Over Selling Wireless

from the truth-in-advertising dept

It's no secret that Intel has gone on a wireless advertising frenzy with their Centrino marketing program. They have ads everywhere in just about every format you can imagine. However, this one writer in Network IT Week makes a very good point that their ads can be misleading and confusing not-so-tech-savvy people into believing that WiFi connections are already everywhere. As is pointed out in the article, the ads tend to confuse local area wireless with wide area wireless - and imply that if you have a WiFi enabled laptop, all you have to do is turn it on and you'll have internet access. Now, obviously, if you know a thing or two about computers, you know this is not true (or most likely to be untrue, unless you happen to have friendly neighbors with open WiFi networks and never travel anywhere else). However, some are apparently taken in and are a bit confused when their laptop doesn't seem to connect them to the internet automatically. Sure, it's in the fine print, but who actually looks at the fine print. If the focus of the pitch is on the power of WiFi, then shouldn't the ads really be focused on what local area WiFi can do, rather than wide area technologies that aren't as prominent yet? Update: Apparently, Intel is being investigated over the ad described in the first article above.

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