Photos: Intel Core 2 Duo launch

Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini stood on stage at the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., to formally launch the company’s most important product in a decade, the Core 2 Duo processor. \r\n\r\n

Otellini holds up the Core 2 Duo processor, which\r\nwas built with Intel’s 65-nanometer manufacturing technology. It has 291\r\nmillion transistors packed into an area smaller than the fingernail on\r\nOtellini’s little finger, he said.

Velocity Micro’s PCs are among the first to be\r\navailable with the new Core Extreme and Core 2 Duo processors through\r\nBest Buy’s retail stores.

Intel demonstrated the new processors running on\r\nthis fiery blue desktop PC from boutique gaming PC vendor Falcon Northwest.

Dozens of systems were available for demonstrations\r\nfollowing Otellini’s speech, including this number from Voodoo PC. Some\r\nPCs based on the Core Extreme processor are available immediately, while\r\nless expensive ones will start to trickle out over the next several\r\nweeks.

Dell’s new subsidiary, Alienware, showed off a new\r\nchassis design for a Core Extreme PC that has a hinged cover for its\r\nmedia card reader and DVD drive.

Intel and its partners were also showing off\r\npreproduction notebooks based on Merom, the notebook version of the Core\r\n2 Duo. New notebooks will start to appear toward the end of August, said\r\nDadi Perlmutter, the new solo head of Intel’s Mobility Group, in an\r\ninterview.