Intel's Dallman Touts Whitebook Platform At ISS

Intel unveiled its Rich Creek 2 mobile platform for whitebook builders, stressed the channel opportunities around its new Atom brand of ultra-low voltage processors and launched a new managed services support program for partners during a busy week at the Intel Solutions Summit in Las Vegas.

The Rich Creek 2 motherboard form factor specification is part of Intel's next-generation Centrino mobile platform codenamed Montevina, said Steve Dallman, global channel chief at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant.

"I just want the channel to be really engaged in this business," Dallman said in a media Q&A session following his ISS keynote to partners Tuesday.

"Rich Creek 2 feels like the right direction. We're looking to work with ODMs who've worked with the channel for a long time. So I can go to a Gigabyte and not have to say, you know, 'This is what a distributor is,'" Dallman said.

Select partners like Seneca Data have already built working laptops on the Rich Creek 2 platform. The Syracuse, N.Y.-based system builder showcased a Rich Creek 2 laptop built on Intel's 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo processor at ISS.

Steve Maser, vice president of product development and marketing for Seneca, told ChannelWeb ahead of the conference that he thinks the platform will allow system builders to build $800 to $1,000 business notebooks with a three-year-warranty that packs more bang for the buck than those offered by larger players like Dell.

Partners were generally upbeat about Rich Creek 2, though it will initially only be available to select partners and not as a stand-alone product. One system builder who preferred to remain anonymous said the new platform "goes a long way towards clearing up the 'Verified by Intel' confusion from last year."

Intel announced last October that it would discontinue its Verified By Intel channel program for testing and support of barebone notebooks in 2008. Dallman said then that the chip maker would stop verifying most of the components listed under its mobile Common Building Blocks initiative with the Montevina platform, though it would continue to do so for channel partners with chassis and LCD displays.

The anonymous partner said his company had felt "abandoned" on whitebooks, but that the Rich Creek 2 platform showed that Intel was "still serious" about the space.

Dallman said Rich Creek 2's availability could become wider with time: "This is a developing thing at the moment, with four or five guys ready to go to market."

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