Analysis
These are all valid points, but how effective has AMD been at conveying them to the market and, more importantly, how many Puma notebooks are currently in the marketplace?
Puma had a one month head start on Centrino 2 and it was vital for it to get traction in the market in that time, before the Intel marketing machine rumbled into town. We asked AMD for a list of SKUs that have already shipped and we're hoping to receive that soon. In the meantime we had a look at a couple of major vendor's websites to see what they had on offer.
One challenge AMD has is that it doesn't have the marketing muscle to plug a laptop brand in the same way that Intel can with Centrino. In fact, Puma doesn't even exist as a brand and is just the codename for the platform based around the Turion 64 X2 Ultra processor. So a search for notebooks sporting one of those should give as a snapshot of its market penetration.
The HP US site offers three AMD notebook ranges and seven Intel ones. All the AMD ones had Turion 64 X2 Ultra processors as an option. Dell doesn't seem to do any AMD notebooks, at least not on its US or UK websites.
So the biggest PC maker in the world is offering Puma laptops and therefore it's fair to assume there are a decent number of them out there. However, it's too early to tell if AMD's head start has been sufficiently exploited.
Regarding the graphics issue, it's just a matter of time before Intel comes out with its next generation mobile IGPs - GM45 and GM47 - at which point a lot of Moorhead's criticisms will presumably be negated. So here's another headstart for AMD and, again, it could be crucial how well AMD exploits it.
