Many people are hailing 2012 as the year of the ultrabook, something backed-up by the appearance of a sleuth of such laptops at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Apple’s MacBook Air was one of the first ultrabooks on the market but now all the major computer companies are releasing their own versions of the device.

For those of you who didn’t know, ultrabooks are ultra-slim laptops, most of which are less than an inch thick. They tend to have solid state hard drives (SSDs) which vary from the hard disk drives (HDDs) found on most computers and laptops. SSDs are supposed to be better as they have no moving parts, are quieter and faster than HDDs. But the result of this is a higher price and often lower capacity – many ultrabooks tend to have around 128GB capacity (with cheaper models having even less) whereas there are many cheaper laptops (using HDDs) available nowadays with 500GB capacity or more.

Obviously, the main attraction of ultrabooks is their ultra-portability; they are very easy to transport around. They’re likely to be especially useful for people who travel a lot but don’t want to lug around a more hefty laptop the whole time.

The question is, can they replace normal laptops or will the two always exist in unison? One of the oft-quoted problems of ultrabooks is their lack of an optical drive for playing DVDs and CDs. However Samsung’s Series 5 Ultra range of ultrabooks do have optical drives and remain under an inch thick so there are some with optical drives. Others would argue that optical drives are not needed nowadays anyway with the majority of content being downloaded rather than installed or ripped from CDs and DVDs. There is one other option for ultrabooks lacking an optical drive, and that is to attach an external one. This solution is ok for use at home but obviously it slightly defeats the object of an ultrabook if you always need to use the optical drive and thus have to take it with you everywhere!

I personally think it’s inevitable that ultrabooks will eventually become the norm as their price declines. Right now most of them are relatively expensive but as with any new technology, the price will reduce over time. With the ability to include optical drives and keep ultrabooks super thin, no features need to be lost, and of course everyone thinner laptops appeal to everyone. So I imagine within 5 years ultrabooks will be very widespread and most manufacturers will focus on producing them rather than their bulkier cousins (normal laptops).

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Ben.

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