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2012 to be year of the ultrabook

Notebook makers desperately seek novelty

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World+Dog will next year be after ultra-skinny laptops running Windows 8.

So says Simon Lin, chairman of Wistron, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer specialising in notebooks.

The slimline MacBook Air-style machines - dubbed by Intel "ultrabooks" - will be a key growth driver in 2012, Lin said during a chat with DigiTimes.

They will account for 10-20 per cent of laptop sales during 2012 - if Wistron's output is typical.

Laptop makers are, of course, desperate for novelty now that there's no longer the buzz around netbooks that there once was, and most folk have a standard-size machine.

Will super-skinny laptops be the big thing in 2012? Let us know what you think. ®

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Latest Comments

MAYBE.

Definately maybe. With the rise of tablets rising as the choice for mobile computing laptops will have to do something special. For one they must either improve the mouse pad to allow various customizable multi-touch gestures, have better instant on from standby and better battery life or become more of a hybrid laptop/tablet like the Asus transformer which i absolutely love.

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0

Not sure about that

But something like the Eee Pad Transformer with a proper OS on it might be exactly what I'm looking for.

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