This year’s CES saw the announcement of the new Samsung Series 9 ultrabook. Its slim aluminum body houses specially designed components that make it one of the thinnest and lightest portable computers around.

It will be available in 13.3″ and 15″ versions, but Samsung claims that it is so compact that the 15″ version is the size of a typical 14″ laptop. Read more »

Following the announcement of its new line of ultrabooks, Lenovo has now lifted the curtains off the IdeaPad S-series netbooks.

The IdeaPad S200 and S206 target the already too-crowded niche of affordable and decently performing netbooks. Read more »

This just in from the USB standards setting organization – USB 3.0 should begin rolling out to smartphones and tablets before the end of this year or early next year.

Now don’t expect to see full-sized USB ports on your next smartphone – the upgrade should be in the form of USB 3.0-supporting microUSB ports to meet the demands of thin industrial design. Read more »

Gigabyte is showing off two new devices at CES – the T1006M, a Windows 7 convertible netbook-tablet, and the S1081, a pure Windows 7 tablet. Both have 10.1″ capacitive multi-touch touchscreens outside and Intel’s latest Cedar Trail Atom dual-core processors inside.

Where they differ is the keyboard. The T1006M has one, but unlike traditional netbooks, you can quickly transform it into a tablet by turning the screen around. Impressively, its 10.1″ screen has a 1366×768 pixel resolution, typically found in larger displays. Read more »

The competition for the best ultrabook at CES 2012 has begun, and Lenovo entered it with the unveiling of the IdeaPad U310 and U410.

The Lenovo U310 is 0.7″ (18mm) thick and weighs 3.74lbs (1.7kg) whilst the U410 is a pinch thicker at 0.83″ (21mm) and just slightly heavier, weighing in at 4.18lbs (1.9kg). Read more »

Acer has announced two very thin and light Ultrabooks at CES. The first one is the Aspire S5, which Acer claims to be the thinnest in the world. The Ultrabook uses magnesium alloy and brushed metal for the body, which is only 15mm at the thickest point and weighs 1.35kg (2.97 pounds).

Another highlight of this machine is that it is one of the first notebooks to be announced with a Thunderbolt port and will be pairing it with USB 3.0 and HDMI ports on the back. Inside you will find Intel Core series processors, SSD storage and a PowerSmart battery pack that claims to have a life cycle which is three times longer than that of traditional battery packs. Read more »

Vizio is an American consumer electronics brand known for their highly-competitive prices that have made them such a hit in the continent. Now they plan to enter the Windows-based computer segment with these ultra-stylish notebooks and All In Ones (AIO).

There will be five models on sale, two of which will be AIOs, one with a 24-inch display and the other with a 27-inch display and the other three will be notebooks. Two of these will be Ultrabooks with a 14-inch and a 15.6-inch display and the last one is a regular 15.6-inch notebook. Read more »

You’d think that with CES so close Lenovo would have held on to these a bit longer, but it seems they couldn’t contain themselves any longer so they just went ahead and announced nine, yes, nine notebooks all at once.

The first one is a rather interesting hybrid notebook called the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid. The beauty of this machine is that along with Windows as the main operating system it also comes with Android that powers the notebook’s ‘instant on’ mode. The Android installation on the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid is a highly customized version of the OS and although you cannot run Android apps on it you can browse the web, play videos and music, read your mail and add widgets to the three homescreens. Read more »

It looks like another member of AT&T’s quickly growing LTE lineup is about to break its cover. The waterproof Pantech Element tablet is bound to join the 4G party on January 8, and bring a touch of ruggedness to the carrier’s Android lineup.

The Pantech Element will feature a Read more »

HP has just released a teaser video for their upcoming HP Envy Spectre notebook. Being a teaser, the video doesn’t really show a lot but hints at the notebook being very thin, which suggests that we could be looking at HP’s next Ultrabook after the Folio 13.

Unfortunately, the rest of the details remain unclear. What will be the display size? What will be the hardware? How long will the battery last? We don’t know. All we know for now is that HP seems to be targeting the thin and light segment. Hopefully it will be something worthwhile.

Head past the break for the video. Read more »

Things are not going well for netbooks. After sales started spiraling downwards, hardware makers slowly started opting out of this segment. We saw last month that Samsung could be considering dropping netbooks altogether and concentrate on Ultrabooks and now Dell has come out and announced the same.

When the company’s Inspiron Mini was found to be missing from their site, The Verge contacted Dell on the matter. This is when they learned that Dell does not plan to sell them anymore. They also said that the “thin and powerful is where it is at for us”, hinting at the growing Ultrabook segment. Read more »

Samsung made official their Series 5 Ultrabooks – that’s right Ultrabooks, not Chromebooks – in South Korea. While not the thinnest or lightest, they pack some mouth-watering specs.

The Series 5 Ultrabooks come in two sizes, 13″ and 14″, but the difference between them is more than just an inch. Read more »

Toshiba quietly launched its 7″ Thrive tablet, running Android 3.2 Honeycomb on sale today. The manufacturer has, therefore, made good on its promise for a December launch, which it made back at the device’s announcement.

The pricing of the rugged looking, NVIDIA Tegra 2 packing tablet starts Read more »

LG just introduced a new member to its lineup of portable computers. The LG X-Note Z330 is a 1.21kg ultrabook with a 13.3″ screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. Just 14.7mm thick and with an extremely cool design, the Z330 is certainly among the hottest looking laptops to date.

The LG X-Note Z330 comes with either Core i7 2637M or Core i5 2467M CPU, 4GB or RAM and 120GB or 300GB SSD, which allow it to make a cold boot in the amazing 9.9 seconds. As per the ultrabook tradition, there’s no discrete GPU here, so the Intel HD 3000, built into the CPU, will have to do. Read more »

Some juicy rumors from the realm of Mac just surfaced online. According to the often reliable DigiTimes, Apple will be launching a 15″ MacBook Air at the start of 2012.

The 15″ MacBook Air will come to support the 11.6″ and 13″ versions in their fight against the Ultrabook army, which is quickly growing in numbers. Read more »