First Ultrabooks surface at IFA
Intel specs 'em - Toshiba, Lenovo announce 'em
IFA 2011 While Toshiba was announcing the Portégé Z830 - a 18mm-thick 13.3in notebook matched to Intel's Ultrabook spec - Lenovo was taking the wraps off the IdeaPad U300s - also an Ultrabook.
The spec is defined entirely by the chip giant - you want to use the Ultrabook trademark on your machine, you have to spec it up the way Intel tells you. So don't expect a great deal of variety between Ultrabook specs.
Toshiba's has the requisite ultra-low voltage (ULV) Sandy Bridge processor, 13.3in - resolution TBC - display, 128GB SSD, up to 6 DDR 3 memory, full-size HDMI and VGA ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and one USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports - all in a chassis just 15.9mm thick.
The lid add a couple of millimetres or so, taking the Z830's thickness to 18mm. It weighs 1.12kg.
Lenovo was slightly more forthcoming with spec details. The U300s has a 1.8GHz Core i7-2677M, 4GB of DDR 3 and a 256GB SSD.
The Chinese company also touted the IdeaPad's "breathable keyboard", which allows heat to be vented without the need for the bulky cooling kit that have stopped big laptops getting this thin in the past.
Like Apple's "unibody" MacBooks, the U300s is "machined from solid aluminium", Lenovo said.
Of course, no one's talking prices yet. Rumours suggest they won't come in under $1000, and probably a lot more given the big SSDs.
Toshiba said the Z830 will be out in Q4 - Lenovo didn't say. ®
COMMENTS
Oh?
Suddenly the macbook air is looking quite reasonably priced. 13", 128G, 1100quid.
And you can have one now.
What will apple announce by the time these come to market?
13.3in - resolution TBC - display
Oooh let me guess...will it by any chance be 1366 x 768?
VGA not that 'ultra'
Are VGA ports really part of the Intel spec? Really?
I can't remember the last time I saw a projector without an HDMI port. At least HDMI is intelligent and we don't end up with the bizarrely squashed presentations that you often see from widescreen lappies plugged into 4:3 projectors.
For glods sake
Come on lads, stop making the same thing over and over again.
Try something new.
Remember the microwriter? Why is voice control still carp? what about direct neural connection, or a small black box with a projector in and an angled mirror to let you choose walls or ceiling as a screen? Why do convertable tablets have to be docked to their keyboards? What about a dockable bluetooth headset supplied with it? What about a BFO external battery for people who need a week's life. Why not make the camera slip-out & wireless tethered? rows of grip-keys on the back. Fingerprint reading software for the camera? Tiny fold-out legs so I can stand it over a paper document and make scans of them with the camera? Even a line scan camera so I can sweep the top edge over a document to scan it? Stereo sound recording for gigs and church concerts? multiple SD card slots so we can copy pictures from our real camera to someone else's card? A matching flat speaker array that can be sandwiched with the puter in the same case? Included car mount and power cable? remote GPS antenna plug for use in motor caravans? Steroscopic cameras? A matching flat printer that can be sandwiched with the puter in the same case? integral FM or DAB radio? integral freeview reciever? Two headphone jacks, for him and her to watch video on a plane? Wireless dvd drive?
mee-too == I have no ideas at all. Look what happened to the WebOs stuff.
I suspect you didn't own one of Apple's "leading" MacBook Airs then
There's a reason why other manufacturers didn't launch Air clones: the Air was an inadequate computer. Badly designed, with insufficient cooling, it couldn't do anything as complicated as watch a YouTube video before the CPU's thermal throttling kicked in and reduced the whole system to a crawl. This is not a manufacturing fault; I had the unit tested several times, and compared it with a friend's model too.
I know how stupidly cold they keep the offices in Infinite Loop, but it would have been nice if just one person had tried the case prototype in an environment where the ambient temperature is *above* 20°C - you know, like a typical European living room?
A stupid design overcomes any clever manufacturing. It's only now that there's genuine low-power Intel chips that you can make something like the Air and not be laughed out of the market (Apple avoid this by charging so much that their customers won't ever admit they bought a lemon; the more you charge, the less likely it is that your customers will complain)
I had a MacBook Air, and I had only ever bought Apple laptops, but my current laptop is a Sony Vaio. It's nowhere near as sleek as the Mac, but it actually works, which is something the Apple product never did.
I'd be tempted by one of these Ultrabooks once someone hacks MacOS to it.
