Like HP with their Elitebook Folio 9470M, Toshiba with their Z930, Lenovo with their X1 Carbon, Dell are launching a business-focused Ultrabook. The Dell Latitude 6430u was leaked back in May but formal launch was announced by Dell this week. Clearly they were waiting for Windows 8 but note that this isn’t a touchscreen Ultrabook, despite the pretty touch-led Metro user interface being shown above.

  Just when you thought Asus had learned from its past experience with netbooks that launching a myriad of confusingly named devices was not helpful to consumers, they decide to do it all again with the Zenbook brand and the U500. Up until now, the Zenbook line has shared two specific things; first, all Zenbooks featured a similar wedge shaped design and metalic finish. Second, all Zenbook’s were Ultrabooks. Until now, that is. Asus has decided to throw the U500, a 15″ thin and light laptop, in with the rest of […]

The adoption of Micro-USB as a charging port standard on smartphones was a breakthrough for the consumer but we’re still left with the same problem on our other portable electronics. Example: I just spent 10 minutes searching for a power adaptor for a Tablet here in the office. What if we could do the same for portable electronics as we did for smartphones? Power over USB (or USB Power Delivery as it’s officially known) looks like it could be the answer.

People often suggest to me that an Ultrabook is simply a lightweight laptop. There’s one very important thing they miss – it’s an Intel-based lightweight laptop. Why is that important? It’s important because if you get the word ‘Ultrabook’ into peoples heads, you’ve cut off a huge chunk of competition. Take this RFP for example; The TSA [that’s the USA governments Transportation Security Administration] is asking for proposals to fulfill a requirement for Ultrabooks for around 500 locations in a contract worth up to $2.1 million. This is a big […]

Supporting 1080p wireless transfer, including protected content, using H.264 hardware encoding over 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz Wi-Fi networks in Version 3, Intel Wi-Di is becoming more and more interesting. There are now TVs and monitors available with Wi-Di built in and the new Netgear Push2TV 3000 (PTV3000) is breaking new ground in size and price. I took a look at the latest low-latency version of the product and got hands-on with the tiny Netgear PTV3000 which is launching at $59.

There’s nothing better for software innovation than getting a bunch of software innovators together, adding some hardware experts, some visionaries, a bunch of cool hardware, feedback from consumers… and a few glasses of alcohol. That about sums up what happened at IDF last week. Without reading any of the Ultimate Coder Ultimate Challenge blogs this week (see more below though) I know that all of the teams were stimulated to make changes, add features and optimize others. It’s late in the game (only 2 weeks to go) but I’m sure […]

I had hands-on (and I’m now testing a beta of)  PowerDirector Mobile at IDF 2012 last week. I’m interested in how this could contribute to fast, mobile video production with an Ultrabook/slate but I’m also still going to be using PowerDirector on the desktop, a video editing package that really fits well with the Ultrabook. I’ve been using it for a year now for all my YouTube content because it’s been stable and very, very fast. I sound like an ad, but I promise you, I’m a fan purely through […]

I met with Cyberlink at IDF2012 and had a great demo and hands-on with their new media suite. In fact, there’s something about the video editor that makes me want to get a Core-based tablet right way for my trade-show videos. It’s really fast, easy and mobile.