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Ultrabooks: Tablets with Attitude, or Netbooks on Steroids?

Remember the netbook craze a few years back? In case you don't, netbooks were those miniature laptops that were quite simply adorable. Companies like Asus, Samsung, Dell, and Acer were very successful in marketing them at cut-rate prices, and consumers scooped them up like hotcakes.

At the time, it seemed like everyone I knew just had to have one. Netbooks were the future of mobile computing -- at least until you tried to use one on a daily basis.

Tiny Size, Big Drawbacks

You see, while the netbook solved the problem of providing highly portable hardware that could run a full-blown OS (such as Windows XP), it did so at the expense of a roomy display, a functional keyboard, and a usable trackpad. On more than one occasion, I got so frustrated attempting to type a long email on my netbook's ridiculously tiny keyboard that I wanted to chuck it out the window.

While I managed to curb my urge to destroy, I'm sure many netbooks actually suffered a painful death at the hands of disgruntled owners.

Netbooks -- most of which used Intel's Atom processor -- also lacked the power to run a newer operating system like Windows 7. Consumers wised up and concluded that netbooks were more like toys than productivity tools.

Apple's Killer One-Two Punch

For the most part, the netbook craze died out not long after it peaked in 2008. Once that happened, mobile users had a new choice to make. They could either to go back to full-size notebooks or try out the next new computer fad: the tablet, or more specifically, the iPad.

Around the time of the iPad release, Apple CEO Steve Jobs observed that "netbooks aren't better than anything." Now, Jobs didn't say that there wasn't a place for ultraportable devices, but he was saying that netbooks forced users to give up too much usability in exchange for a lightweight and portable computer. As we all know, Apple recognized that there was a market for a highly portable computer but avoided the netbook fad in favor of two other approaches.

The first was the now-infamous iPad running a slightly modified version of iOS, the iPhone operating system. The second was to develop a new, ultraportable laptop running Apple's OS X.

The primary difference between Apple's portable laptop and a typical netbook was that Apple refused to trade off user functionality. Instead of shrinking the monitor, keyboard, and touchpad, Apple cut excess weight by making its hardware incredibly thin. The result was the MacBook Air, which debuted in early 2008. Since then, the Air has gone through several upgrade cycles, and its sales have increased by as much as 300 percent a year.
 
The one-two punch of the iPad and the MacBook Air sent competing PC hardware manufacturers running back to the drawing board. They simply didn't have any products that could compete against either of Apple's offerings. Interestingly, nearly every PC manufacturer focused at first on building tablet PCs to compete against the iPad.

That, in turn, left the ultraportable notebook market wide open for the MacBook Air, despite the obvious demand. Talk about tunnel vision!

Ultrabooks Tangle with the MacBook Air

But now it seems as though PC manufacturers have finally gotten around to creating some competition for the MacBook Air. These new laptops, dubbed "ultrabooks," will use the low-voltage version of Intel's Sandy Bridge processor series. Think of these CPUs as more powerful successors to the Atom chips that were so popular in netbooks.

Intel and participating PC manufacturers are touting ultrabooks as subnotebooks with "no compromises." They're stealing a page from Apple's playbook and building MacBook Air clones that reduce size and weight by making them very thin while still offering usable screens, keyboards, and touchpads. The major difference between the MacBook Air and ultrabooks is that the latter will run either Windows 7 or an open source Linux operating system.
 
During the remainder of the year, we should see ultrabooks from Asus, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba hit the streets. (Both Acer and Asus officially rolled out their respective offerings during the first half of October.) For the most part, all ultrabooks will have similar specs, including the following:
 Intel Sandy Bridge i5 or i7 dual-core CPUs
11- to 14-inch displays
Less than 0.8 inches thick
Longer-than-average battery life (5 to 7 hours or more)
Prices starting at less than $1,000

So as you can see, the ultraportable notebook market is going to get some much-needed Windows 7 competitors. Now that the MacBook Air has some competition, however, it's time to tackle a related question. . . .

Ultrabook or Tablet?

The answer really boils down to the type of computer user you are. Both form factors are portable and are therefore attractive choices for on-the-go users. Each of them, however, differs in terms of how users choose to interact with their computers.
 

If you spend lots of time with social networking apps and do minimal email or word processing work, you'll probably find that tablets are perfectly suited for you. Using tablet touch gestures for Web browsing and tablet application usage is highly intuitive, especially when you work with native tablet applications.

On the other hand, if you need to use Windows-only applications, work with documents and spreadsheets, or do other keyboard-intensive tasks, you're more likely to fall into the ultrabook camp. It's really as simple as that.

One word of warning: You are more likely to end up with a case of buyer's remorse if you attempt to use a tablet as your primary computing device. Like the netbook, sometimes the tablet's touchscreen user interface is a poor substitute for a traditional keyboard. So if you got suckered into buying a netbook a few years ago, only to replace it with a more usable computer a short while later, skip the tablet and buy a shiny new ultrabook.

I promise you won't be disappointed this time around.

Wireless Business Solution Zee Tawasha