Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, and a number of other companies are launching ultrabooks this year. They’re expected to be laptops that weigh less than 3 pounds, measure less than 0.8 inches thick, and cost less than $1000, while offering high performance Intel processors.
But if you drop the latest Intel Core i-series chips from the equation, you can bring the prices down much further. We’ve seen a number of thin and light laptops for under $400 over the past few years — typically with Intel Atom or AMD Fusion processors. Now Romanian device maker Evolio is introducing a new thin and light laptop which it calls the “lightest notebook in the world.”
I think the company might be using a little poetic license, since we’ve already seen netbooks that weigh just 2 pounds. But the Evolio U9 has a rather intriguing design. It weighs just 2.16 pounds and measures 0.7 inches thick, but features an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display.
The notebook has a 1.6 GHz dual core Intel Atom Cedarview processor, 2GB of RAM, and a solid state disk with 64GB or 128GB of storage. The Evolio U9 doesn’t have the fastest processor around, but it can handle HD video playback and has an HDMI port. The company says it should get up to 5 hours of abttery life.
There’s no word on how much the Evolio U9 will cost, but it’s due out in December. I suspect it will be significantly cheaper than ultrabooks such as the Acer Aspire S3 or Asus UX21.
via SoftPedia
it’ll be 450 euros (617 USD)
https://www.gadgetreport.ro/gadget/evolio-ataca-piata-cu-ultrabook-de-450-de-euro/
it is on sale now, it costs 413 euros…Â
Fujitsu p1620: core 2 duo, 2.2 lbs, 8.9″ 1280×768 touchscreen, came out 2008
Whether this is a worthwhile product all depends on how much it costs. It would be a steal at $400 and a rip off at $1000.
There’s also the discussion of whether it is really worthwhile to strip one pound and half an inch of height from a notebook by increasing its price and sacrificing the ability to easily replace the hard disk and memory.
Yes, upgrade-ability may be the biggest issue with these systems but is not limited to the Ultrabooks.
Netbooks, like those from Asus for example, have already adopted a hard to upgrade design policy. While few tablets even let you change the battery, let a lone any internal parts.
While this is also nothing new for the Ultra Portable market. The Dell Alienware M11x for example require you unscrew and remove the bottom panel in order to access the battery to unplug and replace. Along with previous ultra thin designs from other companies sold over the years.
There are ways they could give us access but it’s just a question of whether there will be enough pressure for them to do so versus what they save locking the system up.
I think being able to replace the battery without needing a screwdriver is very useful, especially for trans-pacific flights. Â I also think it’s useful to be able to replace the hard disk and (to a lesser extent) memory; as well as other components.
For a large enterprise, it makes more sense to have someone in-house be able to replace a failing hard disk or broken screen the same day instead of having to send the computer to a factory and wait for it to be repaired.
Closer to home, I had a pre-Lenovo ThinkPad (which I bought used) for seven years; by the time I retired it, I had replaced the screen twice, the hard disk twice, and it was on its second keyboard. Â
I’m not sure that would be possible with these new ultra-thin all-in-one wonders. Â Once the SSD wears out from too many write cycles, for example, it may be impossible to replace.
Are they just trying to escape from netbooks with profit margins that are too thin?
Give me an HTC Flyer tablet with a folding USB keyboard.
For this particular product, it would seem so. They may be trying to charge more than the typical netbook and make more profit, but we won’t know for certain until they officially give a price.
The big difference between Ultrabooks and Netbooks is Ultrabooks are still full laptops. You can run anything on them you would normally on a full laptop but it remains thin and light enough to be easily carried with you like a netbook.
While netbooks are more basic computers that are designed to be cheaper and can be more easily put into even smaller systems.
A netbook though still gives you more than something like a HTC Flyer. But ARM systems can be made smaller and lighter, with longer run times. So if that fits your needs then it can still be a good choice, even if it still cost more than a netbook.