Intel, BMW show tomorrow's 'mobile office'

IDG News Service - Forget working from home; not long from now, you could be running a business from the back of your car.

Intel Corp. and BMW AG drove a prototype BMW 7 Series, which doubles as a mobile office, to the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany. The computing power comes from a Tablet PC fitted into the armrest on the back seat, along with a Bluetooth-enabled printer and fax machine.

For connectivity, the car has a wireless LAN access point that connects to the outside world over General Packet Radio Service and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System third-generation telephone networks, which support wireless data services.

"It's just a prototype, so don't go asking BMW for one just yet ... but the automotive industry is working on these type of advances," said Christian Morales, general manager of Intel's operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. An Intel representative at CeBIT couldn't immediately say when the vehicle might go on sale.

Aside from the car, Intel's presence at CeBIT this year has a heavy consumer focus. At a press conference Thursday, the company showed a variety of home PCs and "entertainment PCs," which resemble DVD players and can connect to a PC to shuttle movies to wireless screens around the home. One of the DVD-like systems was a reference design built by Taiwan's First International Computer Inc.

Intel also squeezed out a new chip set for consumer PCs. Code-named Alderwood, it's intended to complement the Grantsdale chip set unveiled earlier this year. Both are designed to improve the playback of video and other motion graphics on home PCs.

Grantsdale includes an integrated graphics chip and supports the zippy PCI Express interconnect and DDR2 (double data rate) memory technologies. Alderwood will also support PCI Express and DDR2 but is for systems with a separate graphics chip. Both are due out by the middle of this year, said Kevin Corbett, vice president and chief technology officer at Intel's Desktop Platforms Group.

As part of its effort to boost digital technologies for the home, Intel representatives met with 200 venture capitalists in San Francisco on Wednesday to encourage them to invest in companies developing products for that area. Intel is also talking to Hollywood studios to figure out business models that will allow customers to download new movies at home simultaneous with their theatrical releases, Corbett said. There was no word this week when that may occur.

By promoting such digital multimedia services for the home, Intel hopes to sell more of its newer, high-performance chips.