Intel Promises Cheaper Ultrabooks Discussion

Is it possible to build a thin, high-performance laptop for the same price as a budget notebook? Intel says they can but will a $599 price tag get people buying ultrabooks?

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Im still quite startled by the projections, 10mil to 44mil? from a thing that was launched late 2011? thats just great actually. While we were hampered by the numbers of actual products most of 2011 till mid 2012, we are not by that anymore, and with prices falling, its surely this will pick up

 

We can hope that this is an indication that Intel will be dropping its component prices. Which they might well do for left-over SandyBridge chips. Samsung have been offering a version of the NP900X3D with a Sandy Bridge CPU at a significantly lower price than the equivalent Ivy Bridge model. However, it's still a few hundred dollars above Intel's indicated price.

John

 

Over 10 hours for an ultrabook? As long as it isn't an extended or protruding battery pack, I'm sold. Also, having windows 7 compatible drivers would be perfect.

 

SemiAccurate has published a few articles on why they think Ultrabooks are a bad idea in general, and specifically noting that putting out a quality product with Intel's form factor specifications is generally going to cost more than Intel advertises (currently $1000). I do not see a way manufacturers will possibly be able to take prices down further while increasing their bill of materials by including touchscreens.

 

was curious and found it
A year on, Ultrabooks are a worse disaster than most expected | SemiAccurate

What do you guys think.. do you agree that ultrabooks are a bad compromise on thinness, power, battery life and price?
or are semi-thin the way to go.. like the Vaio S13 and Thinkpad X230 series which are slightly thicker but have non ULV processors, full ports, etc.

 

Personally, I think thinness is overrated. There's a much stronger correlation between weight and portability, than thinness. The X230 in particular is more durable, versatile and less expensive. For some though who won't upgrade and don't need a ton of space or battery life, the slim form of an ultrabook might be attractive.

 

I like the overall concept: Something not much thicker than a tablet but with a full-sized keyboard and a bigger screen screen. indeed, my Samsung Series 9 invariably gets puzzled looks from anyone who hasn't previously seen something similar. I point out that there are three basic components: Keyboard, screen and battery (under the palmrest to stop it tipping over backwards). I then add that under the keyboard there's a board with the electronics. For me the biggest performance constraint is not the CPU speed but the SSD capacity.

However, producing a thin rigid box is much more difficult than building a thicker rigid box and usually involves metal. Perhaps 3D printing will be able to create strong notebook skeletons at lower cost than at present.

The only sub-$1000 Series 9 is one that uses the Sandy Bridge platform for which, I presume, Samsung managed to get clear-out pricing on the chips. So, perhaps, the arrival of Haswell will make Ultrabooks more affordable, because the prices for the previous generations of chips will drop. While Haswell promises improvements, most of us don't need more CPU speed while lower CPU power consumption will only have modest impact on the overall computer power consumption considering the display, at usable brightness, uses more power than the CPU.

And, as for touchscreen, it is going to push weight and thickness in the wrong direction. I hope the manufacturers have the sense to produce non-touch versions even if they have to forgo Intel marketing money and then let the sales statistics show what the consumers want.

John

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but never once have I had the desire to touch my laptop screen. As the input device on my tablet, touch makes a lot more sense.

 

I too have no desire to touch my laptop, unless it can fold/twist/spin into a tablet.

I think the Dell Vostro lineup has a perfect balance between thinness and rigidity. Or the new Latitude E6430u.

Make it as thin as possible without foregoing functionality that is standard on $600 notebooks, and I'll be sold!

 

My 3 year old son knows how to launch Netflix and watch Curious George on an iPad or launch a painting app and doodle but he thinks my laptop is "broken" because touching the screen does nothing and he's not adept enough to use a touchpad or figure out keyboard short cuts. For that reason, when I want my laptop to substitute as a babysitter for my kid it'd be a nice feature.

 

Don't knock touchscreens in laptop mode until you've tried it. I've yet to find a more enjoyable way to surf the web. Flicking and jabbing through web pages is the best.

I say that having used Firefox + Pentadactyl extensively in the past too.

 

Once you get used to a touchscreen, its very hard to go back... I find myself reaching for the screen quite often when I am not using my touch HP notebook..

 

I can tell you from personal experience that the ultrabook form gives up too much in functionality in order to achieve a cool form factor.

Ultrabooks are mostly 3 cell and can barely last 4 - 5 hours (if you're lucky)
In order to maintain a thin profile, they're now using buttonless touchpads which does not help with usability. And it's become the standard for even non-ultrabooks.
Keyboard designs are severely shrunken and makes it practically useless.

I've owned the Yoga 13 and while the touchpad was tolerable (not great); It is one of the worst Synaptics design I've ever used. The keyboard was a a joke: Shrunken backspace, shrunken shift keys, etc. I returned it and gave the Lenovo Twist a try. SAME THING! Keys are shrunken. Better than Yoga, but for a 12.5" laptop, I shouldn't have to feel like I'm typing on a 10" netbook. Disabled the touchpad and used the trackpad only which is great but does not have the smoothness and sensitivity of an X230 (even with sensitivity adjustment optimized). Battery life? 3.25 hours! That can barely get me through a single class before a recharge is needed.

My X230 is lighter than the Yoga 13, has a FULL size keyboard, has an excellent trackpoint, battery life is 7.5 hours, and a full ivy bridge processor (i5).

I think the industry is making a huge mistake by trying to position themselves to sell "fun" laptops that are thin and lightweight. A typical consumer is going to buy it for it's cool factor, but the moment they try to write an email or work on a term paper, they're going to realize that they just paid $1000 for a laptop that's been crippled so it can look pretty. Perhaps the laptop industry is sinking because companies are wasting their consumers time by creating thin laptops with no added value.

 

I had the desire a few times... when there was a speck on the screen. Always regretted it as a smudge appeared and I had to wipe the whole thing down.

 

have you tried the Asus UX32VD? the review here says it lasts 6 hours which is pretty decent.
can't comment on the keyboard on any of these ultrabooks since I've never really tried it
but I did try the Vaio Z's keyboard and hated it.. it was too shallow.

 

Before you entirely trash the UB concept, take a look at Samsung's new Series 7 Ultra. It's significance is not just its features and price, but what they say about the future of the product form. If Samsung can do this in March 2013, 2014 may be an excellent year for virtually all formats of thin/convertible laptops.
The Ultra 7 has the same 1080p wide color gamut screen as the Asus UX Zen series, a very decent (though still shallow) keyboard, backlit of course, excellent touchpad, a touchscreen and full size ethernet and VGA ports along with 3 USBs and.......user replaceable RAM and SSD for up to 16GB RAM and "infinity" SSD (as long as it is mSATA)! Real battery life appears to be 6 hours and weight is 3.6 lbs. This one is not as paper thin as the Zenbooks, the Sammy 9 or the MBA, but hey, for all those full size ports and user installable RAM to 16GB and SSD to 512GB and beyond, what's 0.5 lbs? Of course, we're still talking ULV cpus, i5-i7 and Intel 4000 HD graphics, though I've read that the 4000D's performance is significantly better with dual channel memory, and the more the better since it shares it with the system. As a non-gamer who rarely does heavy duty photo or video editing, I can't imagine wanting more from a travel machine.

Check out the review in mobile tech review and give this another thought.

 

Am in total agreement with these statements. Personally I never saw much of a need or use for ultrabooks, but that's my own personal taste.

 

same here no touch tablet unless it can twist or removed (LCD it is)

 

Thin and light laptops have been around years before Intel's marketing team spun up the "ultrabook" name. But they were never good sellers and were almost always flops for the manufacturers.

What I don't understand is how Intel can start dictating the market and making claims like these. They want to increase the profits they make from selling components to manufacturers, and they want manufacturers to drive down the prices of the computers they sell. How can they expect manufacturers to go along with this? Intel can say all the mumbo jumbo they want, but they aren't the ones selling computers to anybody.