Intel intros enhanced laptops

It provides for faster processors and chipsets, better video and graphics, faster wireless signals, better security and manageability

Intel India today announced a host of new technologies, including faster Intel Core2 Duo processors, for its latest-generation Intel Centrino processor technology used in notebook PCs for consumers and businesses.

It provides for faster processors and chipsets, better video and graphics, faster wireless signals, better security and manageability. It is designed for energy efficiency to enable great battery life.

More than 230 Intel Centrino Duo and Intel Centrino Pro processor technology-based designs from PC manufacturers, resellers and integrators around the world are expected to take advantage of these and other features this year. Intel said in a statement.

Notebooks would come with designs ranging from fully loaded, 17-inch wide-screen models ideal for entertainment to tiny, energy-saving notebook PCs that weigh less than three pounds, Intel statement added.

“When we introduced Intel Centrino four years ago, Intel changed the computing landscape with our mobile innovations,” said Ramamurthy Sivakumar, managing director, Intel South Asia. “Now, simply said, we have improved virtually all aspects of Intel-based notebooks, the most popular and fastest growing computing market segment in the world.”

At the heart of the new Intel Centrino Duo and Intel Centrino Pro processor technology-based notebooks is the next-generation of Intel’s highly acclaimed Intel Core2 Duo processor, delivers breakthrough mobile performance and responsiveness for demanding business users and consumers alike.

The Mobile Intel 965 Express chipset family with Intel Clear Video Technology enables an enhanced high-definition video experience. Intel Turbo Memory is an optional feature, that can access frequently used software applications twice as fast and reduce the amount of time it takes to turn on, or boot-up, a laptop by as much as 20 per cent. In turn, these faster speeds save on power consumption and increase battery life.

“Intel's Centrino Pro processor technology now allows the inherent benefits of Intel vPro processor technology to be implemented in a mobile solution. Built-in features like remote management could potentially reduce infrastructure downtime and cost, in a form factor traditionally harder to keep tabs on due to the portable nature of notebooks," said Reuben Tan, research manager, Personal systems, IDC Asia/Pacific.

"E-cigarette" helps you stub out the habit

The world's first "electronic" cigarette hopes to double sales this year as it expands overseas

It feels like a cigarette, looks like a cigarette but it isn't bad for your health.

A Chinese company marketing the world's first "electronic" cigarette hopes to double sales this year as it expands overseas and as some of China's legions of smokers try to quit.

Golden Dragon Group Ltd's Ruyan cigarettes are battery-powered, cigarette-shaped devices that deliver nicotine to inhalers in a bid to emulate actual smoking.

"The nicotine is delivered to the lungs within 7 to 10 seconds," said Scott Fraser, Vice President of SBT Co. Ltd., the Beijing-based firm that first developed the electronic cigarette technology in 2003 and which is now controlled by Golden Dragon.

"It feels like a cigarette, looks like a cigarette, it even emits vapour. In many ways, it is like an actual smoking experience, and that's what makes us different," he told Reuters.

The cigarettes sell for around 1,600 yuan ($208) apiece and are already available in China, Israel, Turkey, and a number of European countries, but not yet the United States.

Golden Dragon's competitors include global giants Pfizer and Novartis AG, which sell more familiar nicotine replacement products such as chewing gum, patches, and inhalers.

But Golden Dragon's financial results show it might be onto a good thing. Sales more than doubled to HK$286.1 million in 2006, after surging more than ten-fold to HK$135.6 million in 2005, a year after the technology was perfected.

China - home to 400 million smokers and a roughly $160 billion dollar tobacco industry - accounts for 65 percent of Ruyan sales. The firm estimates around 10 percent of China's smokers are attempting to quit, and averaging a 2 percent success rate.

Idea, Aircel, Spice in merger talks: Report

Aircel Cellular Ltd. is in talks to merge with Idea Cellular Ltd. and Spice Telecom, an Indian Financial newspaper said today, citing industry executives close to the negotiations.

Idea, Spice and Aircel planned to merge to create "a pan-Indian presence" to compete with larger players, the paper said.

One executive at Aircel - majority-owned by Malaysia's top mobile phone firm Maxis Communications - confirmed the talks, the paper said.

Idea, India's fifth-largest mobile services firm, listed earlier this year, while Spice, which is 49 percent owned by Telekom Malaysia, plans an initial public offering.

A spokeswoman for Idea did not immediately return calls.

Last week, a Spice official said reports that it would merge with larger rival Idea were speculative.

India's mobile market, the world's fastest-growing, is dominated by Bharti Airtel Ltd., Reliance Communications Ltd., state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Hutchison Essar.