Today Intel announced a new class in laptops called UltraBooks at Computex 2011. These new breed of laptops which are meant to directly compete with Apple's MacBook Air will offer longer battery life, are less than an inch thick and priced under $1000. Intel is confident that by 2012 the Ultrabook will make up 40 percent of the consumer laptops sold worldwide.The Ultrabooks will be made available in the 2011 holiday season and will be led by the Asus UX 21. The second wave of Ultrabooks will be released in 2012 with more to follow in 2013.
Intel is proposing that the Ultrabooks are fitted in with the latest technologies like SSD hard drives, Thunderbolt technology for connectivity, USB 3.0, Intel's 3D transistors and powered by Intel's 2nd generation Core series processors. By 2013 the third wave of Ultrabooks will feature intel's third generation Core processors, code named Haswell. Intel claims that Haswell powered Ultrabooks will be even thinner and have a longer batter life and reduced power consumption.
While we are still unclear why the PC industry takes years to follow the standards that Apple sets with it's devices, we know it takes just a little initiative from the PC manufacturers to ensure that we have amazing products at our fingertips. The Ultrabooks can usher in a new generation of devices in the PC category and we hope that the manufacturers will be up for the task.