Michael Dell’s last-minute acceptance of a keynote speaker’s slot at CES is widely viewed as a signal that the PC manufacturer will unveil a family of Intel Yonah-based laptops aimed at the home entertainment market.

Dell, of course, has an exclusive processor arrangement with Intel and the firm didn’t want to sit by the sidelines as upstart Intel processor user Apple Computer steals the thunder as a creative user of the Yonah dual-core processor.

The Yonah processors are expected to show up in some of Dell’s Precision and Latitue models. While Intel likes to publicly downplay processor speeds, its sales people have been touting the Yonah’s speeds, which are said to range from the mid-1.5 GHz to more than 2 GHz.

The best thing about the Yonah is said to be its capability of delivering impressive speed and throughput performance specs while keeping a lid on power consumption