ZDNet Asia reports “Intel officially closed the books on the Pentium era on Thursday with the Core 2 Duo, its most important product launch in 13 years.” The Core 2 Duo chips will have the special instructions to better support virtualization at near-native speeds, from what I understand. If you're thinking about buying a new machine, the new chips are attractive, though you might want to wait a few months to ensure they actually work in the field.
Is “Core 2 Duo” the best name the marketeers could come up with? Obviously, the Pentium line won't go one to Sextium, Septium, Octium and Nonium, and “Itanium” was about as popular as green kryptonite. AMD isn't doing much better with their Turion, Sempron and Athlon 64 X2 series – which is the good one?
Some analysts are claiming that Intel has cleaned AMD's clock with this latest release of processors. I think it's good to see it's a horse race – all the competitors will try all the harder.