When Apple updated the notebook line in October, they conveniently left the 17 incher out of the equation. We figured they just needed more time to wrap things up in their production lines. After all, when they introduced the MacBook Pro, the 17 inch PowerBook was only updated a few months later. 

Then Intel goes ahead and releases a low-cost quad core notebook chip that definitely fits the bill for Apple’s large notebook. It is after all, a desktop replacement, and people want the best performance they can get from the workhorse. Here’s the report by David Flynn on APCmag.com…

Branded as the Core 2 Extreme Q9000, the chip partners four 2GHz cores with 6MB of Level 2 cache for US$348. That price is one third the US$1,038 ticket for the QX9300 2.53GHz superslab and well under half that of the next-down Q9100 2.26GHz, which lists at US$851.

Both of those processors have twice the L2 cache of the Q9000, but they all share the same 45nm Penryn-class architecture and a 1GHz front side bus, compared to the 800MHz bus (also with 6MB of cache) of the T8300 and T8500 processors used in the 15 inch MacBook Pro.

This still remains a rumour of course, so don’t get disappointed if you see the 17 incher sporting only a two point something dual core processor. Besides, we still have to worry about whether Apple will again exclude the matte option on the display, and leave out some juicy firewire ports on the big one.

Have any tip-offs? Send them along to pr@smokingapples.com