The Tech-pert: What are Ultrabooks and Why Should You Care

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What’s the biggest buzzword at this year’s Consumer
Electronics Show? No, it’s not “Beiber.” It’s ultrabooks. Three guesses what they
are:

1. Regular books, only super-better.

2. Kindle-style e-book readers plated with shiny
titanium.

3. Super-thin, super-light laptops that used to be known
as “ultraportables,” “ultralights,” and “subnotebooks.”

Yep, you guessed it, ultraportables are just the latest
breed of thin, lightweight laptops—Windows-powered champions to the MacBook Air
throne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook).

Indeed, Apple pretty much perfected the category years
ago, but it wasn’t until Intel coined the term in 2011 that anybody knew the
Air was an “ultraportable.”

If I sound a little jaded, it’s because I’m still scarred
by the whole netbook craze. Netbooks, you’ll recall, were all the rage in 2010,
offering slowpoke processors, tiny screens, cramped keyboards, poor battery
life, chunky designs, and other compromises for a few dollars less than
full-fledged laptops.

I was not a fan.

The good news is that ultrabooks have almost nothing in
common with netbooks. The former are sleek and shiny, often polished to a high
finish, standing less than an inch tall, and weighing less than three pounds.

Even better, they’re powered by Intel’s latest low-power
(but still very powerful) processors: Core i5 and i7 “Sandy Bridge” chips.
(Even faster “Ivy Bridge” versions are due later in 2012.) Another great design
amenity: solid-state drives (SSDs) in place of hard drives. That helps them
boot faster and run longer on a charge.

Most ultrabook models have 13-inch screens, though you’ll
see a few with larger or smaller displays. I tend to look upon 13 inches as the
sweet spot for productivity and portability.

Just as they did with netbooks, all the major PC
manufacturers (and plenty of minor ones) are hopping on the ultrabook wagon.
Watch for new models from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba, among
others.

Now for the bad news: ultrabooks will cost you. As with
the MacBook Air, pricing starts at around $1,000 and rises sharply from there.
A fully loaded model with a blazing-fast processor and high-capacity SSD could
easily run you close to $2,000.

I’m sure prices will come down as the category takes off
and the market gets saturated, but for now you should expect to pay a premium
for ultra-style and ultra-portability.

Is it worth it? Ultrabooks are cool, no doubt about it,
especially the ultra-thin, ultra-MacBook Air-like models. (Come to think of it,
if you’re going to pony up that much cash anyway, why not just get the
bar-setting, still-unparalleled Air?)

That said, as a card-carrying cheapskate, I can be just
as happy with a traditional laptop that’s a bit thicker, a bit less sexy, and a
whole lot cheaper.

Your thoughts?

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