I met with Cyberlink at IDF2012 and had a great demo and hands-on with their new media suite. In fact, there’s something about the video editor that makes me want to get a Core-based tablet right way for my trade-show videos. It’s really fast, easy and mobile.
Going through patent application and refinement could take well into 2013 for Synaptics but their ThinTouch keyboard technology could help shave more from the thickness of an Ultrabook.
Video below.
Current Ultrabook keyboards are still based on the ‘scissor’ action mechanics that have been around for years but those keyboard below 3.5mm in thickness is proving to be a challenge.
ThinTouch has a key travel of 0.75 mm vertically but includes a horizontal movement too. Total keyboard thickness is 2.5mm which could enable a 12mm thin Ultrabook design.
Read the full story
One of the aims of attending the Intel Developer Forum last week for me was to find out as much as possible about 2013, Haswell and what it means for Ultrabooks. I’m sure there’s more detail to come soon (and possibly, a new roadmap) but I came away with a lot of useful information that I’ve summarized below. What is clear is that Haswell is more about mobility than any other Core CPU to date. It will extend down into tablet territory enabling detachable screens and new form factors. There will be a huge focus on active standby; the claimed 20x lower idle power should equate to multi-day ‘active’ idle. A ‘dual slice’ GPU will feature in Ultrabooks
I really liked the look of the HP Env X2 I tested at IDF 2012. The size and weight proportions are more conducive to mobile operations than some of the Core-based solutions and in addition, there’s a battery life advantage to be had over Core but it’s not quite up to replacing a desktop for most people so there’s a big trade-off. The ASUS Vivo Tab is the same, but looks even better!
I got hands-on at IDF and you can see that in the video below. I walked away very impressed and definitely interested in testing it further, especially as I’m a huge fan of ultra-mobile solutions.
Read the full story
Congratulations to Firaxis Games who are about to release a touch-enabled version of Civ V. I got a few fingers on at IDF2012 and put together a video demo for you.
This Ivy-Bridge optimised version will be available to everyone as an update in Steam in Q4 and it works well. Firaxis have worked around the issue of hover/tooltips b implementing scrolling using a two-finger gesture. It’s not natural at first but to be able to get the tooltips easily is welcome.
I’ve already looked into wireless charging but at IDF2012 I got a chance to speak to the engineers about it and get a first-hand demo. Video below.
At IDF this week, Intel showed off a demo of Nuance’s Dragon Assist software running on an Ultrabook. Dragon Assist, currently in beta, is a Siri-like approach to PC voice control. Using natural words and phrases you can ask the computer to do a number of tasks. The demo that Intel showed on stage was quite impressive — it was fast, accurate, and potentially quite useful. But would you use it?
Chippy is checking out Ultrabooks at IDF this week and he had a chance to get his hands on the NEC Lavie Z Ultrabook. What makes this unit stand out is its incredible weight. This is a 13.3″ screen; at just 876 grams, the Lavie Z is the world’s lightest Ultrabook in it’s class, even lighter than many of the Ultrabooks in the size class below it. For example. the Asus UX21A with an 11.6″ screen is about 1100 grams.
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
| |||
 |
|