They’re Not Ultrabooks. They’re Notebooks

By  |  Friday, January 20, 2012 at 10:02 am

Donald Morrison Melanson of Engadget has a nice piece making a point that resonates with me: There are some nice Ultrabooks, but it’s silly to call them Ultrabooks, as if they were something other than thinnish laptops. The tech industry loves to come up with new buzzwords and to declare new categories of stuff. But I’ll bet that consumers–even if they end up buying lots of Ultrabooks–won’t think of them as something discrete and new.

 
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  1. @umbrarchist Says:

    Definitely! Just marketing hype to sell something more profitable than netbooks.

  2. John Baxter Says:

    Intel wants them called Ultrabooks, because an Ultrabook can't contain an AMD CPU.

  3. chippers Says:

    The Federal Trade Commission's Consent Decree (2010) forbids Intel from paying and threatening manufacturers not to use AMD processors. Since Intel obviously wants to block AMD out of the higher end products, Intel is basically calling all high end laptops, Ultrabooks – and paying all the manufacturers enough so that making high end AMD laptops wouldn't make sense.

    Someone needs to take this company back to antitrust court.

  4. Aaron Martin-Colby Says:

    The “cloud” is another buzzword that annoys the hell out of me. The cloud? What happened to Network Computers? Or Software As A Service? Bah! Humbug.

  5. The_Heraclitus Says:

    Cloud is an older term than SAAS and the like. It is a techie term, not a mktg term.

  6. The_Heraclitus Says:

    But it’s silly to call them "Air", as if they were something other than thinnish laptops. Apple loves to come up with new buzzwords and to declare new categories of stuff. But I’ll bet that consumers–even if they end up buying lots of Air's–won’t think of them as something discrete and new.

  7. Jamie Says:

    "Macbook Air clones" gives more context and would be more descriptive but it sounds a little too pejorative for professional reporters. Also, using that terminology would concede that it isn't really a segment.

  8. chipers Says:

    Maybe Intel needs to call Ultrabooks a "new" segment, so that it can pay manufacturers enough to make it illogical to make AMD-based high-end laptops without violating the Federal Trade Commission's Consent Decree against Intel – which prohibits Intel from bribing computer makers to block out AMD? If Ultrabooks aren't new, then Intel is just paying the manufacturers to block AMD out of the high end segment..

    Ugh… Can this company ever abide by the law?