Laptops, or notebooks, are finally evolving into something pretty amazing. When Apple released their first MacBook Air in 2008 featuring an ultra slim design, dealing away with an optical drive and using an SSD drive instead of a hard drive few really cared much about it. It seemed like an overpriced netbook, an odd entry into the then booming netbook market.

Apple seems to have had bigger plans though, which only apparently dawned on the industry when they came out with the latest iteration of the MacBook Air earlier in 2011. Just three years after the rise of netbooks we’ve seen an explosion of the tablet market (also led by Apple with their iPad) pretty much killing the netbook momentum. Meanwhile SSD drives became cheaper, processor performance per watt further improved, and phasing out optical storage became far less of a crazy idea.
 
The new MacBook Air thus ended up offering a very respectable amount of computing power with great speed, and in an irresistibly thin package. Most of all, it came at a price that most seem to consider quite acceptable.
 
All of a sudden everybody had to get in on this new game, and thus the Intel’s “Ultrabook” initiative was born. Intel is literally putting hundreds of millions of dollars into an initiative that has building Macbook Air-like notebooks as its mission, and calling them “ultrabooks”.
 
According to some the urge, and the need for Intel to be so proactive about it, comes from the relative unpreparedness of the PC industry when it comes to adequately answering Apple’s challenge. They’ve been price racing each other to the bottom, cutting their margins, and with them their ability to innovate. Meanwhile Apple has been doing just the opposite, refusing to compete on price alone, and putting together formidable manufacturing advantages that allow them to build next generation computers cheaper than anyone could.
 
In other words the PC industry needed a transformation, and that’s what the Intel’s Ultrabook initiative seems to be about.

“Thin and light” is the war cry for Ultrabooks, and the Asus UX31, one of the new breed of mobile PCs about to be unleashed to an unsuspecting public, can add “metallic” to that anthem.

This is a very industrial-looking piece of tech, from its brushed metal lid to its ultra-thin wedged front and rather sharp corners.

From standby, the UX31 bounces into life in a blink, and the bright 13.3” screen displays a 1600 x 900 resolution, higher than some larger screen counterparts. The expected array of status LED is missing, with only tiny white LEDs embedded in the caps lock, Wi-Fi function key and in the power key, which has been integrated into the keyboard layout.

Sparseness is the theme for this Ultrabook, with a small but useful amount of connections. On the left hand side there is the SD/MMC card slot, headphone jack and USB 2.0 port. On the right hand side are all the new-tech connections: Micro HDMI, Mini Displayport and USB 3.0 plus the small power socket.

Specifications (base version)
	Manufacturer	ASUS
	Model name	UX31
	CPU type	Intel Core i5 2557M
	CPU speed	1500 Mhz
	Graphics	Intel HD Graphics 3000
	OS	Windows 7
	Display Size	13.3" 1366 X 768
	RAM	4096 MB
	Flash	128 GB
	Keyboard	YES
	Mouse Pointer	YES
	Weight	1300gm / 45.9 oz.

Physical Interfaces

• Line-out / Headphone (3.5mm)
• Micro HDMI
• Mini Displayport
• SD card slot
• USB2.0
• USB3.0 (x1)

Wireless Interfaces

• 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth Info N/A
• No Wireless WAN (e.g. 3G cellular)