Apple’s MacBook Air laptops sold over a million units in the last quarter of 2011, and these numbers have the PC industry salivating over the prospects.  Intel has recently begun promoting their own brand of these thin and light portables they call Ultrabooks.  And all the major manufacturers either have climbed onto Intel’s bandwagon and have their models for sale now or are in the planning stage for having one soon.

But, early sales of Ultrabooks have generally been disappointing.  It is said that both Asus and Acer, the two early entrants,  sold only about 100,000 each, while their expectations were nearer 200,000 to 300,000.  No other sales data are available at this time, so is isn’t known if the prospects have improved since the initial sales data were reported.

The lackluster sales have not deterred the industry, however, and they remain behind these new ultraportables.  Industry estimates are that by 2013 ultraportables will account for about 20% of all laptop sales.  The reason the adoption will be this slow is the price of these sleek new machines are too high.  Most retail in the $1000 to $1500 range which is twice to three times the price of a conventional laptop. 

Fortunately there are realistic hopes that the costs and pricing will come down as production is ramped up and some of the newer chips like Ivy Bridge from Intel and Trinity from AMD begin finding their way to volume production.

For now, however, if you want a thin and light portable, your only option is one with an Intel Sandy Bridge system on a chip (SOC)  The MacBook Air uses Sandy Bridge as do all the Windows machines.  There are no competitors in the chip world that make a comparable SOC.

There are, however, two new possibilities that are nearing completion:

• AMD has its Trinity design ready, and it will reportedly be as low in power consumption, equally fast CPU (AMD calls theirs an APU—Application Processing Unit), with even faster graphics.  Rumors are that AMD will launch its next-generation accelerated processing unit, codenamed Trinity, in second quarter 2012. The Trinity will start with its quad-core A10 and A8 processors in the second quarter then followed by dual-core A6 and A4 processors in the third-quarter of 2012.

Clock speeds for the A10 model are 3.87 GHz and 4.0 GHz in turbo mode.  Speeds for the A6 and A4 dual core versions have not been leaked.

Confirming earlier rumors, AMD’s said Trinity-based thin-and-light laptops will be priced between $600 and $800 by the middle of the year.

• An even more radical design will probably be available later this year after Microsoft releases Windows 8 for ARM chips.  There is much to be said for the reduced instruction set machines (RISC) of ARM.  Almost all cell phones, smartphones and tablets use a variant of ARM designs.  By reducing their instruction set they can be made to do some things well, such as graphics or WiFi, and not do other things at all or at least not well.

Also, designers have learned to add multiple cores as well as to link many individual ARM SOCs, in which each unit is dedicated to specific chores. 

The multi-core ability of ARM designs make it feasible for use as a central processing unit for a laptop.  Otherwise, it would probably be confined to the phone and tablet market.

Apple, for example, has tailored the A9 ARM to run its iPad, iPhone and iPods. But its full-fledged computers use a full instruction set CPU from Intel. Texas Instruments has tailored the same chip to run the BlackBerry Playbook and other tablets. Qualcomm has done its thing with its Snapdragon SOC, and Nvidia is using a different model as the basis of its Tegra 3 (quad-core) design.

Although the ARM A9 is a 32-bit design, it can be tweaked to do a good job for many different uses.  And a 64-bit design is being developed now.  It is certain that the same manufactures who are working on Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks will also offer an ARM-based laptop, probably later this year. 

It will be most interesting to see if a RISC machine will be able to go head to head with the more powerful designs of Intel.  Intel, itself, uses RISC technology in its Atom line of processors, but they are not as power-efficient as ARM designs, and the Atom was designed specifically for netbooks, a category of PC that is rapidly losing market share.

AMD has christened their new line of ultraportables as Ultrathin.  No code name has been assigned the ultraportables that use ARM chips, yet, but you can bet they will have one soon.  Overall, the industry sees ultraportables as the wave of the future, and everyone is anxious to cash in on the trend.

The good news is that AMD has purposely aimed at lowering the prices of their Ultrathin models.  They want to be at least $200 below the price for a comparable Ultrabook that uses Intel hardware.  ARM SOCs may be even lower.  Lower prices will stimulate a higher demand and put price pressure on everyone else who supplies this new market.  Ultraportables seem headed for more affordable prices within the next few months.

It seems only a short time ago that Intel introduced the Sandy Bridge family of microprocessors for thin and light laptops.  They were welcomed warmly by those wanting utra-low voltage laptops with high performance characteristics. 

All of the new breed of Ultrabooks use Sandy Bridge chips, as does the Apple MacBook Air.  And even though the initial reception of the Intel Ultrabooks has been  muted, there is no doubt that smaller and faster is the way system on a chip (SOC) design is headed.

A significant limitation of the Sandy Bridge design was it size.  Intel used 32 nanometer dimensions for Sandy Bridge, which was an improvement over the former 45 nanometer size, but late last year Intel began producing Ivy Bridge chips using the newest 22 nanometer dimensions.

The reduction in size for the Ivy Bridge family has positive implications for both speed of execution and lower power drain.   And, of course smaller is always better than larger for those who lug laptops around much of the time.

To provide some perspective on the size of the 22 nanometer design, one million nanometers is slightly less than one half an inch.  The new designs are thin.

Indeed, the basic reason for the Ivy Bridge SOC was more efficient power management and better/faster graphics performance.  The increasing popularity of high definition video requires a more robust graphics processing, and Intel is providing this with its new integrated graphics chip on the same die as the Ivy Bridge CPU, the Intel HD Graphics 4000.  The 4000 model replaces the HD 3000 used by Sandy Bridge.

The performance boost of Ivy Bridge will be around 20% in CPU speed and from 30% to 100% for graphics operations.

Plans for the Ivy Bridge implementation are dependent on Intel’s projected delivery date, and this is not yet announced, but the expectations in the industry are for the second half of the year. 

There are two problems that must be dealt with before production is ramped up to retail demands, however.  The first is that the existing Sandy Bridge inventory must be sold, and this is not happening as fast as Intel had hoped.  The first generation of Ultrabooks is not selling fast—the prices are far too high to move large quantities, so we should expect blow-out prices on the current crop of Ultrabooks.  The second problem is getting their production ramped up, and here, again, Intel may be experiencing some early problems—not unexpected for new products using a new technique.

Once these problems are behind Intel, Ivy Bridge processors will begin showing up in all the currently branded Ultrabooks.   

The pictures at left will give you some idea of what to expect.  Acer, Asus, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Apple, Samsung, Toshiba and others will be converting their existing line of ultras to the new chip set.  We can expect a visible and noisy fanfare for their introduction some time before  the holiday selling season begins in October.

Intel will offer the Ivy Bridge SOC for all of its regular models of processors.  Core i3, i5 and i7 models are planned.

There will probably be less of an impact on desktops and large-screen laptops, but there is little doubt that thin and light are the future of much of the portable computing landscape.

Ray Hendon

Ultraportables, which include the newest incarnation of thin and light laptops, the Ultrabook, are thought by some to be a threat to tablet computers.  The instant-on capability of Ultrabooks are believed to be especially attractive to those who have been buying tablets because of this feature. 

It appears likely to me that Ultrabooks and other thin and light laptops will do well in the market place, especially when their prices fall a few hundred dollars.  But whether they will dampen any of the enthusiasm for tablets is another matter.  Personally I think both form factors satisfy separate needs for different users.

One feature of the new Ultrabooks that will help resolve the question is whether they will serve their owners as competent eReaders.  Surely there are some prospective buyers who would prefer to own only one device rather than two—but only if the one could do the work of two.  Can an Ultrabook do both heavy duty computing and convenient eReading?  Can one design satisfy both these needs?

Certainly a dedicated eReader or a tablet have some advantages over a laptop, even a thin and light one.  Reading electronic books, for example is probably done best by a device that closely emulates the look and feel of a book.  The popularity of the Kindle and Nook are thought to owe much of their success to their similarity to printed books.

How essential is the look and feel,  though, to those who read a lot.   This article takes a look at the possibility of using these new, thin and light computers as an eReader.

To put this question to a practical test, I loaded the top three eReading applications to an 11.6” screen Asus UX21 to see how they worked.  The applications chosen to test are:

Amazon’s Kindle App for PCs, Macs, iPad, iPhone and Android devices

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• Barnes and Noble’s Nook Application for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone  and Android devices
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• Sony’s Reader Application for PC, Mac and Android devices

  

To give you a taste of the difference, I have taken screen shots of random pages from eBooks on the three applications I mentioned.

Beginning with Amazon, a screen shot of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, is displayed in the two column format for laptop viewing. The screen shot is taken of the Kindle application for PCs.

Screen of Kindle Reader in Two Column Format

The Kindle app is widely praised for its versatility of layout options, underlining, comments, bookmarks and especially its syncing abilities.  This app also has go-to options that ease navigation, and dictionary lookup for a highlighted word.  All these features work on Ultrabooks. 

Amazon also has a user friendly policy of allowing you to direct any book in your library to be sent to any device on your registered list of devices. Amazon is indifferent as to which device or how many you use for any their electronic titles.  It treats them all the same and syncs them in an effortless way. The moment I registered my latest laptop, the Asus ZenBook UX21, all books in my library were immediately available for reading.

The strongest features of Amazon is, in my view, the ease of use of its website.  It is easy to find books, send them to the device of your choice, and generally navigate their vast site.

Equally strong is the selection of books, magazines and newspapers. They claim over a million titles, but that includes some categories such as “Singles” that represent a new class of literature that is generally shorter than a book but longer than an article. 

The worst feature of Amazon is that they insist on using a proprietary format for their eBook files.  It has an AZW extension and works only on Kindle software or hardware.  Although all the free sites I use give the option of downloading their books in the AZW format, in practice it is not terribly inconvenient.  Amazon also can read PDF files, and they will convert your Word for Windows documents to a format that allows you to put them in you Kindle library.

The other downside to Amazon is that they use DRM (digital rights management) on everything, so there is no cutting or pasting using anything in the AZW format. 

The Nook eReader software also provides a good reader experience. The screen shot below is from one of their pre-DRM works. Don’t be fooled by the small typeface. My screen capture utility shrunk it because the Nook takes up more of the horizontal space of the computer screen than the Kindle reader, so it has to cut the size down to fit within the pasted space. In practice, the Nook screen is as readable as any other.

Screen shot from the Nook Reader using the dual pane format

All the formatting and user options are available for the Nook reader–font size, margins, highlighting, lookup, go-to. And the B&N syncing feature is excellent between devices, and they offer their reader software app for a wide range of devices.

As far as eReading goes, it is hard to find much to prefer of B&N over Amazon or vice versa.  Both are excellent and have almost identical features.

The same is true for selection of books. B&N’s inventory is huge, and they have a good selection of free public domain books—as good as or better than Amazon’s.

Nook uses the ePub format, as does Sony, although both will read many other formats as well.  They do not read Amazon’s proprietary AZW file format, however.

Something of an oddity: The Nook reader treats all ePub software as DRM protected, so they do not allow cutting or pasting of non-DRM books.  Even on the iPad, whose own iReader app allows cutting and pasting of non-DRM protected material the  Nook does not.

Sony’s reader app provides a good reading experience. The screen shot below is from an ePub file of a non-DRM version of Sherlock Holmes.

Screen of Sony Reader’s Dual Column Layout

As with the Nook, the Sony Reader software uses more of the landscape screen to display its materiel than the Kindle app, so my clipping software has to reduce it to fit the pasting space. But Sony gives one plenty of formatting options and page control.

Sony lags both Amazon and B&N with book selection and syncing ability.  Their books are generally priced high; they have few free books, and their selection doesn’t match its two larger competitors.

Sony makes its reader software available to fewer devices—no iPad, no iPhone, no BlackBerry, for example.  They have syncing available to the three types of devices they support, but I have not tried it personally.

I like the Sony reader app for its ability to read almost any kind of document regardless of format, except, of course, Kindle documents. I will always have their app installed on my computers in case a particular book is not available in the Kindle format.  And they allow cut and paste options for non-protected books.

I find all three of the reader software about equally enjoyable to use. The differences in layout and options are not terribly important. I find I use the Kindle app more than the others because I find more books on their site I like, and I like to sync the books among all my devices. Still, I maintain active use of the Nook and the Sony Readers.

Summary:

First, the reality of the size and convenience of specialized eReaders and tablets makes it clear that they have the advantage. It is not possible for an ultrabook, weighing in at 2.9 pounds, to be as convenient to use as a 7-inch tablet or even the pound and a half iPad.

However, it is also inconvenient to carry two devices if one will do. So, there will be occasions when a thin and light laptop could be a suitable substitute for a dedicated eReader or tablet. 

At bottom, all of these tested apps work well on an Ultrabook. And they would work just as well with the software from other vendors such as Kobo or Blio. If your eReading preferences include comic books, magazines or children’s books, then you might like a specialty reader designed for the formats unique to these publications.

While all the eReading apps work well on an Ultrabook, it still may not be your preferred way of reading electronic texts.  But they are completely usable as a primary or secondary eReader. The choice of one over another is more dependent on which site you prefer to use because of its particular strengths than to the characteristics of their eReades.

From my experience, I have given away my Kindle reader. I simply do not want to carry another device with me in my travels. Now that I have a 7-inch tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, I use it as my eReader of choice because of its lightness and ease of holding in one hand. I use the iPad for e-reading infrequently, but there are occasions when it comes in handy. Its weight, though, makes it a second choice, especially for long reading times. 

I rarely use a PC or my ultraportable for reading, but if I do it will be on the ultraportable.  Its lightness and instant-on feature does make it a better choice than the older, heavier laptops, but it is not as convenient to carry as a tablet.

An ultraportable may not be your favorite way of reading electronic texts, but it serves as a completely satisfying vehicle for reading if you want to carry only one device with you or if an occasion arises when it is all you have to use.

My needs for a laptop computer, after years of trial and error, are precisely defined. I don’t like carrying bulky, heavy laptops, so light weight is my first consideration. I want it under four pounds, and, if possible, under three.

The Asus UX31, the big brother of the UX21  is pictured below.

Given lightness, it follows that the screen must be small, and over the years I have settled on an 11.6-inch screen as my optimal. I tried 14-inch screen years ago and it was too bulky and heavy. I tried a netbook with a 10-inch and it was too small to view a webpage comfortably. 13.3-is OK, but it adds weight, so the 11.6-incher is my choice. There are a few brands with a 12-inch screen, and I would like to try one, but there are no ultrabooks with that dimension, at least not yet.

Another top priority, although not entirely definitive is a Windows environment. All my writing is done with Microsoft’s Word for Windows. I have used it since the DOS days and have followed it up each iteration to Windows 7. I could go for an Apple-based OS, the MacBook Air, but I would have to factor in the extra cost of buying an Apple versions of Microsoft Office or at least Word for Mac. Using a MacBook Air would also introduce another inconvenience, that of moving files between its formatting and that of Windows on my desktop. Although this would not be a killer, it does put a barrier to an Apple or Unix environment.

Another consideration of lightness is the thickness, and here the ultrabook and other versions of thin and light have recently opened up the ultrathin design. It is appealing in looks, but for the most part it is good because it reduces the weight.

Quickness is also important. I have had an iPad for almost a year, and I have grown to like “instant on,” so SSD storage memory is a must. Some light and thin models of laptops have a hybrid approach with a small amount of SSD plus a spinning hard drive. This is not for me. Vast storage is not required for my uses of a portable computer. And adding a spinning drive increases weight and slows down data storage and retrieval, and shortened battery life.  Although SSD is expensive, it is getting less so, and I will pay the difference.

Long battery life is on the list of many laptop users, but it is a low priority for me. When I am at my desk, I use a desktop.  When I go to the coffee shop, I am there in order to change environments and do some serious work. But working more than two hours at a time is a rarity when I am there. So if my laptop lasts that long, that is enough. I’ll put it on the charger once I get home.

There are times, of course, when I am on the road, for example, when a longer battery life would be handy, but again, if one wants long battery life then a larger battery is required.  Larger batteries mean, of course, more weight. For me it is an easy tradeoff to carry a charger, although at times it is inconvenient. If I had the habit of using my laptop like I use my iPad, off and on all day, then I would want more charge-free time. But that is not how I generally use my laptop, so a three-cell battery does the job for my purpose.

From the criteria above it should be clear that I wanted a ultra-portable, variously defined as an ultrabook by Intel, Ultrathin by AMD, MacBook Air by Apple and just plain ultraportable by everyone else. So, getting closer to a decision I took the 3-hour drive to Houston so I could see the MacBook Air in person again, and see if my itch would demand a $1000 scratch.

My first stop was at the Apple Store in the Galleria Mall where I could have some time with the beautiful and talented MacBook Air. I had seen the new model before, but I wanted a fresher look. I got the look, and left without spending anything. My itch was not that demanding.

On the way out of the Galleria I ran into the Microsoft Store, so I decided to check it out, never having seen one before. Naturally I gravitated to the laptop section and an Asus UX21 and 31 were on display. Their display prices were $999 for the 11.6-inch UX21 and $1099 for the 13.3-inch UX31, but the salesman told me of their special offer of 25% off if the ticket price was at least $1000. That price would put the UX21, my preference, at $750 if I added a carrying case, so I was interested. But, I didn’t buy it that day.  I should have, though, because it would have saved me another trip to Houston the next day when I decided to buy it.

The UX 21 is shown immediately below.

It’s been about a month now, and I have had plenty of time to check out the Asus machine–I love it. It meets every objective I had in mind. It looks good, weighs less than 3 pounds, and has an 11.6-inch screen with a 1366 X 768 resolution. It boots from scratch in about 15 seconds, loads Word for Windows in less than 2 seconds and awakens from sleep mode in less than 2 seconds—it is fast, thanks to the Core i5 processor that powers it.

It also caters to one of my working quirks—I dislike using a touch pad for moussing, and the UX21 can be configured to turn off or to automatically disable the pad when a mouse is plugged into a USB port. On those occasions when I use the pad it works fine and has some pad options that are convenient—pinch to zoom, three finger scrolling and that sort of thing.

The function keys are well laid out, and Asus has adopted an intelligent attitude about making the delete/insert, print screen/sysrg, and pause/break keys usable without holding the function key down. A WiFi on/off function key is quite handy on F2 and an instant “sleep” function on F1.

I am impressed, too, by the Bang & Olufsen speaker system that hinges at the bottom of the screen. I have never heard a better internal speaker system on a laptop computer. But, I confess I haven’t heard that many, so there may be some other good ones available.

Included in the external ports is a mini-USB port that is used to attach an external monitor, and the adapter for this operation is included in the box as well as an Ethernet connecting adapter that fits into the USB 3.0 port. There is another full sized 2.0 USB on the right side with a mini HDMI out.

The one thing about it I do not like is the keyboard–a Chiclet design with a short travel. At first I missed making contact with certain keys when touch typing. The “a” key and “m” key were commonly missed at first. I have had to adjust my typing to the needs of the keys to be hit more or less in the center and with sufficient force to register. I confess I have been spoiled by using the Lenovo ThinkPad X120E keyboard. Lenovo inherited the fabulous ThinkPad keyboard from IBM when they bought the PC division some years ago, and in my mind there has never been a better keyboard for a portable computer. But, I don’t think that that type of keyboard is feasible on an ultrathin laptop. There isn’t enough depth for the travel required by that design.

The upside is that I have learned to adjust to the demands of this keyboard, but it did take some time and I still miss a key every now and then. I have kept it past the return time, and I plan on keeping it for four or five years—my usual horizon for a new computer.

There will be better models introduced later in the year. Apple is expected to up-grade the Air when Ivy Bridge processors are released by Intel, probably in the second quarter. The Windows laptops are expected to do the same.  Ivy Bridge will be a processor chip of 22 nanometers rather than the current 34 nanometers. So we should expect faster execution and longer battery life from the new models.

There are also expectations that prices will fall. Intel, which has big plans for Ultrabooks, has mentioned prices for the finished products at around $750 by the end of the year. And AMD is readying their thin and light processor for later this year, at prices lower than Intel charges. So there will be price pressures from more than one source.

If I hadn’t needed one now, I would probably have waited until summer, but I couldn’t. I have no problem with accepting what I bought will soon be displaced with something better. It has been that way since I began buying computers since the late 1980s, and I don’t expect it to change. The more things change, the more they stay the same.