Intel Retiring Centrino Brand From Notebooks

Say bye to Centrino the way you knew it.

The Centrino brand is one that we’ve come to know since the launch of Intel’s Pentium M. While Centrino isn’t a chipset or processor on its own, it’s a brand used by Intel to help consumers identify a set of technologies for notebooks.

With the introduction of the new Core i3, i5 and i7 lines, it seems that Intel didn’t want to contend with putting yet another shiny sticker on notebooks and will be retiring the Centrino brand next year.

Originally, the Centrino brand designated notebooks that featured a specific processor, chipset and wireless capability. Intel realizes that the Centrino brand still has some value with its ties to wireless and mobile technologies, and eventually use the Centrino label on other technologies.

Intel corporate communications manager Bill Calder wrote in a blog post, “With this focus on Intel Core, the Centrino processor technology brand will be retired for PCs beginning next year. However, Centrino has tremendous equity as a wireless technology, so we will transition the name to our Wi-Fi and WiMAX products beginning in 2010.”