Intel's Athena project could improve laptops, if only he had the tooth

About eight years ago, Intel turned its enormous power into one of the leading PC component manufacturers to improve the quality of laptops around the world with the word "Ultrabook". Intel has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to a marketing campaign for the latest laptops, but advertising was accompanied by one condition: these computers had to meet stringent standards in terms of thinness, weight , responsiveness and battery life.

The computer industry has come to grips with the enormous challenge of the amazing MacBook Air: and in a few years, the quality of Windows hardware has undeniably improved. Fragile plastic machines have given way to metal, less latency has become standard and incredible machines like the Dell XPS 13 and HP Specter x360 have emerged from the fray.

Now, Intel is trying to take laptops to the next level with a new program called Project Athena. But today, we learn that Intel has forgotten to bring the most important component: a real brand.

As we discovered earlier this month, the Athena Project will not be a meaningless marketing campaign. In fact, Intel aims to remove one of the biggest lies ever seen by PC buyers in the computer industry: battery life.

According to Intel, the Project Athena's laptops will have to offer a real 9-hour battery life, browsing the web via Wi-Fi, with their screen set to the brightness level (250 nits) that a user could have in the real world. This is important because the current reference systems for laptops are far from what they are, but when a PC maker says that your new computer has a battery life of 24 hours, they usually measure it reading a video that imposes little load on the processor, without Wi-Fi off, and low-light screen to start. Who uses a laptop like this?

We now learn that battery life is only the beginning. The Project Athena laptops will have to wake up in one second, be ready to surf the Web in less than two seconds thanks to connected standby, and will enjoy the same kind of responsiveness as when they're plugged into the wall – they come with touch screens, precision touch pads (trust us, that's needed), latest Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, enough RAM (8GB) and NVMe solid state storage (256 GB) to manage the basics for most users.

And Intel is not going to just let these things to manufacturers. It will test the disadvantages of some of these things, namely the battery life and responsiveness, because Intel believes that they are the basis of PCs that really meet the needs of modern users.

Basically, Intel tells the world that it will prevent manufacturers from cheating, in many ways that they usually cheat when they buy a cheap component of a machine. And Intel says it will raise the bar every year, as is the case with Ultrabook, to ensure that the "key experience indicators" (see the previous slide) of a good laptop experience are satisfied with each new computer.

I would be very impressed with the success of the Ultrabook campaign: Intel says there is no Project Athena brand for consumers. You will not really see it when you enter a store. It will not be about marketing material, or a sticker on the laptop itself. There will be no clear way to tell friends and relatives a little less computer savvy than they really have to look for a Project Athena laptop to guarantee a good experience, instead of anything that might attract the best. Buy or Amazon or Newegg shelf.

It also means that manufacturers have no clear incentive to engage, to compete to build new Project Athena machines and to raise the bar for the entire sector. I suspect that the builders will only submit computers that they already know how to succeed – and I wonder if it will be adopted much, even at that time. The manufacturers seem terribly fond of being able to announce that their laptops can last 24 hours on battery, and I do not see them easily agree to instantly reduce that number by half.

Image: Sean Hollister / The Verge

Intel claims to have early access to technologies developed by Intel, such as its energy-efficient displays, and labs and symposia, but that these were already status quo for its partners. It is difficult to imagine that Intel will suddenly retain such ideas to a smaller range of partners if it already benefits from this intellectual property without doing so.

Intel says it is only the first year for the Athena project and that it could incorporate a brand or a marketing campaign later. For now, this seems like a good idea without teeth.