Intel paying vendors to launch Ultrabooks

Emil

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Intel is investing heavily in its Ultrabook concept. The chip giant is paying first-tier notebook vendors to develop Ultrabooks, according to sources from downstream notebook players cited by DigiTimes.

Most notebook vendors are taking a conservative attitude toward Intel's Ultrabook concept after the failure of Intel's Consumer Ultra Low Voltage-based ultra-thin notebooks in 2009, not to mention the growing idea that tablets are cannibalizing notebook sales. As a result, Intel is hoping a big investment will be able to attract these vendors to launch Ultrabook products.

Intel unveiled design guidelines for the Ultrabook less than two months ago. The goal is to combine thinner and lighter form factors with tablet-style features such as touchscreens and near instant-on capabilities.

Ultrabooks are supposed to less than 20mm (0.8 inch) thick and cost less than $1,000. In the next 18 months, the company is hoping to eventually have really thin, really responsive systems down to truly mainstream price points of around $600.

The first wave of laptops adhering to the spec will arrive in time for the 2011 holiday shopping season, with Asus, one of the initial launch partners, releasing the UX21 Ultrabook. A second wave of Ultrabooks will appear in the first half of 2012, based on Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors. The company hopes to reach its goal of mainstream prices at some point in 2013 with a new Core processor design, code-named Haswell, which will half the power consumption of Intel chips compared to today's laptops, enabling thinner designs and longer battery life. By that time, Intel says, as much as 40 percent of laptop shipments will be in this category.

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Only problem is... they are not Apple and not running OSX.

For about the same price as the very soon and upcoming new Air you will get:

no TimeMachine, no GarageBand (and all the rest of the awesome built in software), no resale value, no painless pro audio, constant virus fears, overpriced and painful OS updates, a watered down undomainable version of the OS, lousy support, mediocre battery life, no Lightpeak, loads of crapware and trialware ...

Move along people.
 
Wow! When are people going to realize that Apple have done nothing special except market well and trick ****** like the guest @8:58pm into paying way too much for a device that does nothing extra ...
 
I don't own a Mac, or powerbook, or and Iphone, or an Ipod, but looking and using my daughters Ipod, my moms Ipad, my cousins Mac, and feeling a powerbook at the store, i can say Apple has its advantages. I am a PC all the way, but i must admit Apple looks like it might go Serious main-stream with the IOS5
 
"When are people going to realize that Apple have done nothing special except market well and trick"

Nope, not true. It's a superior overall experience and value unless you are a Windows or Linux superuser. And even then, the Unix underpinnings on the Mac are very powerful when you dig in a little. Excellent software can pay for itself very quickly in many ways and the Mac also includes pretty good hardware matched with it to make it all perform very smoothly together.

Try one in earnest for 6 months and then decide if it's worth it.

Also, if you look on EBay you will notice that second hand Macs fetch a pretty darn good price relative to PCs. This can easily offset any extra cost at the register relative to a PC.
 
Apple products are only appealing if you want the most simplistic and uncustomizable product possible. If you want anything more than that, an apple product isn't for you. And they grossly overprice all of their products. You can actually buy the exact same specs brand new for roughly $400-500 cheaper than what you can buy from apple.

Also, there really isn't anything very special or specific in macs. They have far fewer available software for them and nothing all that original.

And you may be able to sell them on ebay if your computer doesn't break. Apple products have some of the worst build-in obsolesence i've ever seen in a product.
 
Lightpeak is an Intel technology and will likely be available in many of these new models. The processor in the Mac air is also Intel. The Mac Air is an Intel ultrabook for all intense purposes so if anything it supports this push.
 
Wow, this comment section deviated the quickest i've ever seen here, lol. The first guest came in trolling all the way :p

To get us back on topic (take you Mac vs Windows computer argument somewhere else) i'm looking forward to where this is going to go. Thin, light, fairly cheap, longer battery life, near instant on capabilities...i'm interested. I will, however, hold out till the new chip design. For now, i'm going for a fairly cheap laptop to last me till I see how well these hold up.
The biggest problem I have is that in my mind, the thinner the laptop, the easier it is to break. That may not be the case, but i'm just paranoid like that :p
 
"Apple products are only appealing if you want the most simplistic and uncustomizable product possible."

Bunk. Apple laptops are no less customizable than Dell, HP or any other brand but come with better screens and better designs along with all the necessary options standard. Mac Pros are uber-customizable and are built so well that people keep them forever. iMacs are no different from any other company's all-in-ones except that they have an amazing quality 27" screen and loads of power for a fantastic price. What differentiates a Mac is that it is built so well and comes already so well outfitted and matched for OS X that upgrades are rarely needed.

"If you want anything more than that, an apple product isn't for you. And they grossly overprice all of their products. You can actually buy the exact same specs brand new for roughly $400-500 cheaper than what you can buy from apple."

Including the cheap plastic build quality, terrible screen quality, crapware, and an inferior "light" version of a virus-prone operating system that makes people lose hair at an early age and pay ME to fix :$)

To this day no one has managed to come up with a Macbook Air or iMac 27" of equivalent quality for less money. Not to mention the fact that you would be stuck with a "home" version of Windows. A computer is far more than hardware, OS X kicks serious Windows butt.

"Also, there really isn't anything very special or specific in macs. They have far fewer available software for them and nothing all that original."

except for TimeMachine, GarageBand, iWeb, iPhoto, iMovie, Mission Control, AutoSave, Versions, FaceTime to name few that come free with every new Mac, are wonderfully integrated, feature-filled and easy to use and have no functional or aesthetic equal that comes with Windows.

"And you may be able to sell them on ebay if your computer doesn't break. Apple products have some of the worst build-in obsolesence i've ever seen in a product."

And the best support in the industry and amazing resale value for something so obsolete. Not.

That Guest has obviously never owned a Mac and is clueless. I know people still using their 12" MacBookPro from 7 years ago and it runs Leopard well. Studies have shown that people typically hold on to them twice as long as a generic PC or Laptop and often still get good money for them when they sell.

The Mac encourages great software because of the higher standards. PCs have tons of "me too" software titles but what is most telling is that the vast majority of the best and most popular professional software found on the PC ORIGINATED on the Mac. But for most users the built-in software is so well integrated, covers a huge landscape of typical needs and is of such great quality that mac users need very few little third party software.
 
I wonder if this will help AMD. AMD now has the chips to fit into such a case at the low end, and should have even better next year, with Trinity and the next gen Brazos (whatever it's called). The E-350 is already well established in the low end 11.6" form factor. Designs for Intel's chips could help designs for these AMD chips.
 
It's true that the Mac users I know seem quite satisfied with their purchase and don't feel it overpriced for what they get out of it. There is quite a bit of added value in the solid full-featured design, excellent software, ease of use and relative virus immunity (for now).

That being said, I can get quite a bit out of my hand-built machines for substantially little money. With a little elbow grease, PC's with Linux can take you a long way. Windows is another matter but with some customization and a good anti-virus (Kaspersky) my XP is still going strong and looks and runs at least as well as Windows 7 (an overpriced upgrade from my perspective).

Back on topic. The gist here is that Intel profits from ultra-portable CPUs and chipsets but I think there are other less obvious reasons. Ultra-portable's aren't very up-gradable and typically less powerful meaning that they will be obsolete quicker which in turn means potentially even greater profits for Intel. Intel's higher-end desktop and laptop consumer CPUs are now quite powerful. However, the industry is focused on super-efficient processors that run efficient software (Pads and Phones etc). Therefore Intel's powerful consumer CPUs will need replacing much less often meaning less profit for Intel from this sector. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, Intel wants to woo people away from devices that don't yet have an Intel processor in them and ultra-portables are the best weapon Intel has available for this right now until they can release an Arm equivalent.
 
And also you can install on your PC Mac OSX, if you are wise enough.
 
Guys!!! Take your OS bashing on your own thread!!! Let's try to stay on topic...sheesh...guests, lol.
 
Lets keep on topic please, I don't really want to start removing posts but I will if I have too. So no more talk of Apple unless its relative to the thread in question please.
 
My Macbook is slowly taking a crap on me. I wouldn't mind a new notebook that is "ULTRA" thin. Give me a decently powerful CPU with a decent GPU and I'm in. Really, I don't do anything special with my laptop anyways. Besides, Flash always runs terrible on OSX anyways so that's another reason I'm sick of using my Mac (Nothing wrong with the OS or an Apple product)

BTW, when will people learn to STFU about what product people would like to use? Jezuz, people who have NEVER even used an Apple product let alone the OSX operating system love to talk massive $h!t for no reason. It has it's advantages and NO it's not for everyone. I won't play the pissing game but simply put, please to be STFU'ing about Mac vs. PC? Tired, very old and tired topic.
 
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