Intel: $699 ultrabooks coming soon

Intel is kicking off its ultrabook symposium in Taipei tomorrow, and details have emerged of exactly what the company will be showcasing for the platform going forward. NetbookNews sat down with Navin Shenoy, the Vice President of Intel’s Architecture Group, and gleaned some information as to what to expect. As you might imagine, Intel is keen to promote ultrabooks and bring even more to market. Currently there are around 35 designs available to buy, but Intel says there are at least 140 designs for the platform.

Intel is also hoping to hit a very aggressive $699 price point for entry-level ultrabooks going forward in order to stave off competition from Apple’s MacBook Airs. There have been a couple of Sandy Bridge-based models that have briefly touched that price, but Intel is hoping for a wider range of ultrabooks to start hitting that specific number.

Standard ultrabooks are currently flooding from the market from a variety of manufacturers, but Intel hinted that around 40 ultrabooks with touch capabilities would see the light of day soon enough. Those models will launch around the fourth quarter, coinciding with the release of Windows 8 which places a new emphasis on touch operation.

Finally, the company once again hinted at its next-generation processor, Haswell. The processor will mark another jump in speed for Intel, but also bring with it reduced power requirements. Intel is pitching the 22nm processor as the first System on a Chip for the PC, claiming that it will use up to 20 times less power than Ivy Bridge. That low-power requirement will be especially important for ultrabooks, enabling true all day computing and bringing them closer to ARM-based tablets.


Intel: $699 ultrabooks coming soon is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Acer Aspire S5 review: is this innovative Ultrabook worth $1,400?

Acer Aspire S5 review

With dozens and dozens of Ultrabooks on parade, you’d be forgiven if one skinny laptop with an ultra-low voltage processor started to look like the next. Even so, it’s tough to forget the Acer Aspire S5: of all the ultraportables we’ve seen these last nine months, this is the only one with a motorized port cover. Yeah, that one. It’s an intriguing product, to be sure, and the stakes are especially high given that $1,400 price: you’d have to really enjoy that form factor (and everything else) to choose it over some less expensive ultraportable. So is it worth it? Is that drop-down door anything more than a gimmick? Questions for the ages, and ones we’ll tackle in our full review after the break.

Continue reading Acer Aspire S5 review: is this innovative Ultrabook worth $1,400?

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Acer Aspire S5 review: is this innovative Ultrabook worth $1,400? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell to Offer Ubuntu Linux Preinstalled on XPS 13 Ultrabooks

If you’re the sort of computer user who wants to be different, but you don’t want to lay out the big money that the MacBook costs you might want to check out Dell’s latest offering. Dell has announced that it’s offering an XPS 13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed instead of Windows. Apparently, the machine will only be available in select areas.

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The specific flavor of Linux is Ubuntu 12.04LTS. The machine is part of Dell’s Project Sputnik, which aims to create an Ubuntu-based developer laptop. Dell notes that it’s taking the project “from pilot to product this fall” allowing developers to “create ‘microclouds’ on their laptops… and then deploy that environment seamlessly to the cloud.”

Despite their sleek form factor and power, Ultrabooks haven’t caught on in a big way so far, mostly because of the price, and already saturated PC market. The typical Ultrabook today prices out in the $800 and up range, making them quite expensive. There is no indication of what the Linux based XPS 13 will sell for, but the current XPS 13 sells for around $900.

[via C|NET]


Dell to ship XPS 13 with Ubuntu Linux in some areas, Precise Pangolin goes ultraportable

Dell XPS 13 review side profile

Dell’s Project Sputnik is successful enough that the company is launching another satellite, so to speak. After a strong reception for its developer-installable distribution of Ubuntu, the PC builder is now planning an edition of the XPS 13 with the Linux variant already installed. The hardware will be identical to its Windows parallel and ship with the same Precise Pangolin Ubuntu build that previously required a download. Dell incubator lead Nnamdi Orakwue is shy with The Inquirer about how much the Microsoft-free system will cost when it ships to some corners of the world in the fall, although the $999 price of a base Windows version might serve as a ballpark figure. All that’s for certain is that the Ultrabook should represent one of the fastest pre-assembled, open source PCs to date.

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Dell to ship XPS 13 with Ubuntu Linux in some areas, Precise Pangolin goes ultraportable originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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N-Trig pen tech whittled down to single DuoSense chips and sensors, shrinks scribblings to travel size

N-Trig DuoSense Android tablet

As much as N-Trig is an old hand at supporting styluses, it’s had to focus on tablets and other larger devices due to technology limits: the HTC Flyer is about as small as the company has gone to date. A new version of N-Trig’s DuoSense chipset family could be the ticket to going to much smaller sizes. The new 4000 series condenses both pen input and multi-touch finger gestures into a combination of one chip and one sensor, letting any entrepreneurial device maker stuff the two control methods into a handheld device with as little as a 5-inch display. Naturally, the chip line scales all the way to 15.6-inch panels for creatives poking at the screens of laptops and larger Ultrabooks. We’re told that both Android and Windows slates will get N-Trig’s tinier touch tricks before the end of the year — whether or not that includes phablets with the same girth as the Galaxy Note or Optimus Vu, however, is left to our wild imaginings.

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N-Trig pen tech whittled down to single DuoSense chips and sensors, shrinks scribblings to travel size originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP ENVY 4 Ultrabook hands-on and unboxing

HP’s new ENVY 4 Ultrabook has landed on the SlashGear test bench this week. Complete with a sleek and impressive design, dual-stereo Beats Audio speakers, and Intel’s 3rd Gen Ivy Bridge dual-core i5 processor. Back in May we received our first glance at the new ENVY Ultrabook, but today we’ve given it another look in a quick hands-on video. More details, pictures, and specs are available after the break.

HP’s new ENVY 4 and 6 Ultrabooks have recently hit the shelves and to start things off we’ve unboxed the ENVY 4, and got our paws all over this new aluminum wrapped laptop. HP’s equipped these new Ultrabooks with a sleek design, impressive power under the hood, and kept them well in range of Intel’s “Ultrabook” standard. Coming in under 4 lbs (3.86 to be exact) and only 0.78″ thick the ENVY 4 is what we’re looking at today so here’s our quick unboxing video:

HP ENVY 4 Ultrabook hands-on & unboxing

As you saw from the video above, the specs are rather decent for an $800 machine. You’ll get a clear and vivid 14-inch Brightview LED 1366 x 768 display, 1.7 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (3317U), 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 500GB HD (no SSD here) 3 USB ports, Ethernet, HDMI, SD slot for storage, integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, and more.

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The build quality for our initial impressions are nice, but certainly no MacBook Air. It’s topped in a midnight black brushed aluminum, and finished with a soft-touch matte coating on the sides and bottom — which nicely fits the Beats Audio red color scheme. All of this comes in under an inch being only 0.78″ thick and weighing less than 4 lbs.

Of course you’ll be running on Windows 7 x64, and you’ll probably want to upgrade to Windows 8 — or will you? The HP ENVY 4 Ultrabook has a nice sleek design, a slim bezel around the 14-inch LED display, a mildly powerful processor under the hood, and we’ll surely be taking it all for a spin in our full review early next week. The lack of an SSD for storage is my only concern compared to the competition, but this does come in at a decent price. Stay tuned and let us know if you have any questions for our full review.

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HP ENVY 4 Ultrabook hands-on and unboxing is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Samsung Series 9 13-inch lands 1.9GHz Core i7, 256GB SSD edition for the power user set

Samsung Series 9 13-inch angle

When we looked at the 13-inch Samsung Series 9, we lamented that there was only one version on offer: if anyone wanted more than a Core i5 and a 128GB drive, their dreams were crushed. Samsung must feel that there’s hope for us yet, as there’s now a higher-end spec that slots in a 1.9GHz Core i7 and doubles the storage to 256GB. That’s good news to us, even if the 4GB RAM ceiling will still have some avid Ultrabook fans turning elsewhere. Springing for the new flagship will set shoppers back by about $300 more than the previous top of the line, or $1,700 — still pricey relative to the competition, but much more palatable you’re searching for a premium Windows 7 ultraportable and aren’t willing to budge on screen size.

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Samsung Series 9 13-inch lands 1.9GHz Core i7, 256GB SSD edition for the power user set originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crucial ships mSATA-based m4 SSD upgrade, your Ultrabook never felt better

Crucial ships out mSATAbased m4 SSD upgrade, your Ultrabook never felt betterCrucial has already managed to stuff its m4 SSD into Ultrabook sizes, but the 7mm thick design may still be too portly for the thinner laptops in the pack. With that in mind, the flash memory guru has just started shipping the m4 mSATA, a barebones card that sits cozily next to the motherboard either as a cache for a rotating disk or as a main drive. It’s still as speedy as many of its bigger cousins, with read speeds of up to 500MB/s per second. We suspect most buyers will be lured in by the low prices: at just $53 for a cache-friendly 32GB SSD and no more than $226 for a 256GB example, it’s entirely feasible to give that spinning-drive Ultrabook a shot in the arm.

Continue reading Crucial ships mSATA-based m4 SSD upgrade, your Ultrabook never felt better

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Crucial ships mSATA-based m4 SSD upgrade, your Ultrabook never felt better originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint to offer Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook

Sprint has offered a new bundle of a device with a compatible data connection – the Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook, where it is the first Ultrabook that comes bundled in a wireless package which also comprises of a 3G/4G mobile hotspot device without any additional charge. The Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook is one of the new category of sleek and stylish, no-compromise, computing devices which was inspired by Intel, where it incorporates useful features for consumers such as a speedy start-up, thin and light designs.

This will be an exclusive offer that is available through Sprint Telesales (1-800-SPRINT1), Web Sales (www.sprint.com/ultrabook), Sprint Business Sales and Sprint Business Solutions Partners, where it will comprise of a Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook alongside a MiFi 3G/4G mobile hotspot by Novatel Wireless or Overdrive Pro 3G/4G mobile hotspot by Sierra Wireless. The asking price? $799.99 inclusive of tax, and you will also be able to enjoy three months of free mobile broadband service on the mobile hotspot device alongside a two-year Sprint mobile broadband service agreement. The thing is, will the Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook be able to live up to its expectations as a decent computing device? Let us take a closer look at it after the jump.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook is surprisingly thin, measuring just 0.71″ in thickness, and tipping the scales at under four pounds. The battery is able to deliver up to 7 hours of battery life, boasting a 13.3″ HD display, an Intel Core i5 processor and Intel GMA 3000 HD graphics, a 720p HD webcam and stereo speakers with Dolby Home Theatre V4 audio enhancement, Lenovo’s AccuType keyboard with individual rounded keys, a glass touchpad for easy scroll, zoom and rotate functions.

As for Sprint’s data plans for the 3G/4G mobile hotspot device, pricing start from $34.99 monthly for 3GB of combined 3G/4G data on the Sprint network. Those who want to pick up the $49.99 monthly plan will get to enjoy 6GB of combined 3G/4G data, in addition to enjoying three months of free mobile broadband service alongside a two-year Sprint mobile broadband service agreement.

Press Release

[ Sprint to offer Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]


Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook bundled on Sprint now

Ultrabooks have not really taken off in a big way that Intel and the rest of the Ultrabook industry insiders had wished, since it still pales in comparison when compared side by side with the MacBook Air in terms of amount sold, but it is certainly gaining some ground, although the progress is said to be slower than expected. Well, I do not think that the fault lies in the hardware, but rather, perception of folks. Those who are thinking of jumping aboard the Ultrabook bandwagon might want to check out the Lenovo IdeaPad U310 Ultrabook that is being made available over Sprint in an exclusive bundle, where it will come with MiFi or Overdrive Pro 3G/4G mobile hotspot alongside three months of free service. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: HTC EVO 3D and EVO Design 4G getting Ice Cream Sandwich by early August, Sprint launches 4G LTE in 15 markets instead of 5,