What you should know about ultrabooks

HP is the first out of the stalls, letting us all catch a glimpse of their new ultrabook, the HP Envy Spectre.

There are a couple of distinguishing features between an ultrabook and your run of the mill laptop. We could sum it up with the phrase ‘essentially they’re better’ but that doesn’t really do anyone any good now does it?

With portable devices becoming all the rage, we saw the release of netbooks which offered a significantly reduced CPU on a portable platform that had a long-lasting battery. Developments in processors lead to the release of Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge which in effect bridge the CPU and the GPU taking up less power and therefore improving battery power. Port developments like the USB 3.0 and HDMI lead to smaller ports that do a more effective job, thus reducing chassis size.

You therefore get a computer like the ultrabook, capable of supporting more powerful processors like Intel’s i7 second generation, with a spacious screen (larger than the 11 inch netbook screen) which weigh less than 1.4kg and have a width under 2cm.

You’ll also find that ultrabooks have a long battery life – well over 5 hours – and for portable purposes they favour Solid State Drives (SSD) which have less movable parts thus reducing risk to data when on the go.

We anticipate the ultrabook market to turn fierce this year. Manufacturers will be on a more level playing field then we saw with the Tablet Wars, since they are used to building laptops and Apple won’t have too extreme an advantage when it comes to sales.

Image credit: HighTechDad