At an event held yesterday in Mumbai, Intel showcased its new technologies, which have helped build its current focus – Ultrabooks. Present at the event were Paul Rietze, Director, Technical Sales & Architecture Enabling Consumer Channels Group, Sales and Marketing Group, Vijay Keshav, World Wide Marketing Manager – Retail, PC Client Group, Thaine Creitz, Consumer Platform Architecture Specialist Advanced Technical Sales - Sales and Marketing Group, Garry Weil, Technical Marketing Manager, Consumer Channels Group - Sales and Marketing Group. The company spokespersons ensured to leave no stone unturned as they highlighted and demoed all the key elements in creating the efficient, Ultrabooks.
While Ultrabooks were swift to perform, we asked Paul about their high price, which could obstruct sales in India. Although he is hoping that the price point wouldn't be an obstruction, he also believes that as the flow of Ultrabooks will increase the prices may see a difference, which again will depend on the OEMs, though. “Intel has been considering newer designs like a clamshell with touchscreen, hybrid devices and also convertibles which could be seen through this year,” he added further. Intel also gave a sneak peek into its future products by displaying an mini Ultrabook, if we may say so, featuring a touchscreen.
“Our research shows that some users are considering touch especially for content consumption applications. Moreover, you have to look at operating systems if there are more touch friendly operating systems and the adoption for touch will be higher,” Vijay Keshav, World Wide Marketing Manager – Retail, PC Client Group.
Starting off with Intel’s processor treasure - Sandy Bridge for 2011, Ivy Bridge for 2012 and Haswell for 2013, the spokespersons began highlighting Ultrabook features like its light and portable form factor. Intel showed off its technologies beginning with Intel Rapid Start technology, which ensures that the device doesn’t take more than a few seconds to boot-up. Also, the time taken by the ultrabook to wake up from hibernation or sleep mode was demoed to be about 6 seconds using a Lenovo Ultrabook. The company also displayed the Smart Response technology (SSD Cache + HDD) through a demonstration.
Moving from performance towards security, Garry shed light on some Intel security features. Talking about identity theft, Intel security solutions allow remotely locking the ultrabook in case the device is stolen and even obstructing the thief from stealing data from the hard disk. Intel showed some applications, like ‘Pair and Share’ showcasing photo sharing abilities, which is free app for iOS, Android and can be download via PC, too. The Intel Teleport Extender is another app, which enables viewing SMSes on the big screen over Wi-Fi; however, it is available only for Android users.
While the company displayed Ultrabooks, the company spokesperson maintains that they are very much focusing on the tablet and smartphone businesses, too. However, they didn’t spill any beans on the Intel and Lava partnership and maintained that it’s in progress and we could be hearing about it soon.