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Really. I worked as a laptop salesman when Intel introduced the term "Centrino". I had to explain to many customers that yes, this other laptop that happened not to use an Intel chipset also worked wirelessly.

To get a Centrino sticker, a laptop had to use an Intel chipset, Intel wireless adapter and Intel CPU. Because the marketing for Centrino focussed almost exclusively on Wifi capability, there were many laptops with non-Intel chipsets or AMD CPUs that were perceived by customers as not being capable of wireless networking.

This article[1] explains how Wi-Fi wasn't very popular until the Centrino campaign.

[1]: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/04/inte...




That's essentially an Intel press release (follow the author link).

Anyway, I'm perfectly content to believe that Centrino and Intel's multimillion dollar marketing campaign for it really helped the growth of Wi-Fi. The parent post claimed the opposite: That the branding "hurt the market" for Wi-Fi, which seems absurd.




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