New portable PCs are in flood at the moment, with announcements from companies such as Lenovo, HP, Sony, Toshiba and Acer. This is not a coincidence. It has been triggered by Intel’s announcement of the new Centrino 2 platform, codenamed Montevina, which is being used in more than 200 new laptops.

Five years ago, the launch of the Centrino platform had a big impact on the market, and led to most notebooks having built-in Wi-Fi. Montevina is the fifth iteration of this platform, and calling it “Centrino 2″ suggests that Intel has similar hopes for it. However, that doesn’t seem likely. Montevina is an upgrade worth having, but you may not notice you’ve got it.

To read this article from The Guardian in full, see www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/31/wifi.computing.