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Intel Dropping Pentium Brand
Devistater writes "After changing their logo from 'Intel Inside' to 'Leap Ahead,' (and attempting to explain why 2006 is a leap year), Intel has now decided to drop the Pentium brand. Instead of an 'Intel Pentium 4 Dual core' you will be now be purchasing an 'Intel D 840.' You can see the intial steps of this move on Dell's desktop lineup.
On the heels of the news of AMD outselling Intel in Desktop Retail sales for two consecutive months, is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?"
Funny that Slashdot's category image sticks to the age-old logo for Intel.
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It might seem crazy now, but it is hard to think of companies that really suffered (to the extent of exiting the industry) when they changed their brand names. Quality determines whether a product will be successful, and advertising and branding determine who successful it will be.
I am sure Intel have given a great deal of thought to this, and in a few years saying D 860 or whatever will be completely natural. As it is, they are going to get bucketloads of publicity from the name change and that will help their bottom line.
The Pentium name has been around for too long, it sounds old and used. However most common users may not even know Pentium, as long as they see the "Intel Inside" logo they think they are getting the best machine.
Further more, Intel chips are going to go into Macs so maybe a name change will be good to make the Mac users feel like they're recieving the new improved intel?
My work here is dung.
Losing the brand name is stupid. Intel even has pop culture behind it.
Kind of like when my wife's real estate agency went from "Better Homes and Gardens" to "GMAC" Ugh. "GMAC" stands for General Motors Assurance Corporation - how boring is that?
Likewise, other recognizable brands or trade names have been wasted into oblivion by idiots sitting on boards who have no clue what they are doing. Witness "Securitas" - what's that, you say? It used to be known as "The Pinkerton Agency" - ahhh... now you recognize it, right? Recognize it fromt he countless pop culture references in western movies and books.
Modern Marketing sucks bigtime.
I don't mind Intel dropping the Pentium brand. It will just help people I talk to remember that "D" stands for Digital Restrictions Managment in the new Intel computers.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I await the day Intel try to trademark the letter D after failing to get i.
/. is good for you.
(trust me, my parents are the proud owners of a celeron *shudders*).
Why shudder?
A 'Celeron D' is perfectly adequate for 90% of home users usage, and lets not forget that the mobile CPU in the Centrino package is a 'Celeron M' - which in its self is becoming quite popular as a low-heat/low-wattage chip.
Unless of course you are referring to the older hamstrung Celerons, then yeah, they were crap.
-Jar.
Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
It seems like the lack of replacement-name indicates that Intel is trying to reinforce the brand of the company (Intel) instead of the brand of the chip (Pentium). This is probably because their lineup has diversified.
With AMD catching up or even outperforming them in sales in many areas of the market, Intel's marketing people probably want people to buy a "genuine" Intel product, and the specifics matter less. Whether they get (what was formerly called) a Pentium, a Centrino, an Itanium or a Celeron matters less; but this brings into the linelight the perceived importance of the company producing the chip. And Intel is still recognised by the average consumer much more than AMD. Whereas they were diluting their brand by having many different chip names.
Furthermore, this throws down the gauntlet for AMD. Previously, all AMD would have to do is get reasonable mindshare for "Athlon" compared to "Pentium". Now they would need to essentially unseat the entire "Intel" brand, which is a much tougher row to hoe.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
So, when Mr Smith, accountant that has a PC at home to surf the web, get his emails and play a few games of Tiger Woods golf asks himself is he wants a PC, what will he look for ? Brand recognition. Will I buy a AMD, or a Pentium ?
Sure, if he got a geeky nephew, the nephew will maybe direct him to a AMD processor, but if he's Joe 6pack average, and wants recognition, he'll go for what ? For that thing he heard a lot on the news, during the last 11 years, a... whatcha call it... PENTIUM.
He won't go for a Pentium 3.4 HT w/533fsb 1mb L2 cache. He'll go for a Pentium. PENTIUM. Doesn't matter wether it's a Celeron or a Dualcore; he wants a Pentium. For the same price, Joe Average will buy a 2.4ghz Celeron over a AMD 3800+ Dualcore (i dunno if those exist, it's a mere example; the CPU business goes too fast for me, I change my PC every 2 years because my 2yo PC still plays the games I want it to play and I'm not really up to date in the CPU technologies). Why ? You've guessed it : because it's a PENTIUM !
"I got a Harley and a Porsche." Everyone understands.
"I have 944 and 883". Wha?
What about "Type 1"? Everyone knows VW Beetle. Nobody knows VW Type 1. But it's the same car...
These products bought their fame DESPITE horrible brand names, not THANKS to them.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I always ask my customers about their cars. I ask them if they wouldn't like to drive the same car as their mechanic, or at a minimum, that they would trust their mechanic's advice on what is reliable and offers good performance for the dollar. I'm their mechanic, only I work on their PC. If you look under the hood of my computer, you'll find AMD; because they offer a stable, affordable, and stronger alternative to Intel. It also helps to let them know that AMD has outsold Intel in the retail channel.
Don't worry. To ordinary plebs, you got an Intel inside, and here's your Pentium on that CD, with product key and user manual. Microsoft Pentium Vista, successor to Windows.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
and they want their joke back.
Notice all these particularly high end car companies don't name their cars? i.e. BMW 330i
The problem they had before was they tried to have the product number stand on its own, so the marketing was focused on the 486 processor, for example. Other companies did 486s, and intel ran into issues, and so they wanted a trademarkable product name, 'Pentium'.
Now, they look at those car companies, and there is a key difference. This isn't the 'D processor', it would be the "Intel D processor" In other words, the product-specific name is too short/unintelligble to be usefully distinguishable, and the market is forced to have the Intel brand name in too. They want to enhance and leverage their brand versus the product like BMW, Lexus, et al do. If they had thought this 10 years ago, we wouldn't have the Pentium we might have been emphasized as 'The Intel 586', though 586 might have been made less predictable, useful, or generally made unable to stand on it's own as a product family identifier without the Intel name to have any clue as to what context to consider it in.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Am I the only one that thinks all marketers should be locked in a dark dungeon?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Agreed. I was checking this out a week back (and perhaps should have gotten first dibs on a story at Slashdot).
.. that still doesn't help me. I want to know how fast / powerful / capable a processor is. Who cares whether it has HT or if it's Exxxtreeeme!
Although I'm a bit of a techie but I haven't looked at processors in a while. So I visited the intel website and I found it impossible to penetrate the permutations of the set {Pentium, D, Dual, Core, HT, Extreme}. They mean nothing to me except, perhaps, sound cool.
So I figred that they MUST have some kind of comparison chart so that I can make some sense of this. Really had to dig for it, but I found this
So, er
Look at the fine print at the bottom of any product comparison page - "Intel processor numbers are not a measure of performance. Processor numbers differentiate features within each processor family, not across different processor families. See http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ for details."
Go ahead and click it. You will find :
"The processor number is not a measurement of performance, nor is it the only factor to consider when selecting a processor.
The digits themselves have no inherent meaning, particularly when looking across processor families. For instance, 840 is not "better" than 640 simply because 8 is greater than 6.
Furthermore, linear increments between processor numbers may not indicate linear feature advancements. For example, the differences in processor features between an Intel® Pentium® M processor 760 and an Intel® Pentium® M processor 765 will not be the same as between an Intel® Pentium® M processor 765 and an Intel® Pentium® M processor 770, even though both pairs of processors are separated by an increment of five digits.
Processor numbers do not represent specific system configurations and do not replace system-level benchmarks."
WTF?!
Yes, perhaps it is a good idea to start naming processors after "features" because focus has started shifting towards better design of processors (rather than just brute force speed). But then again, I would like some solid benchmark to compare all these processors.
I say they should just measure in FLOPS and leave it be. What they have now is just sad.