We’re happy with the Toshiba Z830 that Intel sent to us for a long-term loan. It’s a fast, lightweight and well-connected Ultrabook. We’ve already dropped in a 4GB RAM module to take it up to 6GB but there’s one more thing we can do to pimp it out – upgrade the SSD. We contacted MyDigitalSSD with the plan and they kindly sent us a 256GB BulletProof mSATA SSD with SATA III interface. Not only are we going to see over double the usable space on our drive, we’re going to […]

If you are looking for a primer on Ultrabooks, we’ve got just the thing for you as we’ve just finished updating three of our main reference articles. Ultrabook reference What’s an Ultrabook? – An overview of the Ultrabook. Ultrabook Features Guide – Looking into some of the key features of an Ultrabooks Ultrabook Buying Tips – Read this before you buy your Ultrabook

Tucked into a report on MSI’s 2012 line-up over at Digitimes today is a mention of the MSI S20 Slider that appeared at Computex earlier this month. MSI are apparently aiming for an October or November release for between $799 and $899   Launch date is obviously going to depend on Windows 8 availability but we’re expecting that to happen without delay in Q4 anyway. As for the price, it seems quite competitive.

The 15” Samsung Series 9 2012 with Ivy Bridge has been a pleasure to test. It’s a stylish Ultrabook with potentially very long battery life and a great 3D performance boost over 1st-generation Ultrabooks. The screen is good and bright and the keyboard a pleasure to use. But all is not perfect. A surprising lack of CPU Turbo under battery load, a strange touchpad action and too many ‘micro’ ports takes some of the shine from the Series 9 but despite that, it sits in a unique position in the […]

Acer America has just announced two new Ultrabooks as part of a new ‘Timeline Ultra’ series. On offer is a 14″ and 15.6″ display, the latter of which has a full numpad on the keyboard. The bezels appear to be nice and thin but the resolution leaves much to be desired. Discrete graphics from Nvidia are included as well as optical drives. Both come in at rather affordable prices, but we’re unsure that the inclusion of the optical drive is such a great idea. Acer Aspire Timeline M5 details in our database

Back toward the beginning of May, HP revealed a deluge of new Ultrabook products. Despite a rather confusing array of press releases and announcements, we waded through it all and found what many others missed — HP would be offering the Envy 4 and Envy 6 as not just Intel-powered Ultrabooks, but also as AMD-powered ultrathins. After quite a while, HP now has available the AMD Envy 6 Sleekbook for $699; can it compete with low priced Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks, and what about it’s twin, the Envy 6 Ultrabook?

In 2007 Microsoft introduced 7 inch tablets based on low power CPUs and Windows with touch capability and an overlay user interface called the Origami Experience. The Origami UMPCs drove a huge amount of attention at launch but within 4 years all traces of the devices were gone from the market. Yesterday Microsoft introduced 10 inch tablets based on low power CPUs and Windows with touch capability and an overlay user interface called Metro. The Surface has already driven a huge amount of attention, but will it last? What’s the […]

I know a lot of you are waiting for final details, pricing, availability and a review of the ASUS Zenbook UX31A Ultrabook and while we haven’t secured a review sample yet, we can at least bring you pricing and specification details of four models that have just appeared in retail channels in the USA. The four ASUS UX31A models we’ve seen so far are as follows: