xps

Ivy Bridge will highlight Intel's emphasis on power-efficiency and graphics performance, but one key ingredient will be missing -- Windows 8.

Intel's Ivy Bridge chip is expected to be announced Monday, opening the floodgates for new desktops and laptops built around the chipmaker's first 22-nanometer processor. Generally, the smaller the chip geometries, the faster and/or more power efficient the silicon is. Intel's current Sandy Bridge processors use "fatter" 32-nanometer technology.

How small is 22 nanometers? More than six million 22-nanometer transistors could fit in the period at the end of this sentence, according … Read more

We're more than a quarter of the way through 2012 (believe it or not), so it's time to ask: where are those hot laptops we saw back at CES?

The good news is, looking back at the products we saw back then, is that a surprising number of them weren't vaporware. Even better, a great number of them have already made their debut and have been reviewed on CNET. … Read more

For ultrabooks to succeed, the display needs to approach an iPad's quality or least match that of a MacBook--which uses higher-end displays.

A lower quality display can be a deal breaker for consumers in the age of the iPad, which boasts a high-quality, high-resolution in-plane switching (IPS) display.

IPS and high-quality TN displays offer viewing angles and contrast typically better than those used on most ultrabooks today.

This shortcoming has become apparent in more than a few reviews of the Dell XPS 13 ultrabook, which in almost every other respect is generally considered an excellent design. (Another review here … Read more

With Intel's latest silicon due soon, the chipmaker is cranking up the marketing volume for ultrabooks, saying the skinny laptops usher in a "a new era of computing."

The marketing campaign launched this week is the biggest in about a decade, spanning television, online, and print ads, the company said today. And Intel is putting its proverbial money where its mouth is.

Hundreds of millions of dollars will be allocated for the "largest marketing spend for the company since launching Intel Centrino in 2003," Intel said in a statement. (See first TV ad below.)

Centrino … Read more

Ultrabooks are a hot topic right now, but with so many superslim 13-inch laptops available, how do you choose the best one? It's especially hard in the new pseudo-category, as most of the ultrabooks we've seen are very similar, both in design and specs. For this eagerly awaited Prizefight, we pitted two of our favorite ultrabooks against each other: the HP Folio 13 and the Dell XPS 13.

The Dell has a very MacBook-Air-like design, whereas the HP is a bit more businesslike, but has fantastic battery life. Below, you'll see our laptop experts, me along with Julie Rivera and Brian Tong, rate both systems across several key categories, and at the end, we'll tally up the score and declare a winner. … Read more

Ultrabook suppliers are still dealing with pesky market and profitability issues, according to a CNET source and two reports. And some will turn to low-cost designs as a result.

"The ultrabook adoption during the holiday season was ugly," an industry source, who speaks to ultrabook suppliers, told CNET. That source was speaking about sales for one particular ultrabook vendor.

The market for all ultrabook suppliers, however, is still challenging. "You've got a down market on the eve of a new operating system (Windows 8) at a price point that's fairly robust (high)," said the … Read more

The long-awaited Dell ultrabook is here. Having skipped the first round of new superslim laptops, the new XPS 13 is largely worth the wait, and hits a lot of what you'd want in an ultrabook.

At $999 for a 128GB SSD and Intel Core i5-2467M CPU, the XPS 13 is reasonably priced, although HP, Toshiba, and others offer similar specs for $100 or so less. Working in Dell's favor are the system's excellent build quality--the body is a mix of aluminum, magnesium alloy, and carbon fiber--and its smaller footprint. It's not quite a 13-inch laptop in an 11-inch body, but it's in the ballpark. … Read more

Dell's first ultrabook, the XPS 13, is now available. And it's attracting a lot of attention as one of Dell's best laptop designs to date.

The XPS 13 boasts solid specs for the base $999 configuration, is priced well below the MacBook Air, uses a smaller footprint than 13-inch competitors, and taps carbon fiber materials in the chassis to keep the weight below three pounds.

And Dell will announce Tuesday that it is seeing lots of demand already. "We're seeing strong consumer and business demand for the new XPS 13," said Michael Tatelman, Dell Vice President and General Manager of Americas Consumer, in a statement to be released Tuesday.

The XPS 13 wil also be sold at Best Buy from Tuesday.

Starting at $999.99, it comes -- at that price -- with a 13.3-inch/300-nit/1,366x768 display squeezed into a 12-inch chassis (roughly), an Intel Core i5-2467M processor, Intel HD Graphics 3000, a 128GB solid-state drive, 4GB of memory, backlit keyboard, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. It is 0.71 inches at its thickest point.

Other standard features include a 47WHr 6-cell battery (built into the laptop and not replaceable by the customer) rated at a maximum of over eight hours, one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0, mini Display-Port, 1.3-megapixel Webcam, and dual-array digital microphones. … Read more

It's not every year that laptops take center stage (or even close to it) at CES. But in 2012, a combination of ultrabook hype and inventive product designs combined to make portable computers the most interesting category of the show.

A few weeks back, during CES, we shot the second version of what we're now calling the Laptop Talk Show. The show was streamed live online, and shot in front of a live audience, but has not been made available for on-demand viewing until now. This year's version features myself, Scott Stein, and Molly Wood going over … Read more