Final Words

Another day, another dollar, another year, another Centrino. This processor-only update to Santa Rosa actually interests us more than what we saw last year with the introduction of the Santa Rosa platform.

This year's Centrino update is much more back to the basics: performance goes up, as does battery life, and Intel does it all at no additional cost to the end user.

Possibly because it was a ultra-high-end only launch, but Penryn on the desktop just didn't seem nearly as exciting as mobile Penryn. Here the benefits are even more tangible; by keeping clock speeds the same and using the improvements of Intel's 45nm transistors to lower the voltage, Intel is able to reduce power consumption to a measurable degree in a notebook using mobile Penryn.

Current Santa Rosa owners don't really have any burning need to go out and upgrade their systems, but if you were thinking about buying a new laptop you might as well hold off for another month so that these Penryn based systems can hit the streets.

If you have an aging Centrino notebook, now would be a good time to upgrade. We suspect that the timing of Intel's mobile Penryn announcement may have something to do with the fact that Apple will be holding its MacWorld conference next week.