Back at IDF September, Intel and Google finally announced that they’d be working together to get Android up and running on x86 devices. While there were a number of Android-running x86 tablets and a smartphone prototype or two floating around IDF, it wasn’t immediately apparent what the major advantage of Android 0n x86 devices would be for your everyday consumer. In fact, it wasn’t even apparent exactly why any of the existing Android manufactures would  want to create x86 Android devices, given that up until now, pretty much all of their R&D […]

Ultrabook prices are falling fast. The Novatech nFinity 2367 Ultrabook is on offer in the UK for £358 before tax, with SSD storage. 18mm thin with SSD – You’ve got two of the most important Ultrabook specifications covered. There’s a 14” screen  too. The price is a UK pre-tax offer equating to around £430 after sales tax which smacks of great mainstream value. Where’s the catch?

Calling all Ultrabook designers, manufacturers, OEMs. Putting discreet graphics in Ultrabooks is not going to help the Ultrabook and it may come back to bite you. Mainstream buyers don’t understand what it means, gamers aren’t interested, video editors use Apple rigs and that just leaves the niche market of mobile geeks that do a bit of gaming on the side, a big bunch of impressionable bloggers and anyone you can tease with marketing, advertising and a bunch of stickers. Well, maybe that’s what it’s all about; the ability to market […]

Over the last 6 years of blogging I’ve been fortunate enough to have a well-focused and knowledgeable community associated with my sites. The comments on UMPCPortal articles are priceless nuggets of information and insight, Ultrabooknews has been the same. I want to thank you all for reading and contributing. I also want to offer you an easy way to feed back to me, to Intel and to the manufacturers. This post is intended as a long-life post open to all your comments. Key comments will be highlighted in the post […]

Last spring, I launched into a rant on my personal blog (due to some minor profanity, the linked-to article is labeled as not safe for work) over the way the tech media was labeling a lot of the activity that was going on in the tablet market. You see, back then, circa May 2011, the pockets of resistance against the iPad were beginning to fade, and people were starting to get it that this tablet thing was more than just a passing fad…. A lot of the media took the route of not simply articulating […]

Unlikely to be a true Ultrabook but definitely part of a developing trend towards the convertible Ultrabook design is this Teso K116 ‘ultrabook’ spotted on Alibaba, the global trade portal, today by Netbooknews. The detachable screen is designed in a similar way to the relatively successful Asus Transformer.

As Intel continue to craft Atom into the phone and tablet market it makes sense that they explore all avenues for the core. The ‘netbook’ wave is over but that doesn’t mean there aren’t spaces for Atom to be fitting into. Low cost and low power computing is one of them. Open-source computing is another and it looks like Intel is heading in all of these directions with the Balboa Pier platform and the Valley View Atom/HD graphics SoC inside it. The Verge have pulled together some good information sources […]

‘Shocking thinness and price” says the advertising for the new Lesance NB S3431 Ultrabook.  While 19mm might not be a shock to anyone that reads Ultrabooknews, the price of $725 (59980 Yen) is pretty impressive. Yes, this is a Japan-only model (although expect it to reach other countries under other brands – this looks like one of the first 2nd-tier OEM Ultrabooks to hit the market) and the specs are so-so when compared to other Ultrabooks but for the mainstream market this price is a good indicator.  Continued…