Intel Corp, the world's largest chipmaker, on Wednesday unveiled a technology dubbed ``Geyserville'' that enables a laptop to work as fast as most desktops when the mobile unit is plugged into an electrical output. When the power cord of a laptop is detached, the technology slows the microprocessor -- the brains of PCs -- to speeds found in most conventional mobile computers.

By making a laptop computer nearly as powerful as a high-end desktop machine, it could allow workers to have just one computer, both for the office and for travel. The faster machine would also run programmes -- such as word-processing, multimedia presentations and spreadsheets -- far faster. That could lead to much higher sales.

``This way they can close the performance gap between notebooks and desktops,'' said analyst Ashok Kumar at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. ``Once you put it into a dockingstation, it'll enable you to ratchet up the processor speed.''

While laptops represent only 15 per cent to 20 per cent of the PC market, unit sales of mobile PCs have been outpacing their desktop counterparts. Intel is hoping this technology, along with falling laptop costs, will help spur demand.

The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker at its developers forum in Palm Springs, California demonstrated a modified Pentium II chip in a laptop computer that ran at 500 megahertz when plugged in, but then automatically scaled back to 400 megahertz when the cord was detached.

Intel, along with other companies, is pushing to have 80 per cent of the PCs used by its employees to be laptops and 20 per cent desktops by 2000, reversing the current mix.

Increasingly, as notebook computers get faster and cheaper, some companies are replacing their desktop PCs with laptops. ``We think the rest of the world is going to do the same thing,'' said an analyst Dan Scovel at Fahnestock & Co in New York.

But others werenot so sanguine. Analyst Rob Enderle at Giga Information Group said that while the ``dual-speed'' processor might appeal to the most hard-core power user, for the average business user, they do not need 600 megahertz in a desktop.

Enderle likened the ``dual-processor'' plan from Intel to General Motors Corp's unsuccessful bid during the gasoline crunch of the 1970s to sell a Cadillac with an eight-cylinder engine that only used six or four cylinders depending on how much power was needed.

``People thought it was a great idea, but it turned out the reason people bought Cadillacs was because they wanted the eight-cylinder engine anyway,'' Enderle said, adding that businesses he spoke with said they do not really need super-fast laptops that run at 600 megahertz.

``And if they do want that fast a laptop, why not just get one with a larger battery that runs that fast all the time,'' Enderle said.

The Geyserville technology will be included in Intel's forthcoming Pentium III chip for mobile computing, dueout at speeds of more than 600 megahertz by the end of the year. It will use Intel's latest 0.18 micron chipmaking technology, and laptops powered by the Pentium III chips should be available at about $3,000, Intel said.

``This gives us a tremendous opportunity to rapidly expand and grow the mobile market,'' said head of Intel's mobile/handheld products group, Robert Jecmen. ``We're really able to break through a performance barrier, delivering near-desktop levels of performance.''

Intel has sought to pitch the Pentium III as a ``next-generation'' processor, but most analysts have noted that while the chip boasts 70 new instructions to enhance multimedia, speech recognition and graphics performance, the chip has more incremental, rather than evolutionary, gains.

``The Pentium III is evolutionary rather than revolutionary,'' Scovel said. ``It's another step in Moore's law advancing.''

Moore's law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore -- the richest man in California -- stipulates that theperformance of semiconductors doubles every 18 months while the cost of the device remains roughly the same.