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Sunday, 6 September 2009

INTEL START TO BEAT APPLE Ultrabook: Intel's $300 million plan

Intel is going to release the latest ultra slim laptop to beat the apple slim laptop

My desktop isn't the only and computer I plan to replace in the next few months. I need a new laptop too, and my goal is simple: to find a 13" MacBook Air that isn't made by Apple.
It turns out that I'm not the only one way wanting this mythical non-Apple MacBook Air. Intel wants them too—it calls them Ultrabooks. The chip company has been kicking the Ultrabook idea around for a few months now, and it has grand ambitions: by the end of the next year, it wants 40 percent of PC laptops to be Ultrabooks.
Ultrabooks are ultralight PCs, like the MacBook Air, no more than 0.8" thick, like the MacBook Air, with Intel processors, like the MacBook Air, metal cases for superior heat dissipation, like the MacBook Air, SSD storage, like the MacBook Air, long battery life and even longer standby time, like the MacBook Air, and affordable, like the MacBook Air. Oh, and they should boot in 7 seconds or less (which at a pinch, the MacBook Air can probably pull off, too). Is the MacBook Air actually an Ultrabook? Intel told us that that's up to Apple—the MacBook Air is an Ultrabook in all but name.
Intel, keen to stimulate demand for PCs (rather than for ARM-powered tablets) is clearly so annoyed by the inability for PC OEMs to meet this specification that it recently announced the creation of a $300m "Ultrabook Fund" to invest in companies that are working to build this kind of hardware. That's a damning indictment of the PC industry.
What Intel is asking for is readily attainable. We know that because Apple's selling millions of Airs. And yet the world's five biggest PC manufacturers—HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, and Asustek—have so far been unable to come up with something equivalent. And apparently they're not close to managing it, either, because Intel thinks it must invest pots of cash to close the gap.
This isn't an ideal approach; it would be better if the OEMs could produce these machines on their own. Still, the impetus is now there. Problem solved? Probably not


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