San Francisco — With the new era of tablet PCs are gaining momentum, Hewlett-Packard has released an incredibly stunning teaser video that offers a quick glimpse at its forthcoming Envy Spectre laptop, which is being interpreted in some circles as HP’s second entry in the super-thin ultrabook market.
Eventually, laptops would not even be seen, but the battle for the world’s thinnest Ultrabook has just begun! Watch-out for this word to trend heavily in 2012 as many laptop makers now release their specs with measurements which will look like 0.50282827 inches, trying to out-do the competition by marginal differences.
In fact, based on the number of Ultrabooks slated to be displayed at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) in Las Vegas next week, is branding 2012 as the year of the Ultrabooks, the ultra-thin, ultra-light notebooks. However, ever since Apple unveiled ultra-thin MacBook Air, more and more competitors are entering the space.
At present, the thinnest Ultrabook on the market is the LG XNote Z330 which measures in at an impressive 0.58 inches thick. The shot above is taken from the end of the video, which mostly contains computer generated panes of glass folding in and out like laptop screens. It appears to be heavily altered, but it is clear that the device will be thin.
However, if this majestic HP Spectre 30-second video, reproduced on Websites such as The Verge, devotes most of its length to abstract imagery, which begins with wafer-thin slabs closing slowly in clamshell-like fashion, although it ends with a brief shot of what is clearly a laptop, opening to emit a blast of white light just before the screen fades. Not to mention a logo with a special effect animation. The Verge posted the video to Youtube on Monday after receiving it from an anonymous HP employee.
Besides, not much is revealed about the mysterious Spectre, except that it will likely run on Windows 7 unless its slated for the latter half of the year. The logo for the Envy Sceptre also has the C designed to look like an eclipse. Another discovery indicates that documents filed in December with the FCC (via Wireless Goodness) suggest that the Spectre is an update of HP’s Envy 14.
According to market research firm IHS iSuppli, Ultrabooks will make up 43 percent of global PC shipments in 2015, up from 2 percent in 2011 and 13 percent in 2012. InformationWeek quoted Shawn DuBravac, director of research for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), which operates CES, as saying in December that “he anticipates to see somewhere between 30 and 50 new ultrabooks debut at the electronics show.”
It is not surprising to hear that computer giant Hewlett-Packard is planning to unveil its Envy Spectre at next week’s CES 2012, slated to kick off Jan. 10, where a significant number of other PC manufacturers are expected to tout new ultrabooks, all of which are super-thin and boast more powerful specs than netbooks. But, the mysterious nature of the Envy Spectre video is suggestive of the WebOS teaser video that HP released last February in the run-up to its unveiling of the TouchPad tablet and Pre3 and Veer smartphones. HP discontinued all three products last August.
At several events throughout the fall, companies ranging from Asus and Acer to Toshiba and HP all exhibited their ultrabooks either in development or already on store shelves. In addition, Intel remains an aggressive driver of the ultrabook phenomenon, partnering with manufacturers to issue devices that conform to the chip maker’s exacting specifications. At the recent CEATEC conference in Japan, Intel demonstrated ultrabooks with roughly similar design parameters from Toshiba (with the Dynabook), Acer (the Aspire S3-1) and Asus (the UX21).
The ultrabook trend traces its origins to the summer of 2009, when the industry was already responding to the margin concerns inherent in the then-popular netbooks, which offered low-power hardware in exchange for a cheap price. That July, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts that ultra-thins would arrive on the market with better specs at a higher cost—presumably running versions of Windows that offered his company higher profits.
“We want people to be able to get the advantages of lightweight performance and be able to spend more money with us,” he said at the time.
In many ways, ultrabooks represent a concerted attempt by Intel and those manufacturing partners to provide the same consumer and business interest in thin, portable devices that drove the tablet phenomenon in 2011. And as evidence of HP’s desire to target enterprise users, the Folio 13, an 18-mm thick PC that weighs in at 3.3 pounds and features a 13.3-inch display and 128-GB solid state drive, and is bundled with an optional Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, which secures data in e-mails and on the hard drive.
Apart from HP, some other major competitors in this market include Acer, Asus, Lenovo, LG Electronics, and Toshiba. While majority of Ultrabooks are powered by Intel processors, AMD is also readying processors for this market. However, HP did not respond to a request for comment on whether the Envy Spectre is an ultrabook and when it is slated for launch.
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