Ultraportables -- am I missing something?

[Charles Kozierok]

Okay, I just don't get the appeal of the ultraportable, be it the MacBook Air or Intel's relentless marketing campaign for "ultrabooks".

I understand wanting a smaller computer. I understand wanting a lighter computer. And I certainly get wanting both of those without compromising performance or battery life.

What I cannot wrap my head around is all of this focus on the thinness of the machine. Leaving aside the secondary effect that a thinner machine is lighter than a thicker one, why does it matter if my notebook is 0.9" thick rather than 1.2"? I can't come up with even one use scenario where it matters: it has no real impact on how the machine is used, and barely any impact on how mobile it is. Yet all I see is manufacturers fighting over whose machine is the thinnest by half a millimeter.

What am I not seeing here? Or is it just yet another technology fad, spurred on by an irrational obsession over aesthetics and commercial one-upsmanship?

 

[Topweasel]

Okay, I just don't get the appeal of the ultraportable, be it the MacBook Air or Intel's relentless marketing campaign for "ultrabooks".

I understand wanting a smaller computer. I understand wanting a lighter computer. And I certainly get wanting both of those without compromising performance or battery life.

What I cannot wrap my head around is all of this focus on the thinness of the machine. Leaving aside the secondary effect that a thinner machine is lighter than a thicker one, why does it matter if my notebook is 0.9" thick rather than 1.2"? I can't come up with even one use scenario where it matters: it has no real impact on how the machine is used, and barely any impact on how mobile it is. Yet all I see is manufacturers fighting over whose machine is the thinnest by half a millimeter.

What am I not seeing here? Or is it just yet another technology fad, spurred on by an irrational obsession over aesthetics and commercial one-upsmanship?

Not completely, the thinner the device is the easier it is to carry around. For example an Air or ultrabook (a proper one) are so thin and light that you can grab them with a bunch of papers or a notepad and have it not even register mentally as carrying a laptop. It also can slide into other things better, you don't need a dedicated laptop bag.

That said as laptops become more of a general use computer and everyone has at least one, it's the new social status aspect. Got to have the barely usable small machine that cuts so many corners while being twice as expensive as it should just to show how awesome you are. I had a user debate ounces with me on a laptop, with half a pound being the straw that broke the camels back because of all the other stuff he was carrying. All so the company could spend an extra 600 on a thinner lighter computer for him.

 

[Infohawk]

Okay, I just don't get the appeal of the ultraportable, be it the MacBook Air or Intel's relentless marketing campaign for "ultrabooks".

I understand wanting a smaller computer. I understand wanting a lighter computer. And I certainly get wanting both of those without compromising performance or battery life.

Then you get the appeal of the ultraportable.

If you're tired of hearing about thicknesses, you're probably reading too many reviews. How else is anyone going to quantify progress? This is not going to stop until we have paper-thin electronics.

For a lot of Anandtech users, of course you're going to weigh performance more heavily, but for the average person an ultrabook makes a lot of sense. They just need to use the internet with a keyboard. They don't need discrete graphics or even media bays.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Okay, so basically it's just form over function yet again.

As for the average person who just wants to surf the web, why not get a netbook for a third the price?

 

[Topweasel]

Okay, so basically it's just form over function yet again.

As for the average person who just wants to surf the web, why not get a netbook for a third the price?

Responsiveness. Gone are the days where you expect that a task will take some time and minimum requirements for software meant the difference between it running at all. Nowadays the app needs to start up quickly, movements need to be registered right away. You get the picture. Netbooks were a short term answer for semi usable laptops for people who couldn't afford 900+, or wanted something small for classes and meetings that had a battery that could last. Back then it was 3 hours top on a 9 cell battery and people were getting batteries that would fit into the CDRom spot and 12 cell slices just to last a work day disconnected. All of which added another 4-5 lbs to the laptop.

Now that you can get full power CPU's that are within 10w at full power of an Atom/Brazos and get 6-8 hrs of battery life why settle for a wooden pc? The same goes for price why by a netbook for $350 when you can get an i3 or A6 laptop for $400-500? Netbooks are no longer the answer to anything.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Okay, so basically it's just form over function yet again.

As for the average person who just wants to surf the web, why not get a netbook for a third the price?

I put a SSD into new my work PC as the boot drive. I now hate booting up the old PC to look for a file I forgot to copy over because it . . . boots . . . . so . . . . slowly . . . compared to the new PC.

If you can afford it, why wouldn't you want a fast ultrabook instead of a slow netbook?

I see Hot Deals and closeout emails on $250 - $350 full size laptops and it's tempting to buy one just because it's so cheap. But then I remind myself that if I really need a laptop I might as well spend the extra for a good one since I can afford it. Then I don't buy either

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Oh I hear both of you on netbooks, a segment that I think will disappear entirely over the next few years. I brought them up in response to the suggestion of a user who "just need to use the internet with a keyboard."

If speaking more generically, the choice would be between an ultrabook and a conventional notebook. So to some extent this is another tradeoff in what I call the "capability-mobility spectrum": the ultrabook weighs less but is more limited.

I just find all the emphasis on "thinness" difficult to swallow. It strikes me as marketing hype run amok, because the actual specific benefits of thinness are, well, pretty thin. I think it's mostly an effort on Intel's part to try to capture some of that "MacBook Air magic", what with all the fluff about "sleekness" ans so forth.

But Intel isn't Apple and never will be.

Ultrabooks are not succeeding for the simple reason that they don't really offer a particularly compelling value proposition except for a rather niche audience.

 

[Infohawk]

Okay, so basically it's just form over function yet again.

As for the average person who just wants to surf the web, why not get a netbook for a third the price?

Yeah, and so is wanting a computer that can fit inside a tower case instead a computer that takes up the size of a room. Generally, people like it when something they need to carry around is lighter and smaller. It's not as superficial as you make it out to be.

Depends on what your definition of netbooks are, but from what I heard, they had performance issues with a lot of the basic tasks. I don't see a lot of products marketed as netbooks anymore. And the ones that fit the bill these days look a lot like ultrabooks and also focus on size. People talk about web usage as if it's nothing, but web apps keep getting more and more demanding as time goes on. Ultrabooks and netbooks are converging to the same point.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

But the difference between a desktop computer and one that takes up a room is real, obvious and dramatic. I don't see that same contrast with ultrabooks. There simply isn't that much difference between a regular low-weight notebook and an ultrabook. You're paying through the nose to shave off a couple of millimeters in a dimension already so small that it isn't even noticeable.

Ultrabooks and netbooks are based on entirely different design and marketing principles. Netbooks are intended to be small, low-performance and cheap; ultrabooks are not small (just thin), relatively high-performance and pricey.

Years ago we had a class of mobiles called "subnotebooks" which were also supposed to be high-performance and were high-priced. Unlike ultrabooks, they were shrunk in all dimensions, not just thickness. Those devices made sense, because they really were significantly more portable than full-sized notebooks. Ultrabooks are not nearly so much, and the constant emphasis on thinness at any cost makes them less practical than they would be without this shameless effort to ride the MacBook Air's coattails.

Even more strange is that the ultrabook specs only harp on thinness and not other dimensions -- nor even weight. Theoretically at least, you could make a machine with a 20-inch screen that weighed 10 pounds, and as long as it met the other requirements it would qualify as an "ultrabook", though I doubt anyone would consider it particularly portable.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I disagree that they are only being marketed by thickness.

Ultrabooks often have 11 - 14" screens instead of the 15.6" screen of a $350 laptop, and many offer higher resolution than the 13x7 on those cheaper devices. Weight goes as low as under 2 lbs.

 

[Mushkins]

Yeah, and so is wanting a computer that can fit inside a tower case instead a computer that takes up the size of a room. Generally, people like it when something they need to carry around is lighter and smaller. It's not as superficial as you make it out to be.

While I agree that people care about lighter/smaller for portability, when the comparisons are already down to fighting over two millimeters we're at the point where it's superficial. The difference between a 10lbs laptop and a 3lbs ultrabook is noticeable when comparing the two. The difference between a 2.89lbs ultrabook and a 2.91lbs ultrabook is too subtle for anyone to genuinely notice or care about, it's strictly a marketing point at that level.

It's like worrying about which newspaper as an extra page in it and thus "weighs more."

 

[Topweasel]

While I agree that people care about lighter/smaller for portability, when the comparisons are already down to fighting over two millimeters we're at the point where it's superficial. The difference between a 10lbs laptop and a 3lbs ultrabook is noticeable when comparing the two. The difference between a 2.89lbs ultrabook and a 2.91lbs ultrabook is too subtle for anyone to genuinely notice or care about, it's strictly a marketing point at that level.

It's like worrying about which newspaper as an extra page in it and thus "weighs more."

Actually I had a friend talk about the weight of current days cell phone, he usually talks in hyperbole but on this discussion took it to another level. He was looking at possible future replacements and this was about the time of the 5 the S3 and the 920. He kept yelling about the 920 being a brick and screaming about how Samsung uses crappy thin plastics and yet was 40% heavier then the 5S. Between the three is a total of about .3 lbs and the 5 and S3 like .1 lbs. So we are talking about ounces here and someone that wanted out of the Apple ecosystem and here he is about to drop pretty much all of his options because the Iphone came in .1 lbs lighter. He is also 6'7" and 280lbs himself so I just laughed at him.

But people focus on what is important to them, you can't decide whether its just superficial. He might have been crazy. But weight held the up most importance to him. If someone wants a super thin and lightweight laptop that is nearly as fast as standard laptop and the Manufacturers can make it, then why shouldn't they. Intel only developed the Ultrabook specs to help set guidelines for Windows OEMs after seeing how well the Air sold (keep in mind as the CPU provider for Apple they can make and almost 1 for 1 assessment of their sales to Apple computer sales).

 

[Infohawk]

While I agree that people care about lighter/smaller for portability, when the comparisons are already down to fighting over two millimeters we're at the point where it's superficial. The difference between a 10lbs laptop and a 3lbs ultrabook is noticeable when comparing the two. The difference between a 2.89lbs ultrabook and a 2.91lbs ultrabook is too subtle for anyone to genuinely notice or care about, it's strictly a marketing point at that level.

It's like worrying about which newspaper as an extra page in it and thus "weighs more."

Maybe you have something specific in mind but I dont' see reviewers making a huge deal about such differences directly. They have to give those measurements. Good reviews quantify differences, but I don't see anything like "CNET recommends you buy this laptop because it is 2 mm thinner.

 

[corkyg]

Are not super thinners more vulnerable to flex cracking if in a backpack and you roll your shoulders forward for some reason?

 

[Mushkins]

Actually I had a friend talk about the weight of current days cell phone, he usually talks in hyperbole but on this discussion took it to another level. He was looking at possible future replacements and this was about the time of the 5 the S3 and the 920. He kept yelling about the 920 being a brick and screaming about how Samsung uses crappy thin plastics and yet was 40% heavier then the 5S. Between the three is a total of about .3 lbs and the 5 and S3 like .1 lbs. So we are talking about ounces here and someone that wanted out of the Apple ecosystem and here he is about to drop pretty much all of his options because the Iphone came in .1 lbs lighter. He is also 6'7" and 280lbs himself so I just laughed at him.

But people focus on what is important to them, you can't decide whether its just superficial. He might have been crazy. But weight held the up most importance to him. If someone wants a super thin and lightweight laptop that is nearly as fast as standard laptop and the Manufacturers can make it, then why shouldn't they. Intel only developed the Ultrabook specs to help set guidelines for Windows OEMs after seeing how well the Air sold (keep in mind as the CPU provider for Apple they can make and almost 1 for 1 assessment of their sales to Apple computer sales).

Apples and Oranges. You hold a phone in one hand, it's easier to feel small differences in weight. You can tell the difference between a penny and a quarter in your palm for the most part, but neither one is particularly taxing to hold regardless of the difference. You don't palm a laptop, it's either sitting on a flat surface or your lap while using it, you're carrying it under your arm or in a bag, or you're using both hands to lift it and move it more out of care than necessity. A few millimeters and a fraction of a pound is not going to equate to the difference in being comfortable vs uncomfortable when carrying it in your arm or resting it in your lap, but a slightly heavier or larger phone *can* be uncomfortable to hold and use with just one hand. For example, I have reasonably small hands because i'm a small guy. The iPhone 4 is difficult to one-hand type for me because my thumb just doesn't reach the far side without straining, I can't imagine trying to one-hand type on something like a Galaxy S4. If one-handed typing was an important smartphone feature for me, the size difference between the two is meaningful, and the small form factor change between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5 *is* a quantifiable change to me as I don't have to stretch my thumb to one-handed type. The differences in ultrabook thinness and less than a pound weight differences do not quantify in the same way.

Maybe you have something specific in mind but I dont' see reviewers making a huge deal about such differences directly. They have to give those measurements. Good reviews quantify differences, but I don't see anything like "CNET recommends you buy this laptop because it is 2 mm thinner."

Reviewers? Not really. People comparing them to other ultrabooks are the ones typically making a big fuss over how a fraction of a millimeter makes one "better" than the other. Marketing is really where the fault lies, as they're all always playing up the fight to be the thinnest or the the lightest in order to to portray their product as the "best." A good reviewer says "it's 2 mm thinner than the last model," a good advertisement has it pegged as "THE THINNEST, LIGHTEST ULTRABOOK ON THE MARKET!!!!" Because that == "better" to Joe Somebody who sees the poster at the train station on his morning commute.

 

[slackerinabox]

Okay, I just don't get the appeal of the ultraportable, be it the MacBook Air or Intel's relentless marketing campaign for "ultrabooks".

I understand wanting a smaller computer. I understand wanting a lighter computer. And I certainly get wanting both of those without compromising performance or battery life.

What I cannot wrap my head around is all of this focus on the thinness of the machine. Leaving aside the secondary effect that a thinner machine is lighter than a thicker one, why does it matter if my notebook is 0.9" thick rather than 1.2"? I can't come up with even one use scenario where it matters: it has no real impact on how the machine is used, and barely any impact on how mobile it is. Yet all I see is manufacturers fighting over whose machine is the thinnest by half a millimeter.

What am I not seeing here? Or is it just yet another technology fad, spurred on by an irrational obsession over aesthetics and commercial one-upsmanship?

You're bitching about a class of computers that you're not interested in, but other people are. Does the concept of preference confuse you? Just get a regular fat laptop, fatty To me, it makes a difference - my old 2.9lb 11" mba is just much more bag friendly than my wife's 13" mba (3.2lb?).

As far as thinness, other than the obvious correlation between formfactor and weight - maybe it is design and aesthetic related, which again boils down to preference. Do you really have a difficult time understanding that some people prefer something that you don't find important? Like me, I'm 32 years old and couldn't give a flying fuck if the GPU can play COD - battery life and portability are my #1 metrics (and I'd like my laptop to look elegant vs flashing blue LED nerd magnet, because if I didn't care about aesthetics I'd leave the house dressed in walmart head to toe).

 

[blackened23]

Personally I like thin and light form factors - i'm sold on it. For anyone travelling a lot, it really is the better form factor. I don't carry a portable around to play video games - and that is the only reason, IMHO, where a full size laptop makes sense. For everything else, give me thin and light with a big SSD and 9+ hours of battery life. It's all preference, both are still offered.

Your preferred form factor is still available. For those who travel, battery life and portability are the #1 metrics as mentioned by the above poster. I also don't give a EFF about how video games or photoshop runs on my portable - that's not what I do while i'm on the go. Additionally, I still see a clear differentiation between full size laptops and ultrabooks. Ultrabooks are designed more for long battery life while laptops, being larger, offer more performance. You are more likely to see a laptop with high end dGPUs and other such high performance components - it simply prioritizes performance over portability/longevity.

And since there is a clear differentiation between laptops and ultrabooks, that is where consumer choice enters the picture. Want performance with a dGPU? Get a laptop that weights 10+ pounds. Want portability and long battery life? Ultrabook. I prefer the latter.

 

[bepo]

When you travel a lot a 13" super thin ultrabook with 10+ hour battery is the ideal computer. The target market for this type of computer is someone with a lot of disposable income and very little care about gaming.

 

[corkyg]

When you travel a lot a 13" super thin ultrabook with 10+ hour battery is the ideal computer. The target market for this type of computer is someone with a lot of disposable income and very little care about gaming.

I just raised my hand!

 

[Zodiark1593]

Ehh, at one point I used to carry around a ZD8000 in college. That there is a 10+ pound behemoth with sub-1 hour battery life. I did get used to it after a week or so, apart from battery life, a heavy laptop wasn't as bad as many here make it out to be, though, that may vary depending on your build.

That said, there are many performance oriented laptops today that don't weigh nearly as much, and attain at least several hours of battery life (usually thanks to some form of switchable graphics like Optimus). It's rather ridiculous to have to consider either going one extreme or the other in regards to weight and performance.

 

[Commodus]

To encapsulate what makes Ultrabooks so important:

With laptops, form is function.

You carry a laptop in a backpack or messenger bag. You curl up with it on the couch, you squeeze it on to an airline seat tray. In those spaces, elements like thickness, weight and overall size will matter. A student hauling a stack of textbooks (while textbooks are a thing, anyway) will appreciate something that's a pound lighter or half an inch thinner.

Things do blur somewhat with systems like the new MacBook Pro: the 13-inch model is just light and thin enough that you could get away with it. However, there's a world of difference between even that and, say, a run-of-the-mill 14- or 15-inch laptop.

 

[dma0991]

You forgot that Ultrabooks are competing with tablets, and the thickness metric is really scrutinized. Laptops demise would've been a lot quicker if they were to stubborn to move to a thinner form factor.

As a user of an old C2D Acer, its thick, its heavy, and its battery life is deplorable. It truly was state of the art back then but it becomes an issue when I could get one that is thinner, lighter and longer battery life. I wouldn't complain much about performance as the old and trusty C2D still works pretty well, and I'm certain that the higher performance of current ULP processors(relative to C2D) would suit my needs.

Another would be a C2E, Dell XPS M1730(belongs to a friend). That thing is beastly when it came to games, not so when I had to carry it around(power brick was also beastly in size).

I realized that I have an affinity towards laptops that are lightweight and long battery life. Its all down to personal preference. If you don't see the benefit of a lighter laptop, you could always get one that is heavier but have better performance.

Are not super thinners more vulnerable to flex cracking if in a backpack and you roll your shoulders forward for some reason?

The rigidity of the aluminum casing or plastic exterior + magnesium sub frame does help alleviate the stress on the components as it flexes.

Then again I have heard of MBA having cracked screens just by having a TV remote accidentally landing on the top lid. D:

 

[Zodiark1593]

To encapsulate what makes Ultrabooks so important:

With laptops, form is function.

You carry a laptop in a backpack or messenger bag. You curl up with it on the couch, you squeeze it on to an airline seat tray. In those spaces, elements like thickness, weight and overall size will matter. A student hauling a stack of textbooks (while textbooks are a thing, anyway) will appreciate something that's a pound lighter or half an inch thinner.

Things do blur somewhat with systems like the new MacBook Pro: the 13-inch model is just light and thin enough that you could get away with it. However, there's a world of difference between even that and, say, a run-of-the-mill 14- or 15-inch laptop.

Correction, form is a function, not the function. If what you said was the case, there's be no market for performance-oriented laptops. (and there are definitely fast laptops out there that aren't 10+ pound slabs). I myself seriously love that I can do my 3d modeling and rendering on the go, with the average Ultrabook, that isn't quite as feasible.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Thanks for all the replies. To be clear, I'm not criticizing anyone for their choices. If I have a beef it is more with the marketing departments of these companies than any customers, who should buy what they feel makes sense for them. And I appreciate the different perspectives.

BTW I should have been more clear that when I said "the ultrabook specs only harp on thinness and not other dimensions -- nor even weight", I was referring to the actual requirements set by Intel. I was rather amused to discover that while great emphasis is placed on thinness, the other dimensions don't seem to matter, resulting in some rather large devices falling into this category.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I suspect they picked thinness as the key requirement because it's the hardest one to achieve, and the most important difference between two laptops of a given screen size to set an ultrabook apart.

A maximum weight, width or height doesn't make sense unless it is set separately for each screen size.

If an ultrabook had a 15.6" screen it would have the same H x W as a $350 laptop but the depth would still be 1/2 - 1/3(?) the thickness.