At the press launch for Intel's New Core family in London this week, one message, as articulated by Intel EMEA product marketing director Richard Curran rang out most clearly: "A PC refresh is an urgent requirement for 2010".

Mr Curran said the combination of new technology from Intel - in the form of its i3, i5 and i7 processors - and a new OS from Microsoft - Windows 7 - made for a compelling story.

A PC fresh, he argued, would help productivity, innovation and efficiency.

It was a view shared by partner BMW. Thomas Schmidt, from BMW, said the automotive giant was committed to a refresh because the smart technology inside Intel's chips would boost productivity and that with Windows XP now a decade old, "it's a good time to switch".

Mr Schmidt explained that the Active Management Technology in Intel's circuitry, together with custom software,  allowed its IT department to update users' machines remotely over a weekend - from new profiles to programmes - without a single day wasted for re-installations and configuration of new client applications.

And that can mean a huge time and cost saving - because BMW will be refreshing 85,000 PCs, 35,000 of those are laptops.

Nina Sundberg, director of Windows Client business, for Microsoft UK, explained that the desktop was becoming "an incredible enabler in a way it wasn't previously".

She stressed that Microsoft's and Intel's partnership, stretching back over 20 years, meant the two firms could deliver to consumers and businesses the power they needed.

She said in conversations with business about refreshes, she was hearing the five Cs: "Carbon neutral,  Contingency,  Consumerisation, Costs, Compliance".

And Intel's innovations such as turbo boost, hyper threading, active management technology, KVM, hardware supported virtualisation are clearly helping deliver the five Cs to customers.

Richard Curran summarised it best when he said: "There is a huge business opportunity for companies to take advantage of technology to enhance their business on the global stage".

You can read more about the event here at The Hypervisor.com, here at Thinq.co.uk and here at The Inquirer.

A whole new processor family will always mean a whole lot of questions about how these chips will affect lives and businesses. And so it proved with today's Intel IT Expert live chat.

Intel's experts were hit with questions ranging from helping users understand the difference between product ranges to detailed queries about updating machines remotely and wirelessly.

Here are the key questions and answers from the session. Please note that all questions came from unnamed guests on the live chat system, and I've shortened some of them for brevity.

Q: Can you explain what KVM remote management is and what the benefits are?

A: Martin Lloyd (Intel enterprise architect) Remote KVM is the ability within vPro platforms with Core i5 and i7 processors and discrete (built-in) graphics to have full remote control of the keyboard, video and mouse. This is effective even when the vPro PC is powered off, allowing full control from power on through into the operating system. The advantage is that there is no dependency upon operating system agents to be running and as KVM is within the vPro chipset it is a common implementation across OEM's. There are significant advantages and savings available for support organisations as there is now a common set of tools to manage your 2010 vPro client estates increasing remote support capabilities and reducing the requirement for a deskside or site visit.

Q: A lot of our staff want to dump their locked-down corporate laptops. How does virtualisation help?

A: Steve Cutler (Intel Technical Marketing Manager) One solution to using your own laptop in corporate environment is to use client virtualisation. you already have options using type 2 hypervisers like Microsoft Virtual PC - and we are working with other virtualisation vendors to port their type 1 virtualisation products to run on clients. In this case you can then run multiple virtual machines on the clients where one VM can be your corporate environment and a second VM can be the consumer/personal VM so that the laptop owner can still do all the usual consumer activities without impacting safety or security of the corporate environment.

Q: I'm interested in client hypervisors on laptops. What benefits does vPro bring?

A: Steve Cutler: vPro platforms include hardware features that enable client hypervisers to run faster and be more secure. They include Intel's Virtualisation Technology (VT) which provides multiple hardware assists to enable better performance especially switching between virtual environments. Trusted Execution technology (TXT) enables the hyperviser to be more secure by ensuring that the hyperviser code has not been tampered with between system boots and also allows the hyperviser to ensure that any virtual machine it launches is also unchanged since the last time it was executed. We are working with ISV's that plan to launch client hyperviser products to build in support for these features. in addition you you may find other features of vpro platforms like Active management techonology or Anti theft technology may help you with a large laptop fleet whether you use client hyperviser or not.

A: Steve Cutler: Let me answer in two parts... How can vPro help? vPro laptops include Active management techology (AMT). If you enable AMT - you will have the ability to remotely manage the laptops over wired or wireless (there can be some differences in capability between wired and wireless) and independently of the OS, so even if a user's OS is down, you can still connect to the laptop to invetigate the problem. You can also power on remote systems to download patches (with laptops over wirelss there may be some limitations due to battery remaining charge). How can you ensure systems have latest virus signature files before connecting to the main network? As mentioned AMT will help you to ensure that patch deployments achieve high success rates - but you need systems connected to your network to be able to deploy patches in the first place!! However if you are updating promptly as patches are available - then presumably you will be able to minimise any risk due to unpatched systems being on your main network. AMT does include the capabilit to isolate the main OS from the network, but still allow AMT to upload a patch file. Regret that at the moment there are few ISVs supporting this feature.

Q: What's the difference between core 2 pro and new i5 vPro?

A: Stuart Dommett (Intel Business Development Manager) The all new Core i5 vPro processor is part of our latest desktop and laptop processor family. The new processor provides improved performance, energy efficiency and some new features including AES-NI which provide significant performance improvements in encryption solutions that utilise this instruction set. Also there is remote KVM and the latest in our Active Management Technology (vers 6). There are some really interesting features in the Core i5 and i7 processors including Turbo Boost and Hyper Threading that improve your processing of different type of apps. Please check out the details on http://www.intel.com/en_uk/business/itcenter/products/core/core_family/index.htm

For more of the questions and answers take a look at the Live Chat site.

I've just finished playing around with an Intel Core i5 based laptop and Intel® Wireless Display or 'WiDi' as many are now calling it... and my immediate thought was: 'this is not just a consumer technology, this could be really useful in the office'

For those who might not have seen WiDi in action, it's a new technology that was launched at this years CES (and won the best of show people's choice award to boot).

What it enables you to do is easily mirror the output of your laptop display wirelessly at 720p resolution.

There were several demos at CES and people were talking about sitting in their living room with friends and watching YouTube on the TV together, all of which is great of course, but I'm surprised more wasn't said about how useful this could be in the business world.

Having spent at least 30 minutes this week fiddling with projectors and vga cables, swapping cables with other presenters during meetings, I love the idea of just walking into a meeting with my laptop and outputting my presentation to a screen (or HDMI enabled projector) with minimal fuss.

I'd be interested to hear what others think about this feature...is it just something for consumers or also good for businesses?

Can you think of any other good places this could be used in? (I'm already thinking point of sale displays etc).

Anyway - I'll leave you with a link in case you want to read more about how it works....

http://www.intel.com/consumer/products/technology/wirelessdisplay.htm