Best Buy has kicked Hewlett-Packard's Folio ultrabook down to a new low of $798. This is happening as HP announces new competitively priced ultrabooks and as rumors about a $799 MacBook Air swirl.
The HP Folio 13 (model 13-1035nr) is now priced at $797.77 at Best Buy. That includes a "Sandy Bridge" 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor; a 13.3-inch display, 4GB of memory, and a 128GB solid state drive. (More specs here.) … Read more
If the ultrabook devolves into a hodgepodge of pseudo-thin, conventional designs, the chances of success are not good.
This may -- or may not -- be on the verge of happening with designs like the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 and even the Hewlett-Packard Envy 14 Spectre.
Though it's been said before, it's worth repeating: a kind-of-thin, kind-of-light laptop ain't an ultrabook.
I've handled the Acer M3, which is being marketed as an ultrabook. Sorry, no way that's an ultrabook. And the HP Spectre? That's a wonderful design in many respects (Gorilla glass screen … Read more
Ivy Bridge will highlight Intel's emphasis on power-efficiency and graphics performance, but one key ingredient will be missing -- Windows 8.
Intel's Ivy Bridge chip is expected to be announced Monday, opening the floodgates for new desktops and laptops built around the chipmaker's first 22-nanometer processor. Generally, the smaller the chip geometries, the faster and/or more power efficient the silicon is. Intel's current Sandy Bridge processors use "fatter" 32-nanometer technology.
How small is 22 nanometers? More than six million 22-nanometer transistors could fit in the period at the end of this sentence, according … Read more
For ultrabooks to succeed, the display needs to approach an iPad's quality or least match that of a MacBook--which uses higher-end displays.
A lower quality display can be a deal breaker for consumers in the age of the iPad, which boasts a high-quality, high-resolution in-plane switching (IPS) display.
IPS and high-quality TN displays offer viewing angles and contrast typically better than those used on most ultrabooks today.
This shortcoming has become apparent in more than a few reviews of the Dell XPS 13 ultrabook, which in almost every other respect is generally considered an excellent design. (Another review here … Read more
With Intel's latest silicon due soon, the chipmaker is cranking up the marketing volume for ultrabooks, saying the skinny laptops usher in a "a new era of computing."
The marketing campaign launched this week is the biggest in about a decade, spanning television, online, and print ads, the company said today. And Intel is putting its proverbial money where its mouth is.
Hundreds of millions of dollars will be allocated for the "largest marketing spend for the company since launching Intel Centrino in 2003," Intel said in a statement. (See first TV ad below.)
A new model in Hewlett-Packard's Folio 13 series is available at Wal-Mart for $100 less than the standard HP price, making one of the most highly rated ultrabooks to date also one of the least expensive.
The online Wal-Mart price is $798, about $100 less than the standard model on HP's Web site.
Wal-Mart's SKU uses a 1.4GHz Intel Core i3-2367M processor compared to the higher-end 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M chip in the $899 model on HP's site.
Everything else is pretty much the same, including 4GB of memory and a 128GB solid state … Read more
Ultrabooks are a hot topic right now, but with so many superslim 13-inch laptops available, how do you choose the best one? It's especially hard in the new pseudo-category, as most of the ultrabooks we've seen are very similar, both in design and specs. For this eagerly awaited Prizefight, we pitted two of our favorite ultrabooks against each other: the HP Folio 13 and the Dell XPS 13.
The Dell has a very MacBook-Air-like design, whereas the HP is a bit more businesslike, but has fantastic battery life. Below, you'll see our laptop experts, me along with Julie Rivera and Brian Tong, rate both systems across several key categories, and at the end, we'll tally up the score and declare a winner. … Read more
I'm not really sure who uses a business laptop. Now that ultrabooks are here and spreading, I'm even less sure.
Case in point: the HP Folio 13.
Here at the CNET offices, I've seen more and more people asking (and hoping) for MacBook Airs. Apple's never had a problem with differentiating between business and personal computers: It simply make products, period. Our IT department allows Apple computers, but they're not technically business laptops. No one seems to mind.
On the Windows side of things, there's been a bit of a divide between some business-targeted laptops--some with crypto-enabled TPM, or Trusted Platform Module chips, others with Intel's vPro technology--and "consumer" computers. That divide is old-fashioned. … Read more
As ultrabooks become a major part of the laptop landscape this year, the key to finding a good one might not lie in specs--since so many have identical innards--so much as look, feel, and bang for the buck.
In that regard, the HP Folio 13 might be a winner.
The HP Folio 13, which was announced last year, is a small business-targeted ultrabook that could be equally at home in the hands of a regular Joe User. After all, the "business" differentiation is merely cosmetic and arbitrary, unless you choose to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional an optional TPM chip. What the HP Folio 13 has--a Core i5 low-voltage CPU, 128GB SSD storage, 4GB of RAM--befits any laptop in the 13-inch ultrabook universe circa 2012.
It is a thicker laptop, and a heavier one, too, compared with the MacBook Air and any of last year's ultrabooks. Not by much, though; it's a little over 3 pounds, and still thinner than any "normal" laptop. It's just not wafer-thin. Consider the side benefits, though: the HP Folio 13 only costs $899, which undercuts a lot of the ultrabook competition by at least $100. And, in terms of both specs and features, there are few compromises. The Folio 13 comes with everything that most ultrabooks do, with none of the annoying compromises such as missing SD card slots or Ethernet jacks that were common to last year's ultrabook crop.… Read more
2012 promises to be a watershed year for laptops. Really thin will be in and internal optical drives out, while some designs venture into hybrid territory.
Apple: Apple is expected to incorporate the MacBook Air design theme into more models, including a 15-incher sans optical drive. And since Apple popularized the really-thin aesthetic with the January 2008 introduction of the MacBook Air, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the company will continue to be a trendsetter.
Trendsetting may include a rumored 2,880-by-1,800-pixel display. That would be a remarkable feat as workstation-class 15-inch Windows laptops, such as … Read more
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