Year of the Ultrabook — or the Ultradud?

Everybody and his brother’s maiden aunt’s hairdresser will announce an Ultrabook next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, where the advertising hype will reach new highs — or lows, depending on how you look at it.

IT’s going to field a lot of questions from users pie-eyed at the prospect of Windows machines running in the MacBook Air’s footsteps. But before you and your users succumb to the pressure, take a deep breath and consider what’s coming down the pike. Next week’s Ultrabook may well become next quarter’s Ultradud.

Last year, the CES darling toys were 3D TVs and Android tablets. That alone should give you pause.

So what’s an Ultrabook? That’s easy: Intel trademarked the term, so it’s whatever Intel says it is — this week, anyway. Intel’s current Ultrabook specs (PDF) call for a weight under 3.1 pounds, thickness under 0.71 inch, five hours of general-use battery life, SSD storage, Intel Rapid Start Technology to implement resumes “within seconds,” and Intel Anti-Theft Technology that disables a lost or stolen Ultrabook.

Although there’s no specific prohibition, Ultrabooks as currently constituted contain no more than 4GB of memory (frequently soldered, so it can’t be upgraded). They also don’t have hard drives, removable batteries, or optical/DVD drives, but they do have more or less full-size keyboards.

Intel’s so sure of its Ultrabook ways that it’s started an entire website devoted to the topic, entitled Reshaping the PC Experience. Indeed.

Market analysis firm IHS (formerly iSuppli) says there were fewer than 1 million Ultrabooks sold in 2011 — less than 2 percent of the notebook market — but the number will run up to 13 percent this year, and by 2015 IHS says that number will grow to 43 percent of the notebook market, or more than 135 million units. Taipei-based TrendForce predicts that 10 percent of all notebooks sold this year will be Ultrabooks. Presumably they’re all taking into account how Intel will modify the definition of “Ultrabook” as time goes by. As InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman has warned, that Ultrabook label on thin Windows laptops has no real meaning.

You can buy an Ultrabook right now, of course. And next week your choices — both real and promised — will expand exponentially. But will any of those machines approach the de facto MacBook Air standard?

Not likely. Right now, the Windows world is looking for Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor, which will run faster and cooler than the current Intel Core i5 — the center of most Ultrabooks right now — and support both the Thunderbolt and USB 3 interface standards. Rumor has it that Ivy Bridge processors will start to trickle out in April.

Then there’s the price. Chances are very good the CES Ultrabooks — at least, the ones you can actually buy, and not just preorder — will run Intel Core i5 or i7 processors; have 4GB of RAM, 128GB of SSD storage, and a 14-inch screen; run Windows 7 Home Premium; and tilt the pecuniary scales at $1,000 or so. Right now a Lenovo U300 with a Core i7, 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium, a 13.3-inch monitor, and a 256GB SSD will set you back an ultra $1,499.  Compare that to a MacBook Air, with a Core i5, 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a 13-inch screen priced at $1,299 — or an 11-inch with 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB SDD at $999. And the MacBook Air’s screen is a very tough act to follow.

Will Ultrabooks unveiled at CES give the MacBook Air a real run for the money, either in specs or in cost? I guess we’ll see.

But all of this — even the anticipated April arrival of Ivy Bridge — reeks of short-term thinking, particularly because Windows 8’s looming for a widely anticipated third-quarter release. Even if you don’t anticipate running Windows 8 on one of these newfangled Ultrabooks, the Wintel market’s going to change enormously in the third quarter. DigiTimes reports that Acer and Lenovo are both working on new tablet PCs based on Intel’s Clover Trail-W processor, slated to ship in the third quarter. Clover Trail is shrouded in secrecy at this point, but it’s destined to update the Atom chip technology with dual-core processing capability. It’s Intel’s answer to ARM architecture, and it’s built with Windows 8 in mind.

The real wild card, particularly if you have to think about long-term investment: Will tablets improve sufficiently in the next year to handle just about everything you’d think of doing on an Ultrabook?

This story, “Year of the Ultrabook — or the Ultradud?” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.