Intel Bets 2012 on Ultrabooks

Ultawhat? UltraFail? There's too many darn gadgets for crying out loud,I know we humans thrive on technology but come on, another market for devices that'll soon be forgotten all in the name to replace the personal computer? Pfff

Is this the same guy that predicted UMPCs would be a success?

Ultra books with Atom... sheesH!

This seems like one of the riskier things Intel has done in the past few years, relatively speaking of course. Ultrabooks (like tablets and netbooks) seem to be a niche market that may or may not take off. Their Atom platform to use in netbooks was a little underwhelming and I've seen the number of netbooks at retail stores slowly begin to dwindle away.

Oh yeah? Well, STFU, Intel!

Unless the Ultra books come with THIS Atom:



Then yea... Not interested!

I bet against Intel on this one.

I'm afraid it's just wishful thinking.

What happens after everyone in the world already has a notebook/ultrabook...what intel is gonna do??

overpriced.

i'm still wishing for a day when laptops become as configurable as a desktop pc.

I would rather have an Ultrabook than a damn tablet. I like the idea, light weight, small PC that I can tote everywhere and has capabilities that no tablet can offer. Then again I don't own either, I would need to try them out for a few days to decide.
Hey Intel, can I borrow one for a week?

I bet for cookies.

UltraBooks are not Atom based. They use i3/i5/i7 CPUs.

They're just thin and sleek laptops. It's not really a gamble for Intel. That's just the way the market is heading.

Acer has a $899 UltraBook. iPad2 is $499. Add in accessories and you're getting close.

Atoms? sorry you are wrong.

"The rest of the S3's specs are in line with the Toshiba Z830 and Lenovo U300s: It uses a low volt Intel Core i5-2467M processor, 4GB of memory, and 64GB SSD (with a 128GB option)."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,28 [...] 1ybTXm843E

There were some models, it's called a whitebook
Intel did something in the past call "Interchangeability Initiative"
which means any notebook that joins it makes notebook parts that can be interchanged with one another

Well, ultrabooks feature a strong CPU, but they sacrifice on a lot of things like a decent GPU, ports etc. It is more of a like it or not thing. I am in the not liking group, for I want a feature packed laptop even if it is 2 lbs more than an ultrabook.

Thank you. At least someone here understands...

I'd be all about an ultrabook if the prices were reasonable. I'd also like a 14" screen too, but the price is the big show stopper.

Ultrabooks are not netbook "toys" (priced under $500 using an Atom processor). There is one Ultrabook that has been on the market since July of this year...it's called an Apple MacBook Air. There's no question that MacBook Airs sell well...we'll have to wait and see if consumers can be convinced to purchase similar hardware from a non-Apple company.

The 2 main shortcomings of Ultrabooks vs. a regular notebook (as I see it) are that there is no built-in optical drive (does anyone still use these? -- you could still hook up an external one for the rare times you need it) and you are limited to Intel's graphics. So clearly it's not targeted at power users or gamers, but then that's what...5% of the consumer market at most?

Personally, I would go for a notebook (Nvidia/AMD graphics, high-res large display), but the rest of my extended family would go the Ultrabook route (possibly even netbooks, ick).


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook

First phase (Q4 2011)
Thin – less than 20 mm (0.8 inch) thickness[6]
Lightweight – less than 1.4 kg (3.1 pounds)[7]
Long battery life – 5 to 8+ hours[8]
Mainstream pricing – under $1,000 USD (for base model)[9]
No optical drive
Use flash-based SSDs[10]
Use CULV (17 W TDP) Intel Sandy Bridge mobile processors
Core i5-2467M (1.6 GHz)
Core i5-2557M (1.7 GHz)
Core i7-2637M (1.7 GHz)
Core i7-2677M (1.8 GHz)
Use Intel's graphics sub-system HD 3000 (12 EUs)

I think these will succeed. They are truly powerful machines at good prices and from the ones I have seen look pretty nice for the price. I can see a lot of people buying these just on looks alone but are great for travel. Most people don't like to type on screen.

Same price as Macbook Air w/ lower resolution screens and same processors = FAIL :-P

So the first point is that Ultrabooks are not targeting gamers and I believe most people posting negative comments are PC enthusiast gamers!

If you remember the comments about the Ipad, everyone said it was doomed to fail and nobody would buy a larger version of the iphone but they were wrong.

Myself being an owner of the i5 sandy bridge notebook, my only complaint about the PC I have is that it's large and heavier than I would like and it's actually only a 14" and 4lbs and the integrated graphics are actually very good for what I use it for.

No one would use an ultrabook to play high end 3D games so really you don't need the heavy duty battery gobbling graphics add on. Many of us are business users and while we occasionally need workstation graphics, the integrated graphics in the SandyBridge do well in those scenarios and of course offer excellent 2D graphics rendering (which is most of what one does on a PC). Netbooks are useless for some of us because of the workload that we do (any engineering and/or software development or even video editing, web development, etc). This is the perfect platform for those of us who don't play games. It is super light and very mobile (many of us DO travel). It also has similar performance to a standard notebook. You get more battery life (super important), plus performance, plus portability. That is what MANY of us NEED!

In fact, once Ivy Bridge comes out with a graphics processor that is double the performance, any whining about graphics will probably go down the tubes as well. I will happily pay $1k for an Ivy Bridge ultrabook and can't wait until they come out. I will be extremely productive with one of those in my hands.

Completely off. It's ALL about the smart phones. Transform smart phones into tablets and vice versa and that's the money maker.

...and Intel knows it doesn't have any competition. Certainly not from AMD anyways.

The smallest tablet I can find is about about 5 to 6 inches long, 3 inches wide, and about an inch thick. I don't want that in my pocket. It isn't necessary to make smart phones into tablet. They are already mini-PCs in a way. Dual-core, already passed 1GHz CPU clock, and some even close to 2GHz, decent amount of RAM, 720p display for some of them, and so on. Pretty nice specs for a phone. I'm sure phones will continue to improve, but at the moment, they are powerful enough for most people (battery life could be an issue though for some).




The ASUS Zenbook UX 21 (Ultrabook) is $999. It's competition in terms of specs and performance is a $1199 MacBook Air. Not a fail if you ask me.

Actually with the terrible intel graphics and no graphics card options on a netbook, AMD has far better options with their APU's. Intel really needs to up their integrated graphics. They have solid chips with sandybridge but the IG's are worthless. AMD may not have the desktop competition, but they have the best options in the netbook arena, ultrabooks are just a step up from that, dont see it being too big of a problem for them to do just as well there.

Average consumer sees two laptops: one with AMD APU and one with Intel CPU. Which one do you think he'll go for? That's right - the Intel one. Intel is a very famous brand, while AMD is relatively unknown to an average consumer. And not many of them know WTF is an APU. And I'll say it again, APUs are NOT NEEDED for a general consumer, SB IGP will do just fine.

Agree, most people don't shop for graphics capability but instead for the style, color, price and then the "Intel logo"!

Most people aren't gamers, so graphics capability is not a priority.

Exactly.