ultrabook

Ultrabooks are expected to heat up even further by this summer, according to one of their major proponents.

Currently selling at $800 and higher, the light and thin laptops will finally ring in at starting prices of $699 in time for the back-to-school shopping crowd, says Intel.

At the same time, a slew of new models will reach the market, including hybrids that can function as either a laptop or a tablet and ones that offer touchscreens to take advantage of Windows 8, reported IDG News.

Speaking at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing today, Kirk Skaugen, Intel general manager … Read more

New Intel solid-state drives are aimed at boosting Windows startup and wake times, making them a hardware feature that will be especially applicable to Windows 8.

The Intel SSD 313 Series offers what is in effect a solid-state drive cache, increasing the "responsiveness" of PCs that are based on hard disk drives -- that being a word Intel and Microsoft throw around a lot these days.

Responsiveness is code for the kind of instant-on experience you get on a tablet or smartphone.

And both Windows 8 PCs (think: ultrabooks) and tablets should offer that kind of responsiveness as … Read more

We're more than a quarter of the way through 2012 (believe it or not), so it's time to ask: where are those hot laptops we saw back at CES?

The good news is, looking back at the products we saw back then, is that a surprising number of them weren't vaporware. Even better, a great number of them have already made their debut and have been reviewed on CNET. … Read more

For ultrabooks to succeed, the display needs to approach an iPad's quality or least match that of a MacBook--which uses higher-end displays.

A lower quality display can be a deal breaker for consumers in the age of the iPad, which boasts a high-quality, high-resolution in-plane switching (IPS) display.

IPS and high-quality TN displays offer viewing angles and contrast typically better than those used on most ultrabooks today.

This shortcoming has become apparent in more than a few reviews of the Dell XPS 13 ultrabook, which in almost every other respect is generally considered an excellent design. (Another review here … Read more

With Intel's latest silicon due soon, the chipmaker is cranking up the marketing volume for ultrabooks, saying the skinny laptops usher in a "a new era of computing."

The marketing campaign launched this week is the biggest in about a decade, spanning television, online, and print ads, the company said today. And Intel is putting its proverbial money where its mouth is.

Hundreds of millions of dollars will be allocated for the "largest marketing spend for the company since launching Intel Centrino in 2003," Intel said in a statement. (See first TV ad below.)

Centrino … Read more

Intel is expected to launch its latest and greatest processor, Ivy Bridge, during the last week of April, a source tells CNET. This will be followed by a crush of new product announcements, laptops, and desktops alike.

The announcement is expected the week of April 23 or soon thereafter.

Ivy Bridge will be the biggest statement by Intel to date on the importance of graphics. Not unlike -- broadly speaking -- the emphasis Apple is placing on graphics in the new A5X chip powering the third-generation iPad.

"Graphics are the part where you're going to see the most … Read more

If this sounds familiar, one only needs to go back to the Netbook craze that was sweeping the "Apple is doomed"-style headlines just a few years ago. Those tiny little notebook computers, according to every other expert, were going to displace Apple's growing notebook share and squash any idea of a touch-screen tablet.

Fast-forward to the present and the iPad is the best-selling consumer electronics product of all-time, the iPhone is dominating the profit share of the smartphone industry, and Macs have seen constant growth every year as the PC market continues to slip.

Those facts … Read more

Can a quad-core Windows 8 laptop be as thin as an iPad? That's the design Qualcomm is aiming for. But we've heard this story before.

The San Diego-based chip supplier anticipates superthin laptops running Windows 8 on top of its Snapdragon chips, according to a report in PC World.

It's certainly an enticing idea: Laptops lighter and thinner than even Intel-based ultrabooks -- an idea also put forward by Nvidia, which already supplies its well-received quad-core Tegra 3 processor to Asus for its Tranformer Prime tablet.

At a macro level, this is about ARM versus Intel on … Read more

With Intel's next-gen CPUs arriving late spring/early summer, and Windows 8 coming to new PCs sometime around October, it's easy to recommend that laptop shoppers hold off on any new purchases until one or both of those are available.

Or, is it? We've opened up the question for point/counterpoint debate, with Scott taking the position that you should definitely not buy a laptop right now, and Dan saying we shouldn't be slaves to a release calendar, and just buy what you want, when you want it.… Read more