Desktops and Notebooks: Ultrabooks Make Their Appearance at Intel's IDF Show

SAN FRANCISCO—Intel's ultrabook concept has been a central theme during this week's Intel Developer Forum here. Intel executives see ultrabooks, which they first introduced at the Computex show in May, as the next step in the evolution of PCs, thin and light devices that marry features found in tablets—such as long battery life, instant-on capabilities and, eventually, touch functionality—with the benefits of traditional notebooks. Ultrabooks, designed to come in at less than 0.8 inches thick and under $1,000 in price, are a key aspect of Intel's larger push in the mobile-computing space, and will help the chip maker bolster a flagging PC market. Several OEMs, including Lenovo, Asus, Acer and Toshiba, are scheduled to roll out the first ultrabooks this fall, with the devices based on the current 2nd Generation "Sandy Bridge" chips. The next wave of ultrabooks, due out in 2012, will be based on Intel's upcoming "Ivy Bridge" products. The following generation, coming in 2013, will be powered by "Haswell" chips. Each generation of Intel chips will offer increasingly greater performance and energy efficiency. During IDF, Intel executives showed off not only this year's ultrabooks, but also devices based on Ivy Bridge from original design manufacturers (ODMs). Here is a look that some of the ultrabooks Intel had on display at IDF.