In just a few hours the press will be gathering in San Francisco for the warm-up to IDF 2012. The Intel Developer Forum is the most important of the years IDF events as it represents the start of a new wave of marketing for Intel and allows analysts to piece together a picture of what Intel will get up to in 2013. In terms of Ultrabooks we already know that we’ve got Windows 8, touch and Haswell coming but there’s more to it than that. Here’s what you can expect from us over the next week as we attend 4 days of Intel events.

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I’ve been to a number of Intel Developer Forums over the years and can tell you that it’s the most important event on my calendar. Not only do you get to see new products launched and have the ability to report about the news coming out of the event but you get to answer deep technical questions and talk to very experienced engineers. You come away with not only an idea about what’s launching today but, if you read between the lines, you can work out what’s going to happen in the next year.  IDF Beijing starts on the 11th April. I’m not attending this one (I usually attend the San Francisco event in Sept) but I can guarantee there will be a busy week ahead as news develops and the technical session PDFs get released.

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If you’re checking out specifications and features of Ultrabooks for a purchase soon, make sure you keep an eye out for Intel Centrino Wireless modules. I’ve had very good experience with the Centrino 6230  module on two Ultrabooks now and having used Intel My WiFi tech today I can say that some of the features are extremely useful and easy to use.

The Centrino 6230 module is a 2 antenna, dual-band (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz) Wifi unit with Bluetooth 3.0 + HS on-board.  WiFi-n speeds go up to 300Mbps and I can confirm that stability and range is excellent. If you’re in a crowded hotspot, the 6230 could give you an advantage.

The 6230 support Intel’s Wireless Display 2 functionality where, given a compatible receiver, TV or STB, you can transmit 1080p format images (Note: with some lossy compression I understand) wirelessly. I haven’t tested Wireless Display outside a trade show yet so I can’t tell you too much about it. I can tell you about My Wi-Fi though.  In this article you find out how to do it and what you can do with it.

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I’m at the Mobile World Congress  in Spain this week and although I’ve been covering a lot of phone and tablet news (over at Carrypad.com) I’ve also been keeping an eye open for Ultrabook news. I didn’t have to look far because when Intel talks about one silicon product, it’s now inextricably linked with the others via the ‘Compute Continuum’ which isn’t just a keynote dream any more, it’s a real project to mesh devices from various parts of Intel’s product range.

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