Intel Pushes for Conformity

While I think that laptops should be a little more standardized, I feel that the differences mirror the people that the companies are marketing to, and that personal computers are more and more becoming the same, where you can line up four $1000 computers, and they will have mostly the same compontents.

Cnet has an article explaining how Intel would like to standardize as much of a notebook as possible to make support and release times better, but I think that the differences in notebooks is a good thing and that moving towards conformity is only going to create brand confusion and blur the lines between an Acer notebook and a Lenovo Thinkpad.

To address what Siu described as “infrastructure pain points,” Intel in 2004 introduced its Common Building Block (CBB) program for specifications in hard-disk drives, optical-disc drives and LCD panels. The initiative aims to establish consistency in components used in notebooks, regardless of who manufactures them, so that assembly cost and time-to-market can be reduced.

This year, the CBB program has added four more specifications–ones for battery packs, power adapters, keyboards and customizable notebook panels.

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