Intel's Centrino mobile platform reached its fourth generation when the Santa Rosa platform was released, back in early May, 2007. Its interesting that, after almost 5 years (the "Carmel" platform, first one belonging to the Centrino platform initiative, was released way back in March, 2003), Intel finally decided to make the step and apply the "2" label at the end of the Centrino name...


Scheduled for mid-2008, Intel's next Centrino platform, codenamed "Montevina", is expected to featured the Echo Peak Wi-Fi/WiMAX controller combo or code-named Shirley Peak Wi-Fi controller, allowing you to connect your laptop to WLANs and WANs, a very useful thing in areas having WiMAX coverage.

While the sources stating that Intel's "Montevina" will be the first one in the Centrino 2 line, there's no official news regarding this subject from Intel, yet. Even more, Intel didn't comment anything about this story yet, but when they'll do this, I am sure we'll find out about more interesting differences between the "old" and the "new" Centrino platform, because for now, the WiMAX support seems to be the greatest progress of the Centrino 2, compared to the current Centrino platform...