SlashGear

For all they’ve been criticised in the past as industry tyrants, Intel certainly made buying a laptop easier over the past few years.  Their Centrino branding, bringing together certain cooperative graphics, processor and networking strands, is a good rule-of-thumb for buyers both naive and mildly knowledgeable.  Still, the tides of tech wait for no man, woman or multi-national, and with ‘n’ flavour WiFi fast approaching ratification (well, fast by WiFi ratification standards, anyway) it’s time for Intel to ratchet up their own specifications to remain competitive.

Appearing in notebooks from this month, Intel is also working with vendors including ASUS, Belkin, Buffalo, D-Link and Netgear on a co-branded “Connect with Centrino” certification scheme where access points and wireless routers will be tested for “real world” performance. 

While Intel are still using a draft-n standard, they’re claiming that their next-gen technology means that users can eke up to an extra hour of battery life from the latest Centrino machines, as well as enjoying up to five times the performance and twice the range of existing ‘g’ WiFi.  It’ll also be backward compatible with a/b/g networks.

Intel [via eHomeUpgrade]