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back to article First Ultrabooks surface at IFA

While Toshiba was announcing the Portégé Z830 - a 18mm-thick 13.3in notebook matched to Intel's Ultrabook spec - Lenovo was taking the wraps off the IdeaPad U300s - also an Ultrabook. Toshiba Portege Z830 Ultrabook The spec is defined entirely by the chip giant - you want to use the Ultrabook trademark on your machine, you …

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  1. RichyS
    Thumb Down

    VGA not that 'ultra'

    Are VGA ports really part of the Intel spec? Really?

    I can't remember the last time I saw a projector without an HDMI port. At least HDMI is intelligent and we don't end up with the bizarrely squashed presentations that you often see from widescreen lappies plugged into 4:3 projectors.

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  2. scottlefley
    WTF?

    .....apples and pears...

    looks to me that the rest of the industry is still playing 'catchup' with an 18 month old apple design...be intereseting to see what the boys from Cupertino come up with once the rest of the copycats have got their out of date machines our...say what you like about apple but they DRIVE the industry...been a long time coming but it has come....

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    1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      I suspect you didn't own one of Apple's "leading" MacBook Airs then

      There's a reason why other manufacturers didn't launch Air clones: the Air was an inadequate computer. Badly designed, with insufficient cooling, it couldn't do anything as complicated as watch a YouTube video before the CPU's thermal throttling kicked in and reduced the whole system to a crawl. This is not a manufacturing fault; I had the unit tested several times, and compared it with a friend's model too.

      I know how stupidly cold they keep the offices in Infinite Loop, but it would have been nice if just one person had tried the case prototype in an environment where the ambient temperature is *above* 20°C - you know, like a typical European living room?

      A stupid design overcomes any clever manufacturing. It's only now that there's genuine low-power Intel chips that you can make something like the Air and not be laughed out of the market (Apple avoid this by charging so much that their customers won't ever admit they bought a lemon; the more you charge, the less likely it is that your customers will complain)

      I had a MacBook Air, and I had only ever bought Apple laptops, but my current laptop is a Sony Vaio. It's nowhere near as sleek as the Mac, but it actually works, which is something the Apple product never did.

      I'd be tempted by one of these Ultrabooks once someone hacks MacOS to it.

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  3. Z80

    13.3in - resolution TBC - display

    Oooh let me guess...will it by any chance be 1366 x 768?

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  4. Robert E A Harvey

    Oh?

    Suddenly the macbook air is looking quite reasonably priced. 13", 128G, 1100quid.

    And you can have one now.

    What will apple announce by the time these come to market?

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apples and pears indeed

    These ultrabooks do indeed look like the MacBook Air, accept with Windows. I find it a little sad that the industry is mostly still playing catchup with Apple. Copying is not competition. It's not like we're talking about companies that lack technical talent or capital!

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    1. Britt Johnston
      Reply Icon
      Windows

      terrible global development model

      1) Apple comes up with any idea

      2) Everyone drops what they are copying for the new big thing

      3) No real improvements for 18 months

      4) Intel declares the Apple design is the official platform standard

      5) 12 months later, the new standard reaches the market

      6) in version 3.0, someone implements a previously unnoticed benefit built into the standard

      What happens when Steve leaves the ship and Apple becomes as defensive as Microsoft?

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  6. D@v3
    WTF?

    is it just me

    or does the pic of the U300s ultrabook look like the screen is not the same size as the base. It looks like if you close it, then the touch pad would still be exposed.

    Probably just me, maybe a bad angle / lighting, but it does look odd.

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  7. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Breathable keyboard?

    How well will these cope with the inevitable coffee spill?

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  8. Hardcastle the ancient
    FAIL

    For glods sake

    Come on lads, stop making the same thing over and over again.

    Try something new.

    Remember the microwriter? Why is voice control still carp? what about direct neural connection, or a small black box with a projector in and an angled mirror to let you choose walls or ceiling as a screen? Why do convertable tablets have to be docked to their keyboards? What about a dockable bluetooth headset supplied with it? What about a BFO external battery for people who need a week's life. Why not make the camera slip-out & wireless tethered? rows of grip-keys on the back. Fingerprint reading software for the camera? Tiny fold-out legs so I can stand it over a paper document and make scans of them with the camera? Even a line scan camera so I can sweep the top edge over a document to scan it? Stereo sound recording for gigs and church concerts? multiple SD card slots so we can copy pictures from our real camera to someone else's card? A matching flat speaker array that can be sandwiched with the puter in the same case? Included car mount and power cable? remote GPS antenna plug for use in motor caravans? Steroscopic cameras? A matching flat printer that can be sandwiched with the puter in the same case? integral FM or DAB radio? integral freeview reciever? Two headphone jacks, for him and her to watch video on a plane? Wireless dvd drive?

    mee-too == I have no ideas at all. Look what happened to the WebOs stuff.

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