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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Ultrabook Laptops : Not Just MacBook Air Clones !!
Posted on 3:46 PM by Admin
Ultrabooks are sleek, super-thin laptops that often feature a silver, wedge or tapering design--yes, just like the Apple MacBook Air.
However, despite Ultrabooks’ design similarities with Apple’s popular
ultraportable, Ultrabooks really are a unique new breed of Windows
laptops. They offer a distinct combination of performance, good looks,
and features--some not available on the MacBook Air. Let's take a look.
Ultrathin and Premium: The Laptop's Natural Evolution
Apple Macbook AirWith
the MacBook Air, Apple definitely popularized the metallic, razor-thin
design we now see in Ultrabooks, but the Air’s signature silver body,
black chiclet keyboard, and tapering wedge shape isn’t exclusive to
Apple.
As HP design exec Stacy Wolff told Engadget, sometimes silver is the right choice, and Apple doesn’t “own silver.” Speaking about the design similarities between the new HP Envy Spectre XT
Ultrabook and the MacBook Air, Wolff proclaimed that the similarities
have nothing to do with mimicking Apple--they’re just the way that
technology has developed.
The 2003 Sony Vaio X505The history of laptops shrinking in size suggests this is true. In fact, in 2003--five years before Apple introduced the MacBook Air--Sony introduced another premium, super-thin laptop: The Vaio X505
(also known as the Vaio PCG-X505, or the "505 Extreme"). This 1.8-pound
laptop tapered down to 0.4 inches at the front (thinner than the Air)
and had the sleek metallic body found on Ultrabooks today.
Look a little closer at some Ultrabooks that may look like MacBook
Air clones, and you’ll find that laptop makers have added their own
touches or improvements to the design. The Envy Spectre XT, for example,
has a magnesium body with a brushed design and a rubber coating on the
bottom of the laptop; Apple uses aluminum with no pattern or bottom
coating.
LG P430The LG P430
has a brushed aluminum shell and black chiclet keyboard, but LG uses a
thin bezel to cram a 14-inch (on the diagonal) display into the P430’s
13.3-inch footprint.
Asus Zenbook UX21The Asus Zenbook UX21 and UX31
also have an identical shape as the MacBook Air, but these Ultrabooks
feature subtle, yet eye-catching design differences: A circular
spun-metal pattern on the charcoal gray lid and a slightly contrasting
linear brushed pattern on the laptops’ silver deck and bottom. Metal
keys, a glass-coated touchpad, and sharper corners are other
distinctions on the UX21 and UX31.
Unique Ultrabook Features and Options
Good looks aren’t everything, however. Even though some laptops do
look exactly like the MacBook Air, often there are significant
differences inside. Besides running Windows, using Intel processors, and
meeting the thinness requirement, laptop makers are free to adapt
Intel’s specifications for Ultrabooks as they see fit.
Some Ultrabooks push the dimensions of Ultrabooks with larger displays: Examples are the 15.6-inch Acer Timeline M3 and the 14-inch Samsung Series 5 Ultra. (The latter even packs an optical drive.) And Ultrabooks, like the Asus Zenbooks, are coming soon with full HD 1080p resolution on matte In-Plane Switching (IPS) displays, for wider viewing angles and richer color.
Toshiba Portege Z835 portsUltrabooks tend to offer more ports that are standard than the MacBook Air does. Both the Toshiba Portege Z835 and the HP Folio 13, for example, come with gigabit ethernet, HDMI, and USB 3.0. The Portege Z835 also adds VGA. You’d need to buy adapters if you want ethernet, VGA, or HDMI capability on the MacBook Air.
Options in some Ultrabooks for hybrid HDD and SSD drives
(rather than just solid-state drives) help drive down the prices of
these laptops. The hybrid drives also increase storage capacity in
exchange for a bit of a performance hit.
Want more powerful graphics processing than the integrated graphics that come in most Ultrabooks? The Acer Timeline M3 and the Gigabyte U2442 series both offer, as options, discrete Nvidia graphics cards.
Finally, some Ultrabooks that should be coming by the end of this year are expected to feature touchscreens and voice recognition.
In short, rather than just aping Apple, many Ultrabook makers are
taking that wafer-thin design idea and veering off in their own
directions. Such diversifying may muddy the Ultrabook brand,
but this competition and PC makers’ quest to make Ultrabooks of their
very own also means that we’ve got many more choices--and perhaps a
better chance of finding the good-looking, super-thin laptop that meets
our needs precisely.
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