Intel wants 2004 to be the year of Centrino.

The chipmaker on Monday plans to begin running a number of new TV, print, online and outdoor ads geared toward increasing the adoption of its Centrino notebook chip bundle among the laptop-toting public in the United States and elsewhere, a company representative said. Centrino has already been on the market for nearly a year and Intel has been marketing it to consumers since the summer of 2003. But so far consumers have been slow to adopt it. Instead, the majority of notebooks equipped with Centrino or Pentium M have been purchased by businesses, according to analysts and PC makers. Intel will endeavor, with its new campaign, to shift consumers toward Centrino notebooks.

The ads will tout the notebooks’ ability to “unwire,” or detach, from a power line and a modem or an Ethernet network cable, and to check e-mail or surf the Web using wireless networking. The Centrino bundle includes an 802.11 wireless module, along with the Pentium M processor and an Intel chipset. Centrino offered only the 801.11b standard, at first, but Intel recently upgraded it with a dual-band 802.11b/g module. The module has since been working its way into new notebook models.

News source: C|Net News.com