Centrino is a mobile technology, that consists of 3 parts, the chipset, the processor, and the wireless capability. If one of those is missing, then the centrino sticker cannot be placed on the laptop. Basically these 3 put together just mean that the system is made for efficient performance, for example my centrino laptop gets over 5 hours on the battery when using intel's speedstep technology, which downclocks the cpu speed when not needed, and turns it up when needed.