ultrabooks

LAS VEGAS--While Toshiba usually has a flood of new laptops every year, the company surprised us this CES by highlighting a single model.

Even more unusual, instead of a ready-to-ship product, it is a still-unnamed 14-inch ultrabook prototype. The unit we saw had a Satellite logo on it, rather than the Portege branding we saw in last year's Z835 (a 13-inch ultrabook currently available for a rock-bottom $799).

Otherwise, it looked very similar, with Toshiba's standard business/consumer crossover look of a gray brushed-metal lid, rounded corners, and an inset screen with a too-thick black plastic bezel.

The keyboard was a standard island-style design, with Toshiba's custom row of page navigation keys along the far right side. We haven't had a chance to use it more than briefly, but the large clickpad looked interesting, with small left and right clickzone indicators etched into it. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Ultrabooks are everywhere here at CES 2012. More importantly, a new class of ultrabook has emerged: the 14-incher.

Last year's Lenovo IdeaPad U300s was one of our favorites in an early first wave of ultrabooks. The new IdeaPad U310 and U410 alter the equation somewhat with the addition of standard hard drives instead of solid-state drives (SSDs), but that extra storage option could be exactly what attracts some buyers who might otherwise be turned off by the limitations of lower-capacity flash storage.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Today at CES 2012, Acer officially unveiled a poorly kept secret: two new ultrabooks.

One is being called the world's thinnest, and the other is an update to the TimelineX series. We got a chance to spend some up-close time with both for some initial impressions of Acer's latest.

The Aspire S5 uses the same numerology as last year's Aspire S3 ultrabook. Unlike that more budget-minded model, the S5 is 15mm thick--2 millimeters thinner than the last year's Aspire S3--weighs less than 3 pounds, and has a sleek Onyx Black magnesium alloy chassis. Its razor-thin design recalls the MacBook Air and Samsung Series 9. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Well, it can only get better from here, right?

Acer informally kicked off the Consumer Electronics Show's wave of press conferences today with the unveiling of the Timeline Ultra and Aspire S5, along with a look at its cloud services.

Missing were any concrete details of its tablet, as well as any information on its planned Windows 8 products.

With its laptop announcements, Acer is doubling down on the ultrabook segment. The products underscore the company's need to find a hot new category to spark revenue, particularly with its key Netbook business cratering. The trouble is, the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Acer unveiled the Aspire S5, which it boasts is the world's thinnest Ultrabook.

The Aspire S5 is the second ultrabook that Acer announced today at its press conference ahead of the official start of the Consumer Electronics Show. With ultrabooks looking very similar in size and shape to each other, thinness has been on the key differentiators. Acer boasts that the device is only 15 millimeters at its maximum point.

Like the Acer Timeline Ultra, it offers an instant-on connection, allowing it to turn on within 1.5 seconds. The device will also get the same access to … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Acer is banking that the cloud will give the company an edge when pushing its line of Ultrabooks.

Chairman J.T. Wang wasted no time talking up AcerCloud, a service that allows the company's customers to sync files between a Windows-based device and Android devices.

"We're determined to make it very successful and sustainable," Wang said.

In July, the company acquired a cloud-services provider called iGware for $325 million, to help it build AcerCloud.

Cloud services will play a big part in the ultrabooks, Wang said. He added that AcerCloud wouldn't have worked without … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Acer today unveiled its Aspire Timeline Ultra, representing its latest take on the ultrabook.

The Aspire Timeline Ultra is slimmer and lighter than Acer's previous version, which came out in September. The company plans to start shipping the device in the first quarter.

Acer is just the latest to commit to Intel's ultrabook campaign, which is an answer to Apple's successful--and similarly sleek--MacBook Air. Intel is putting a lot money behind a push to convince consumers that this is a new product category. Industry analysts, however, are skeptical that the market can support so many new … Read more

Ultrabooks will come in two basic varieties at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas: present and future. The latter will incorporate Intel's Ivy Bridge processor, destined to populate all of the ultrabooks and hybrids coming out in the second half of the year.

Ivy Bridge follows the Sandy Bridge chip shipping in current and ultrabooks. While SB should be the chip of choice in ultrabooks until this summer, expect PC makers (and Apple) to make the switcheroo to Ivy Bridge after that.

PC manufacturing titans like Foxconn and Inventec were already hawking their Ivy Bridge wares in September. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--We've seen it more than a few times.

A company at the Consumer Electronics show wows the tech crowd in Las Vegas with its new product. It's sure to be a hit, the tech press concludes. Then everyone heads home, gets some sleep, and months later we ask ourselves, "Whatever happened to (fill in the blank)?"

Despite the massive size and reach of CES, the show can actually be quite insular. With so many companies looking to display their latest and greatest products, the media is left scrambling to cover as much as they possibly … Read more