The coding teams competing for $10000 have just completed week 2 of the Ultimate Coder Ultrabook Challenge and have all posted their updates. I’ve also received my developer preview Ultrabook with touch and sensors! Read my thoughts about the competition at this stage and view the video below.   

If you aren’t following the Intel Ultimate Coder Ultrabook Challenge, tune in now because not only have we got 6 experienced software development teams creating applications for a new generation of Ultrabooks, not only is your Chippy one of the judges but we’ve got amazing new hardware to use for the competition too.  You can get the latest updates on the competition here but right now I want to show you the exciting touch and sensor-enabled Ultrabook we’re using.

Liliputing have done a good job of reviewing the quirky widescreen U845W that I was impressed with on my detailed hands-on and Brad, the author, comes to a similar conclusion to mine –  We don’t see it being perfect for widescreen movies but we do see that it makes quite a productive researching/writing setup. The U845W is available for $968 at Amazon in the USA at the moment and at £899 in the UK (inc. tax.) which isn’t exactly a bargain for a Core i5 ‘2nd-Gen’ Ultrabook with a hard […]

Ultrabook-info.de, a site I’m often in communication with, has just published an interview with Intel’s PR manager for the German region. There’s a lot of typical PR commentary in it but reading between the lines, a few things bubbling under…. Comments on connected standby for the next generation of Core (Haswell) has me thinking of ‘always on, always connected’ and GRP chassis that will be available next year. There’s also confirmation about the confusing element of security. All Ultrabooks based on 3rd Generation Intel platforms (Ivy Bridge) will support Intel […]

There are very few things an Ultrabook can’t do. Gaming, video editing, CAD, office work and photo editing to name just a few. Yes, there are some limits within all categories but the Ultrabook is the only type of laptop that gives you access to all these capabilities while still being small and lightweight. Its dynamic range is unlike any other PC. I thought it would be a good idea for readers with an Ultrabook to tell the rest of us what software is on their Ultrabooks and how it […]

If you’ve lately perused Lenovo Ultrabook offering you’ll have found the U310 and U410 consumer Ultrabooks and the soon to launch ThinkPad X1 Carbon for business users. Make room for one more in the business lineup because Lenovo is including the new ThinkPad T430U. The T430U looks to be Lenovo’s budget-business option for those who don’t want to pay the premium for the X1 Carbon’s 1.34kg weight and . With option discrete graphics (an interesting option for a business Ultrabook), up to 1TB of HDD storage, and up to 8GB […]

We’ve just spotted the Gigabyte X11 in retail channels and it’s marked up as being available shortly, possibly in 1 week. Pricing is available and full specs and model variants have been listed in Europe.

For those looking for netbook-style sizing and laptop-style performance, the 11.6” category of Ultrabooks is the place to be. It’s not the most active category, that belongs to the 14” segment, but it’s an important one for many. To make an 11.6” Ultrabook though takes skill, leading-edge components and some trade-offs. Battery capacities are generally smaller than in the 13.3” Ultrabooks and screen resolutions must be kept to sensible levels to avoid having to boost font sizes. One the other hand screen backlights take much less power making the 11.6” […]