Up to 6 of these will be coming out in October

Asus reports that it will be launching five to six Ultrabooks in October in New York, when it will display its full range of Ultrabooks that will be priced from $899 – $1,999. The Ultrabooks will have screen sizes of 11.6″ to 13.3″ and will be ultra-thin and ultra-portable. Publicly-known models are the 11.6″ UX21 which was displayed at Computex 2011 and the UX31, which will be the 13.3″ model. It’s unfortunate that I find the Asus logo so ugly.

While Intel has envisioned that an Ultrabook should be powerful and ultraportable, they have also demanded that the Ultrabook be under a thousand dollars, which was rather impossible up until now. The first few prototypes by Acer and Asus both had mid-$1,000 price tags. However, Intel has been willing to help manufacturers to design Ultrabooks that are below $1,000, and also have invested money via they investment corporation to find innovative technology and cost-efficient methods of productions.

However, the Ultrabook has its critics. To me, an ultrabook is a very expensive laptop, and unless it were as slick and ‘cool’ as the MacBook Air, I don’t really see too much point to buying one, especially if I had to pay a premium and not get a significant performance bump. On the other hand, manufacturers have also been wary of the Ultrabook. While HP was supposed to unveil an Ultrabook, it decided to pull out of the PC market completely. The only people left in the market is Asus and Acer, and their move will be closely watched by their competitors

Source: Digitimes

It said "Sponsors of Tomorrow". Trollmarketing, for sure.

Intel Capital, the investment branch of Intel, is really putting its dough on the line this time, by investing 300 million dollars in research that will go towards “companies building hardware and software technologies focused on enhancing how people interact with Ultrabooks, achieving all-day usage through longer battery life, enabling innovative physical designs and improved storage capacity.

Over the next few years, Intel will be seeking ways in which it can enhance the user experience of an Ultrabook user. While there’s a ‘back-to-basics’ element towards this end – such as increasing battery life, slimming sessions, security enhancements and other factors which are desirable today, there will also be integration of new technologies to further enhance this, such as putting a touchscreen on an Ultrabook or adopting an SSD.

It seems that what Intel is doing is that it is trying to ensure that its Ultrabook succeeds. Perhaps this is because they have been championing it for a long time, and pulling back now would be a hard slap in the face. So far, the first few Ultrabooks by Acer and Asus all have some sort of a compromise – all high-end models are priced at over $1,000. If you want to pay less than a $1,000, you’ll probably get a Core i3 with integrated graphics.

These go against what Intel envisioned. The only similarity between what Intel wanted and what Acer and Asus made was something that was ultraportable. Historically, price has always been the difficult part to budge when it came to building an affordable, powerful and ultraportable computer, and from the first iterations of the Ultrabook, it seems that this trend is merely perpetuating itself.

Intel’s investment will bear fruit if it finds ways of reducing the price of the Ultrabook. Let’s not talk about the esoteric extras such as SSDs and touchscreens. The day that they can provide an affordable Core i7 Ultrabook at less than a thousand, Intel can be said to have achieved a great step forward in achieving its Ultrabook vision.

Over time, prices of technology has always fallen. However, if the $300m that Intel is pumping into research can accelerate this phenomenon, then sooner would Intel, and Ultrabook manufacturers be able to compete with the Macbook Air, a $999 Ultrabook that has all the advantages of being an Apple – be it the OS’s stability or the ultra-effective marketing.

So wherein does the Ultrabook fits? Is it meant for the person looking to play the latest games on an ultraportable laptop, or is it meant for people who want something more capable than a netbook… and basically just wants to surf the web and watch HD videos on Youtube? Utility-wise, an Ultrabook can be a great step forward for people needing the ultraportability, but is a step back if you consider your choices more pragmatically. If you want something that can be your main computer, you can get something equally powerful for half the price, though probably double the thickness, and it probably comes with a good-to-have DVD drive too.

The $300 million that will be invested, therefore, really needs to make a dent in the prices of these machines. While Intel needs to find its niche (and it will be a niche, I bet), pragmatism will always find its way when people compare an Ultrabook with a standard form factor laptop. The day that the Ultrabook’s prices drop to somewhere where it can put up a good fight with a powerful netbook (aka notbook) to appease the web-surfing, HD-movie watching crowd is the day that it might win over a significant group of laptop users. On the other end of the spectrum is the high-end “I-need-an-i7-and-GTX550″ crowd, which would be a big challenge for Intel, especially since size, directly related to price, does matter when it comes to high-end performance.

Press release

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and TAIPEI, Aug. 10, 2011 – Intel Capital today announced a $300 million Ultrabook™ Fund to help drive innovation in this new category of devices. As announced at Computex earlier this year, Ultrabook systems will marry the performance and capabilities of today’s laptops with tablet-like features. Ultrabook devices will deliver a highly responsive and secure experience in a thin, light and elegant design at mainstream prices.

To help realize that vision, the Intel Capital Ultrabook Fund aims to invest in companies building hardware and software technologies focused on enhancing how people interact with Ultrabooks, achieving all-day usage through longer battery life, enabling innovative physical designs and improved storage capacity. The overall goal of the fund, which will be invested over the next 3-4 years, is to create a cycle of innovation and system capabilities for this new and growing category of mobile devices.

“Ultrabook devices are poised to be an important area for innovation in the $261 billion global computer industry¹,” said Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president. “The Intel Capital Ultrabook fund will focus on investing in companies building technologies that will help revolutionize the computing experience and morph today’s mobile computers into the next ‘must have’ device.”

“Celebrating 30 years of innovation, the PC is the ultimate Darwinian device and Intel is striving to again reinvent mobile computing,” said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group. “In 2003, the combination of Intel’s Centrino technology with built-in WiFi, paired with Intel Capital’s $300 million in venture investments and other industry enabling efforts, ushered in the shift from desktop PCs to anytime, anywhere mobile computing. Our announcement today is about Intel mobilizing significant investments to achieve the next historic shift in computing.”

There are three key phases in Intel’s strategy to accelerate its vision for this new category. The company’s efforts begin to unfold this year with Intel’s latest 2nd Generation Intel® Core^TM processors. This family of products will enable thin, light and beautiful designs that are less than 21mm (0.8 inch) thick, and at mainstream prices. Systems based on these chips will be available for the 2011 winter holiday shopping season.

To ship Ultrabook devices this year required significant collaboration amongst the entire computing industry. Intel has worked very closely with its customers to ensure that Ultrabook devices deliver compelling and unique value to consumers. Many OEMs have been collaborating on this effort from the very beginning.

“Ultrabook takes the best technologies and marries them with sleeker designs and extraordinarily long battery life for a new kind of computing experience,” said Peter Hortensius, Lenovo’s Product Group president. “This new type of personal computing aligns with our continual focus on engineering innovative laptop solutions that push the boundaries on mobility.”

The second phase of Intel’s vision happens around the next-generation Intel processor family codenamed “Ivy Bridge,” which is scheduled for availability in systems in the first half of 2012. Laptops based on “Ivy Bridge” will bring improved power efficiency, smart visual performance, increased responsiveness and enhanced security.

Intel’s planned 2013 products, codenamed “Haswell,” are the third step in the Ultrabook device progression and expected to reduce power consumption to half of the “thermal design point” for today’s microprocessors.

Intel Capital has a strong track record of driving innovation and growth in computing through dedicated and consistent investments in start-ups and companies at the cutting edge of technology innovation worldwide. By employing Intel’s core assets of architecture, engineering and manufacturing leadership along with capital investment, Intel Capital has helped to create the technology ecosystems which underlie many of the most widespread applications of technology today.

In addition to the Intel Capital Ultrabook Fund, Intel Capital has a number of dedicated funds that drive innovations in specific geographies and technology areas. Country-specific funds include the India Technology Fund, China Technology Fund II, Brazil Technology Fund and Middle East and Turkey Fund. Past technology specific funds have included the Intel Digital Home Fund and  Intel Communications Fund.

Source: Intel Newsroom

Slimming sessions always had large prices attached to them.

Intel is going all out in making sure that the ultrabook category of laptops succeeds as they had planned. After recent announcements of failure to adhere to Intel’s pre-envisioned prices of below US$1000 by Acer and Asus, Intel has come out with a reference Bill of Materials (BOM) which outlines the components in which manufacturers can use as a means to achieving Intel’s target of 21mm ultrabooks at US$475-650, or US$493-710 for 18mm models. These prices exclude assembly costs.

The key to the success of the Ultrabook would lie in the fact that it is highly usable while being portable. Just like a netbook, except for the fact that it would use Sandy or Ivy Bridge processors, have more RAM, a beefier graphics card and have a larger screen. Price, however, comes at a mid-point between a capable but heavy notebook and a cheap but limited netbook.

However, Stan Shih, Acer’s founder, believes that Ultrabooks is a fad which will not last long. Brad Linder off Liliputing, on the other hand, forsees that the problem with Ultrabooks lie in its price. Linder argues that you’ll be paying for lightness, thinness and performance, but it is caught feebly in the competition between a cheaper full-size laptop with more processing power or a netbook with excellent portability and which is even cheaper.

Indeed, there are more economical choices out there, and unless you really need the thin form factor of an Ultrabook, powerful netbooks with AMD’s E-350 and E-450 seem to be a very good choice if you are looking for HD-capable computers with good processing power. And then if you’re looking for bang-for-buck, if you don’t mind weight, you can get a really good standard form factor laptop for US$1000 – to the tune of a Core i7 with the latest Geforce and lots of RAM. Or if you just want something ultraportable, cheap, and light, there’s always the trusty and cheap netbook.

Source: Digitimes