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Intel Dropping Pentium Brand
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Jan 16, 2006 08:27 AM
from the getting-old-anyway dept.
from the getting-old-anyway dept.
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'?"
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new logo? (Score:5, Funny)
Ooh Ahhh Wowwww! (Score:5, Funny)
Am I the only one that thinks all marketers should be locked in a dark dungeon?
Parent
Changing brands (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure it is. The first thing I think of is the original Pentium when I hear the word Pentium. Without the 4 after it, it inheritly sounds slow.
Re:Changing brands (Score:5, Insightful)
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 !
Parent
Re:Changing brands (Score:4, Insightful)
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Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:4, Insightful)
A good example of that would be the Toyota Camry. It is a very good car. For the most part Camry owners wouldn't even think about buying a different car. Toyota earned their brand loyalty by not compromising on quality.
But can you really say the same thing about Intel? My working boxes are all AMD's. To me they offer more bang for the buck. When I think of Intel what comes to mind is not that they're the very best product for the $$$. Instead what comes to my mind is monopolistic business practices with Dell. I'm not saying there's anything more to it than my impression, but that's what I think about when I see Intel Inside.
When I think about quality cars, Camry is what comes to mind. When I think about quality processors, AMD takes the top slot...or maybe I should say Socket A. ;)
Parent
Re:Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, they can't trademark letters...
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This is just sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
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} [intel.com]. 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 [intel.com]
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/ [intel.com] 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.
Parent
Re:Logo change will be forgotten in a few years... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell it to the folks at PricewaterhouseCoopers, when they changed their name to Monday [monday.com].
Astute clickers will find that that link doesn't lead to a site named Monday.com...
Parent
Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smart (Score:5, Interesting)
I have just "converted" some clients (3 specifically) from Intel to AMD, they where die hard "ignorant brand-name buying" users which believed that Intel is better than AMD (and VIA and any other CPU manufacturers) just because they saw more commercials on TV.
What I told them is the tale of the NN processing bits, I told them "do you remember a long time ago, when machines used Windows 3.1, well, when you changed from that to Windows 95, you used a machine that was 32 bits, instead of 16 bits. Well, that was in 1995! now AMD has new processors which are 64 bits, thus can use Windows XP 64 instead of the normal Windows XP which is still 32 bits!" .
I know my tale is not 100% accurate or complete but, I did those people a favor, they spent quite less using AMD and that also showed them that GHZ is not everything (that along with "the mother of all charts" [tomshardware.com] of tom's hardware".
Of course, the computers I am talking about are setup by me, the problem with brand computers (dell, hp, gateway, etc) is that they do not offer alternatives, or the AMD alternatives always seem pretty bad
Parent
Re:Smart (Score:3, Insightful)
64 bit processors also need larger instruction caches because the instructions are way bigger in size. As a result, some small subset of things perform slower in 64 bit mode.
You essentially use a similar argument to the "ours is faster then yours because of Ghz." argument. Both are equally as wrong.
AMD's chips that
Re:Smart (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Another relation (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Another relation (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad example. Mechanics are way out of touch.
I also know a lot of mechanics who drive tricked out, oh excuse me, pimped out or monster cars and obsess about meaningless details (THC 4 speed better than Mopar! No way, my chevy 350 smallblock will bury your hemi!) Nitrous bottles? Bored over engines? How exactly is this good advice to someone looking for a reliable fuel efficient car? Most mechanics obsess about performance cars and have zero grasp of practicality.
The PC service industry and the Car servi
Re:Smart (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Smart (Score:3, Informative)
Although CnQ (Cool and Quiet) has completely reversed the situation, 32-bit Athlons did deserve their reputations for being hot.
When it was P3 vs Athlon, the Athlons were clearly much hotter, although they did have better performance. When it came to P4 vs Athlon, the situation got more complex.
Although Pentium 4s have a peak heat/power rating higher than any Athlon, AMD made a huge mistake with the Athlons, and make their chips unabl
Re:Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
When you know how to spot it, it become blatantly obvious: product identifiers become non-words or just short strings of digits so the manufacturer's name will again become part of product mentions. Auto manufacturers have known this for decades. Remember when the "Legend" and "Vigor" brands disappeared in favor of the "Acura TL" and "Acura RL?" Acura learned form what BMW, Mercedes, and others knew for years. You don't drive a 323i or a C350, you drive a BMW 323i or a Mercedes C350. Only when in-context do the models become shortened to their simple model names or series/class name. Now Intel's following this path.
Keeping the company brand in balance with the products is essential; if one product overshadows the company, the company loses identity. Apple's quietly fighting to keep "Apple" in front of "iPod" and pushing "Mac" back into the name of its flagship notebook. If the company overshadows its products, the products become less competitive and buying habits focus on company loyalty -- think household appliances, in which the brand name is so strong vs individual products that often the same manufacturer supplies many brands with nearly-identical but rebadged versions.
Intel is wise to make the change now. AMD fans brag about "Athlons" and "Opterons," not "AMDs." Intel forces its products to raise the awareness of their company by reducing product names to non-words. Now, their CPUs will be marketed as "Intel D 840" etc and only hardware-aware geeks will shorten it to '840. It's a subtle reminder that Intel (not pentium) is the brand to trust.
Their longstanding "Intel inside" campaign makes this transition possible, even easy. On the other hand, when AMD retires the Athlon name, for instance, they will lose substantial brand awareness because "Athlon" has much more brand strength than "AMD." I've found numerous non-technical people that figure Athlon is made by Intel, simply because that's the only CPU manufacturer they recognize.
Parent
Let's name the processor of the 6th generation! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Smart (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, don't worry, we'll know ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Oh, don't worry, we'll know ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Misconception. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Misconception. (Score:3, Informative)
Are you sure? Check it out:
http://indigo.intel.com/compare_cpu/default.aspx?f amilyid=2&culture=en-US [intel.com]
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20 040105comp.htm [intel.com]
Classically, the celeron has always been a pentium with some of the cache neutered away. I don't really follow the cpu market, so grain of salt and all that, but it appears to still be the case that the Celeron(and Celeron M) is the 'val
AMD leaps beyond while Intel limps along.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Great Move (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all about the Pentiums, baby.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
It's OK to drop Pentium (Score:5, Funny)
Pentium is old (Score:3, Interesting)
back to the part numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
What does surprise me is that they haven't come up with a better product name to replace it. The whole point of using "Pentium" instead of "i586" was trademark and brand identity, and going back to numbers and letters loses that.
Re:back to the part numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:back to the part numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:back to the part numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Intel couldn't stop e.g. Cyrix from selling a chip named "80586", so what's stopping the competition today from releasing a chip called "AMD D 750"?
trademarking letters once again? (Score:4, Funny)
and an another homepage, (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.leapsbeyond.com/ [leapsbeyond.com]
Who has done that?
what comes after Pentium? Sexium? (Score:3, Funny)
1993 called (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Like Benz in Mercedes-Benz... (Score:3)
If you already have the incredibly recognizable "Intel", "Pentium" is - at best - just a redundant add-on, like "Benz" in a "Mercedes-Benz". But at worst it creates an image of a company that lacks innovation. Just see how much more marketing value "Centrino" has over "Pentium M". I don't want to start the holy war here (and no, I'm not sitting with my freelance gig!), but AMD naming is a much better - AMD Duron just sounds better than Intel Pentium. The former evokes durability, the latter suggests that it's just a fifth generation of some product, leading to the inevitable question of shouldn't we proceed to sixth generation at long last?
Great. (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this old news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Pentium was just a clever name for what would have been the 586... we're now many many generations out from there. Countlessly, really, since there are many Pentium 4/M/Xeon/Extreme Edition.
Now that clock speeds aren't ramping up, you can't go 5GHz P4. Changing names is the only way to keep it semi-coherent.
... because "Pentium V" is redundant (Score:3, Insightful)
They had to drop the Pentium name, because it means "five." The first Pentium was the successor to the 486, and Intel decided to drop the numerical identification at least partly because they coudn't trademark it (you can't trademark numbers, IIRC). So the Pentium was the chip that would have been the 586.
The name "Pentium V" or "Pentium 5" would have been a bit silly, so I don't blame them for dropping the name. But I'm very surprised they didn't develop a new brand identity. Do they even have a marketing department at Intel these days? Maybe, given someone else's recent successes in this market, they should just call their new processors "Athlon-compatible." :)
When you can't compete, be sneaky. (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, on July 17, 2005 I got a message from Intel with the subject "Get an Intel(R) BunnyPeople(TM) Character when you Pass Three ICC Online Tests". Apparently someone at Intel thinks that I am immature enough to be motivated by a doll! Maybe there are people that immature, but I'll bet there are few immature people who have purchasing authority.
On the other hand, I have found it impossible to get Intel to do anything right. The Intel people who aren't involved with the design of microprocessors have one "skill" in abundance: They have highly developed methods of avoiding work. I don't have time now to tell the stories about that. Here's only one:
The Intel part number for Intel products was, at that time and probably now, not available anywhere on the public web site. So, if someone wanted to go to Fry's and be sure what they were getting, they would have no way of knowing what part number they wanted.
At that time, there was a way to link Intel product names with Intel part numbers. It was necessary to get a secret password to a non-public Intel web site. I told several Intel marketing people how stupid that was. I got the standard stupid Intel marketing rationalizations about how they didn't need to do the work, or someone else was already doing it. (Which was not true.)
The significance of dropping the Pentium name has nothing to do with the word Pentium. Intel marketing people are adopting ways of naming their microprocessors that provide no information whatsoever about what a prospective customer would be getting. Presumably that makes sense in the fantasy world in which they live. Sneaky behavior is considered smart in the fake world of Intel marketing; they believe they are so superior that they can play games and their customers won't notice.
I forget right now who is CEO of Intel, but the Intel board of directors should fire him. He has no clue about how to build a sense of community.
marketing changes as employees turnover (Score:3, Insightful)
Kudos to Intel's outgoing marketing team, they had a marvelous run.
It's probably a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, in the past when processors had a natural growth pattern of just speed increases it made sense to keep the name. But, these days the industry is moving more towards gradual speed increases coupled with other additional technologies/designs to improve the chip. When you reach the point where you have 15+ different 3ghz Pentiums and all operate at different performance levels, you're only really paying attention to the model number anyway at that point.
Re:brand name change is good, new naming is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:brand name change is good, new naming is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Parent
Re:That makes no sense. (Score:4, Funny)
It displayed 585.99999999 and they decided it's not a good CPU name, so instead they called it Pentium.
Parent
Taking a page from car companies... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Is it wise? (Score:5, Funny)
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