Today’s ultrabooks are basically thin and light laptops. But by the end of the year, we could also see convertible tablets as well as standard-shaped notebooks with touchscreen displays join the ultrabook party.
Intel has been talking about touch-capable ultrabooks for a few months. But now the company is giving us a few ideas of when we might see them… as well as ultrabooks with other new features.
At the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing this week, Intel suggested that touchscreen ultrabooks could hit the streets in the fourth quarter of 2012. That makes sense, since that would be around the time that Windows 8 goes on sale and Windows 8 features a new touch-friendly user interface.
Intel is also looking ahead toward 2013 when we’ll start to see additional sensors built into ultrabooks. That could include gravity sensors that let you control apps by tilting your computer, or motion sensors that offer Kinect-like capabilities so that you can wave your hands or move your body in front of an ultrabook to play games or interact with apps.
Right now these are features we see on mobile tablets and video game consoles. But if Intel has its way, they could find their way to consumer laptops by the third quarter of 2013.
Why such a long wait before sensors in the Ultrabook? Not just Tablets, Phones, but even game controllers and mouse/pointers already have this technology in tiny spaces and very small power requirements. With the technology already existing in other devices, surely there is little need to spend nearly two years of development for this for a Ultrabook?
For me, I would be willing to fork out £700 for a really good Ultrabook for my needs, but I’m not going to just yet because I know by the end of the year it will be outdated by the touch screen technology which be a big part of Windows 8. Once touch screen comes out, I’ll probably wait for Sensors.
I know systems are constantly improving, but what I am talking about is a fundamental feature above a speed or version improvement. I’m not bothered about having a Ivy Bridge or Haswell speed processor per say, just as long as it works.
I think Ultra-books are a pricing response to netbooks (where the companies did not make as much per unit). However, all ultra-books are priced too high. I wonder if they are selling many, as when I go to retail stores, not many people are even looking at them on display, they are instead moving to the computers that are lower in price.
OR – to the iPads, and in some cases, looking at Android tablets (Amazon Fire selling well, B&N Nook not as good, and other tablets are not shown correctly on end caps to show all the superior Ice Cream Sandwich features vs iPad). They are not looking at Ultra-books.
For women who want something that will slip into their purse (the iPad is too big for many purses), at a good price, then the 8 inch Archos 80 G9 Turbo ICS is what will give them the most options, as it can be used with usb or bluetooth external keyboard, mouse, or combo mouse-touchpad unit WITH THEIR TV (from their arm chair) or regular monitor on a desk at home, then it is mobile as well, priced at about $260…! What would you buy, a $900 Ultrabook, or a small tablet at 1/3rd the price, that will do more, in more places?
If you want to see where Android has been, and where it is now, this web page is the best history of Android that I have seen to date –
https://www.tecca.com/basics/android-os-comparison-infographic/
or (but not as feature complete a chart),
https://mashable.com/2011/07/26/android-history-infographic/
So, you can see by this Android history, where the Ultra-books have a bit of a problem (on the consumer side).
So – what can Google do to top the features of Ice Cream Sandwich? That is a scary thought for those who are committed to Ultra-books, or other hardware platforms that do not run Android.