Thinkpads Forum

hi there,
could be a stupid question but is there a difference between the centrino duo and the core duo?? bcs some of my friends from the university are using the t60wide and regular and they have the centrino duo sticker on it... whats the deal witht that cpu... would be nice if someone could lighten me up, bcs since i have my black beauty i'm not much into the hardware stuff except the tuning up my notebook...

To carry the "Centrino" name, the laptop must not only have a specfic processor (in this case, CD or C2D), but also feature an intel LAN/WLAN 3945 i believe, and use intel's chipset (northbridge).

This is just intel's bad marketing practices of forcing manufacturers to buy more stuff from intel.

Your T60 most likely features the better Atheros IBM card, but can't feature the centrino logo.

Centrino is composed of 3 Intel technologies. You dont get the badge if you dont have all 3. This technology provides several benefits such as performance, battery life, connectivity through wireless, etc.

These 3 are 1) processor (Pentium M/Core Solo/Core Duo/Core 2 Duo) 2) chipset (9XX chipsets) and 3) wireless (PRO 2100 up)
Please don't quote me on these examples as I listed them for explanatory purposes only.

Your ThinkPad probably has a non-Intel wireless card (ATHEROS) thats why you dont have the sticker.

The Video Chip has nothing to do with Centrino!
mostly it's the wlan adapter that is non Intel.

cu

We have some ThinkPads that use ATI chipsets, and hence integrated ATI X200 video. They have Pentium M and Intel Wi-fi, but are not Centrino.

Yes you are both correct, did some searching and the video chip is not included in the centrino package. Removed that from the last sentence of my previous post.

hmm i see... still so stupid, bcs the cpu is the same inside and bcs of a different type of wlan card they sell the same stuff under a different name... its seems to me like a perfect way to confuse the customers... i thought they wanted to clean up with that mess when they started with the pentium4 the name war ... i mean i'm studying marketing and in our first class our teacher told us not to confuse custormers bcs they won't understand it and they wont buy it then ... what to do.. reality looks different often from the books but still its stupid ...

Well, ThinkPad is one of the few brands that has higher-end non-Centrino notebooks. And this is only because of the superior Atheros card, and the superior ATI chipset.

In the consumer market, just about everyone understands that they want a "Centrino notebook".

@Fric: The Videochip does not need to be Intel, as stated previously. My T41p booted up with Pentium M-Logo with the Atheros-Card. Now I have a 2915ABG and it is showing the Centrino Logo.

Dummvogel wrote:@Fric: The Videochip does not need to be Intel, as stated previously. My T41p booted up with Pentium M-Logo with the Atheros-Card. Now I have a 2915ABG and it is showing the Centrino Logo.

I know, as I posted earlier, we have ThinkPads that use ATI RC410MD chipset. The mainboard is ATI based, not Intel based.

Oh, ok. I misread that. But curious as I am: What kind of Thinkpad is that? According to thinkwiki.org, the only Thinkpad with ATI-Chipset is the R40e, which does not have P-M, but P4-M

R51e. The chipset is the ATI RC410MD, and the integrated graphics is X200. When we got the R51e early last year I tried installing the then-current beta version of Vista on it and it ran Aero perfectly fine.