As Ultrabooks move to mainstream, pricing becomes critical. Materials become less critical. Expect more plastic and stamped metal…

In a press event on Wednesday, Intel Taiwan’s country manager Jason Chen said that he expects Ultrabooks to reach $599 although the mainstream price is more likely to be $699. The price point will only be reached by the use of cheaper materials reports Focus Taiwan.

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After seeing that US online prices for high-end Ultrabooks have dropped 22% from the original launch prices, it’s good to see other countries showing similar price drops. This Amazon.co.uk offer on a Toshiba Satellite Z830 is particularly interesting. £698.80 is 22% below list price! [US Readers – This is a 120% consumer price that includes sales tax. Business buyers pay around £580]

I’m a Z830 user myself so I can vouch for this Ultrabook. You’ve got all the ports you need, a great SSD (ignore the reports of poor write speeds, it performs exactly when you need it) and the backlit keyboard is something you’ll never want to lose once you’ve had it. The Z830-10T on offer here has the Core i3 CPU at 1.4Ghz. (Without Turbo Boost as seen on other Ultrabooks.)

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It’s almost a dumb thing to say really but yes, the price of 1st-gen Ultrabooks will drop. The question is, how much and will they be worth having?

Lets get one thing straight though, the Sandy Bridge platform is a good one and Ivy Bridge will be better but there won’t be a huge amount of difference for most people. Yes, they will be worth having although there’s a small matter of Windows 8 to consider!

You’ll probably see 15-30 minutes more battery life for average use cases as designs improve and there will be a significant increase in GPU 3D capability, some high-end improvements for Turbo, maybe a Thunderbolt port here and there and a small rise in baseline clock-rate (probably consuming any CPU efficiency gains) but in general there won’t be a huge difference for the average user. Your biggest decision will be around the operating system. Will you want a Windows 7 device when Windows 8 is available later in the year?

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