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A fresh crop of ultrabooks sporting Intel's latest "Ivy Bridge"Core processors will start to go on sale next month, including 30models with touchscreens, Intel said Thursday. Intel will officially announce the Ivy Bridge chips at the Computextrade show in Taiwan next week. Some of the touchscreen ultrabookswill be convertible, meaning the screen can fold back to turn thelaptop into a tablet, said Intel spokeswoman Becky Emmett. Lenovo showed a convertible ultrabook earlier this year, the IdeaPad Yoga. It ran a consumer preview of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 andactivated the touch-optimized Metro user interface when folded intoa tablet. The Yoga had a 13.3-inch screen, was 1.6 centimetersthick and weighed 1.4 kilograms. Lenovo has yet to give pricing oravailability for the ultrabook. Dell will also launch touchscreen ultrabooks and tablets around thetime Windows 8 launches. CEO Michael Dell last week said thetouchscreen products would likely be priced a bit higher than similar products without touchscreens. Ultrabooks have come under fire for what some see as high pricetags of US$800 or more. Ultrabooks with the latest Core processorswill likely be available starting at $699 by the end of the year,Emmett said, but she could not say whether those models would havetouchscreens. About 110 ultrabook models are under development, with and withouttouchscreens, Emmett said. That's a significant improvement fromthe 21 ultrabooks developed with older Core processors code-namedSandy Bridge, she said. HP has already announced Ivy Bridge ultrabooks but has not yet talked about touchscreen models. Acer and Lenovohave also announced Ivy Bridge ultrabooks, and Toshiba is expectedto follow suit. Ultrabook users will see a significant performance advantage withIvy Bridge chips, according to Emmett. The low-power Core chips,which include embedded graphics processors, will deliver twice theperformance in media and graphics compared to Sandy Bridge, Intelsays. An Acer representative earlier this year said Ivy Bridgechips delivered about a 20 percent CPU performance improvement overSandy Bridge processors. Ultrabooks will resume from sleep mode in less than seven secondsand include new security features that can disable them remotely ortrack them in the event of theft. Intel has set new feature and size requirements for Ivy Bridgeultrabooks, including a minimum of five hours of battery life andthe inclusion of USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt for fast data transfers.Ultrabooks with screens under 14 inches should be no more than 18mm thick, and larger systems should not exceed 21 mm, Intel says. The company introduced the concept of ultrabooks around this time last year, to offer thin and light laptops withalways-on connectivity, long battery life and quick start times.Ultrabooks were launched to bring some mojo back to the slumping PCmarket and to help insulate Intel against growing demand fortablets, a market where it's still a marginal player. Beyond Ivy Bridge, Intel is planning a third phase of ultrabooks in2013 with future Core processors code-named Haswell. Intel has saidfuture ultrabooks will be thinner, offer longer battery life stilland have features such as voice recognition. Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductorsfor IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh . Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Led Rechargeable Flashlights , China Led Commercial Lighting Fixtures, and more. For more , please visit Industrial Flood Lighting today!
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