Lamborghini laptop looms large

Posers rejoice -- our spies in Asia inform us that Intel is about to join forces with Italian sports car giant Automobili Lamborghini to produce Lambo-branded laptops.

According to Intel, the collaboration is a match made in heaven, as laptop PCs account for two-thirds of computer sales in Italy. We're more inclined to believe the move was instigated by Lamborghini as a response to the successful Ferrari-branded Acer notebook released in mid-2004.

We've no idea what the Lamborgini offering will look like (our pic here is just a mock-up), but we'd bet our grannies there'll be at least one version made partly of carbon fibre and finished in a bright enough shade of yellow to singe retinas from ten paces.

The laptops are said to be based on the next generation Centrino platform, codenamed Napa, and will feature the forthcoming Yonah CPU that uses two processing cores instead of the usual one. So it should be fast enough to live up to Lamborghini's reputation. Sort of.

As a Windows-based laptop, the Lambo will inevitably be crashing a lot, but the good news is that (unlike a real Lamborghini) its chassis won't be reduced to a mangled heap of metal, and there's no insurance premium to pay -- just hours of your valuable time.

Acer and Ferrari aren't the only carmakers getting in on the laptop PC act. We've also seen a ruggedised Hummer-branded notebook from Itronix, and we won't be surprised to see more popping up from other manufacturers in the near future.

Crave can't help thinking there's something tragic in these aspirational brand extensions, but in a world of Burberry tank-tops, Porche sunglasses and Paris Hilton, we're clearly out of tune with the times. -RR

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