The Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11S in review here is a current Ultrabook, in previous generation form. The new Haswell versions are feeding-in but this Ivy Bridge version is on offer at $699 so it makes an attractive hybrid of great quality and mobility even more interesting.  Ben reviewed the Core i7 version in July but we have the Core i3 version with 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 11.6-inch version here now. It’s mostly a great experience but there are, as always,  considerations. Read on to see if the Lenovo Yoga 11S fits your requirements and check out the Core i7 vs Core i3 Yoga 11S comparison.

Read the full story

The Acer Aspire P3 Ultrabook, that’s actually a tablet with a keyboard accessory, is available for pre-order. We picked up on some of the specs of this low-cost tablet but here’s the full specification run-down. It looks like it will be the first Ultrabook to use the new Y-Series down-clocked lower-TDP processors.

Read the full story

Intel could, according to Xbitlabs, release a new set of low-TDP Ivy Bridge CPUs next year that will help tablet and Ultrabook designers make products thinner, cooler and quieter. TDPs will be brought down from 17W to 10W by limiting clockrate and Turbo features. The process is going to make it very difficult for a customer (and for us analysts) to determine performance based on a i3/i5/i7 part number but are also likely to be there to let Intel feed-in lower price CPUs for tablets and low-cost Ultrabooks. There’s a little trickery involved here as designers already have options for locking-down TDPs although the new parts extend that capability down to tablet designs and make it simpler for manufacturers. The new parts seem good candidates for the Surface Pro for which we don’t have a Core i5 model number yet.

Base frequencies and Turbo features are changed in all of the new CPUs. We don’t expect any changes to the Core architecture.

Read the full story