Ultraportables, thin and lite laptops, ultrabooks, no matter what the name, arguably they represent the future of the form gene. Notably, Apple tree has been flirting with the concept since the MacBook Air was launched in 2008, but other manufacturers such as Lenovo and Sony have besides heavily contributed to the design and development of lightweight notebooks in the past decade.

It appears as though we're but now arriving to that sweet spot where fewer compromises tin be made to build fast and graceful machines that are budget-friendly, all at the same time. Intel has recognized this trend and is investing heavily to make sure they go the platform of choice to build 'ultrabooks' (they own that trademark).

However, it's piece of cake to miss what a true next-generation ultraportable notebook should be. Manufacturers are short-sighted if they but focus on building fast machines that counterbalance iii pounds or less, without putting design and user feel at the core of their future developments.

Recent examples of mainstream ultraportables include the Asus ZenBook UX31, Toshiba Portégé Z835, Lenovo U300. All of these machines rely on Intel's CULV Sandy Bridge platform and, for better or worse, they are direct compared to Apple'southward MacBook Air, which is widely regarded as the benchmark to beat in this course factor and toll range.

With that under consideration, hither are some key aspects where I believe PC makers should focus and where some are already failing on their first try to evangelize a killer ultrabook.

Battery Life

You lot tin can thank tablets for the notion that portable computers should last longer than a mere three hours on bombardment. Triple that figure and that's the kind of expectation that has been building upwardly with every iteration of newer, more efficient notebook platforms in the past decade.

The first ultrabook that arrived to market, the Acer Aspire S3, had a rather poor showing, shipping with an attractive price but a less-than-stellar bombardment life. Other competing products from Asus, Samsung and Lenovo have done considerably better.


The Aspire S3 was kickoff to market but information technology failed to print despite its attainable toll bespeak.

The (like shooting fish in a barrel) bottom line: don't send a system if it cannot compete on battery life. Get back to the drawing board, charge an extra $50, exercise what you have to do, but this is one central aspect that can't be ignored.

Build Quality

Basic hardware that withstands the most abuse should exist a master focus. In other words, a great ultrabook needs a great keyboard and touchpad, not mere afterthoughts thrown on top of a powerful processor and fast storage. ThinkPad'due south stiff and lasting reputation is well deserved subsequently years of offering solid machines that have some of the all-time keyboards on the marketplace.

In a similar fashion, we're well past the signal where it'southward acceptable to transport sub-par screens with poor viewing angles.


The Portégé Z835 is one of the tardily arrivals to this yr'southward round of ultrabooks.

To be off-white, PC makers are doing remarkably well today compared to where they were two years ago. Build quality on sub-$1000 systems used to be mediocre and netbook-like, but that's no longer the case for the nigh role.

The Asus UX31 and Toshiba Portégé Z835 are prime number examples of what a well-conceived ultrabook should exist. Having that said, there's even so room for improvement.

User Experience

Amongst Intel's requirements for ultrabooks are fast boot and wake from slumber times. This commonly requires a solid-state drive, which is possibly the best improver y'all can make to any laptop. Samsung did a remarkable job of optimizing their Serial nine laptops -- some of the all-time in the market even though they're non "ultrabooks" -- and other manufacturers are post-obit suit.

In my opinion, kick times, while of import, are heavily overrated. Personally I'd have any organisation with a 2 minute boot time and 2 2d 'wake from sleep' over an identical auto that can boot in 30 seconds but takes more than 5 seconds to wake upwards. Sheer convenience in a modern OS should dictate not having to reboot all the time and instead being able to put your system to slumber and go back to work almost instantaneously whenever you lot need information technology.


Samsung's Series nine is one of the most refined ultraportables in the market, it doesn't come cheap however.

Annoying arranged software is yet another element crippling users' feel. Who needs a Wi-Fi manager on tiptop of Windows congenital-in tools, trial Office software and security (when you tin become Microsoft's Security Essentials for free), a dozen of so-called services, shopping desktop shortcuts and, wait for it, nagging browser toolbars (!).

Apple is credited for making great products. Even though that may not always exist the case, they succeed at making products people love, recommend to friends, and ultimately buy again. Where do you lot recollect PC makers stand when they sell a calculator loaded with crapware for no good reason? Let's end this horrible practise in one case and for all.

Branding and Incremental Updates

Some manufacturers do ameliorate than others in this respect. For a while, Acer seemed to have a swell run with their Timeline laptop series. The get-go models were peachy, but instead of taking what was good and building upon those strengths, they systematically killed the brand by offering many different models with no true differentiation. In that location was this notion with afterward models that the originals had a ameliorate terminate than subsequent releases.

In a somewhat similar scenario, Dell had more than ane hit with their XPS notebooks and with the Adamo, merely in my mind those are dead brands for premium machines.


Dell has had a few striking designs, they've decided not to iterate however.

Sony also comes to listen for poor branding practices. They take offered some of the best premium-priced ultraportable machines in the by few years. The Vaio T serial evolved into the TX, TXN, TZ, and today information technology'southward the Z series holding the torch. Merely is anyone following any buzz surrounding the company'due south hereafter announcements in this segment?

In today's commoditized PC market, Apple's practice of offer a handful of identifiable products that are updated constantly, and most importantly, edifice upon what's expert on the first to meliorate the post-obit year's model seems to be one valid route to success. You might recall, the MacBook Air was seen as a novelty iii years ago, but is at present one of Apple's best-selling computers.

In my opinion, it goes hand in hand: strong branding, building expectations and long-term reputation, then delivering a machine that is always a comprehensive incremental update over its previous generation.


The MacBook Air is now one of the best selling laptops in the U.Southward.
It's set to face even fiercer competition come January when a second wave of ultrabooks is expected.

Unfortunately this is hardly seen from most PC makers who try to redo their products from scratch every year, failing to understand what their most loyal customers want updated, and on occasion completely losing the formula of what fabricated the original production appealing in the first place.