Aside from Intel trying to create a higher priced laptop market that doesn’t keep applying as much downward pressure on their own margins, what is Intel doing?  Can someone please tell me what other legitimate reason would Intel, a CPU manufacturer, have telling it’s ODMs what kind of devices to put those chips into?  Especially since one of their clients is already doing this with their ‘air’ brand of laptops, so they’re basically encouraging the competitors of their second largest consumer to move into the segment.  This can’t be good for that relationship…

I really don’t get this, or why they think this will be successful when the existing thin and light category starts at $500 and meets a users needs for a relatively less powerful but highly portability needs admirably.  It’s not like any Ultrabook proposals I’ve seen have anything on the Air, or all that compelling.  My ASUS UL30-Vt isn’t a power house but it does everything I need, and has a 10 hour battery life, descrete graphics, and weighs 4 Ibs.  The ASUS Ultrabook, has an IGP, fixed battery with maybe 8 hours of runtime, and weighs what, a half pound less?  Other than a admitedly faster processor, but weaker graphics that can’t accelerate OpenCL (which several applications I use at work make use), the only thing that’s compelling is the use of an SSD out of the box…  Which I added as a aftermarket upgrade for a lot less than ASUS will likely be asking.

So it just doesn’t make sense as anything but a marketing gimick to drive the prices up on a segement of laptops that their Atom and CULV processors literally gutted two or three years ago.

Maybe someone can give me a cogent reason for this that I haven’t thought of.  But to me, this is Intel throwing money away just to anger a notoriously fickle, but high volume, consumer of their products.

But, Ultrabooks are starting with Sandy, not Ivy.  When we get to see Ivy I may not be upset about their IGP performance, but in my mind, although the HD3000 was a huge step forward, it’s still not powerful enough, and is tuned much more for media performance instead of graphics performance, a trend which I don’t see changing.

As to the rest, I sort of see what you’re saying.  I agree with you about ARM’s processing power, and I also doubt that they’ll be able to keep pace as the low hanging fruit on their architecture tree is consume, and they start having to deal with the fundamental trade-offs Intel and AMD are with their higher performing parts.  However I don’t see how that affects the Ultrabook market.  To my mind the Netbook market, and MAYBE the lower end of the standard laptop market may be in danger, but not the mid to high range, which is where Ultrabooks are going to sit.  Ergo commiting money to start a product marketing term for a class of laptops that already exists, with perfectly good options at half the price point Intel is suggesting, is somewhat curious.

As to cutting the costs, the last I heard, Intel agreed to subsidize the costs of a Core i7, and only the Core i7, for use in Ultrabooks, and at that it was a minor price reduction, taking it from roughly %30 of the retail price of the ultrabook, to %25 percent.  Considering the rest of the rest of the Bill of Materials, I don’t see how manufacturers are going to be able to compete in the current market and still make money.  Which I guess is the point of the $300 million dollar fund…  Which could be seen as a anti-competitive bribe since AMD is making a processor that would work in this market.

Again, since the proposed market is pretty much defined by the Air, which already uses an Intel processor…  I don’t see what their getting, except for maybe a higher base price for the processors that are currently being sold for the ‘Thin and Light’ category.  In turn they are opening themselves up to potential Litigation (Something that has occurred to me since my original post), as well as angering one of their larger clients, one which historically responds very poorly to OEMs who try to increase their competition.

I’ve seen your argument in several forum boards, but I don’t really buy it.  I don’t think ARM is at this time, or in the near (2-3 year time span) a credible reason to try to artificially create this market. So that leaves the question of what OTHER resons their are, and honestly I don’t see any except maybe AMD, but they have a legal agreement not to bribe ODMs…  That or we’re missing something else, because again, except for the aluminum frame and an SSD, these computers already largely exist, and they typically go for $500-$700 and don’t use top of the range CPUs.  So all I’m left with is the assumption that this is a push to use higher end, and hence more profitable CPUs in a new ‘class’ of machine that, assumedly doesn’t face direct competition from lower tiered products…  Although I think Intel will find out that this is a complete logical fallacy…  Unless again, there’s something else I’m missing.