Ultrabooks: The concept in its nascent stages is already diminishing – Part 3

However, the likes of Series 5 and Envy 14 Spectre have diluted the concept of the moniker with thicker and heavier notebooks. In addition, the optical drives and platter-based hard drives have made the customer more confused than facilitated.

Remember the time Intel launched the Centrino series of circuits. Centrino name meant that a laptop was able to connect to Wi-Fi and do most of the other networking things you needed it to, without you having to delve too deeply into the spec sheet.

In this case, instead of looking for an Intel ultrabook sticker on a laptop and knowing that it’s going to be very thin, very light, rely on SSD storage, boot quickly, and run for a long time on a battery charge, now consumers will have to go back to checking the size and weight specs carefully.

However, on the positive side the ultrabooks have germinated the concept of slim notebooks. This year, with the exception of two or three laptops, the rest of the bunch was under an inch thick, example: Razer’s Razer Blade gaming notebook.

The idea is that even if the laptops do not get the Ultrabook label attached to them, they are going to be slim in structure. The optical drives are fading as are DVDs and CDs and the slim structures of the laptops might hammer the final nail in the coffin.

The real long-term victory is that the ultrabook is rewriting what it means to be a mainstream laptop. By this time next year, I find it hard to believe that any midprice, midsize laptop won’t be well under 1 inch, and closer to 3 pounds than 4 or 5. Optical drives will continue to fade away, as will dedicated Ethernet jacks. If you’re a PC maker and most of your future laptops aren’t at least trending toward ultrabooks and the MacBook Air, you simply won’t be in the game.

Though they are not all going to be 2 or 3 pounds in weight, they are going to be light weight and SSD will be the new hard drive for any notebook. The future is not so far away but it is not out of reach either.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Apr 4 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.