CES 2012 Preview: Laptops
Three tech products should dominate the CES landscape this year—a processor, an operating system, and a class of laptop PCs that will take advantage of both. It's how much the last will cost that's the kicker.
For years, people have been saying that the Wintel duopoly is losing its clout, particularly now that the three A's of Apple's iPad, Android, and ARM are challenging the paradigm of Windows on x86 processors. But Microsoft and Intel are poised to loom over the computing segment of CES 2012 with a pair of much-anticipated new products.
True, it'll be vapor over Vegas, as neither Microsoft's Windows 8 nor Intel's "Ivy Bridge" processor line is shipping soon: The latest speculation has the chipmaker's successor to today's "Sandy Bridge" CPUs arriving around April, while gossip about a February beta would seem to put Win 8 on track for release next summer (though you can still find pundits worrying about it being later or even missing the 2012 holiday season).
But it's a safe bet that vendors will be talking up their Windows 8 and "Ivy Bridge" plans, even though neither looks like a must buy for owners of recent laptops and desktops. The new operating system's keenest feature, the Windows Phone-style Metro interface, is at its best on touchscreen devices such as tablets. And the shrink to 22-nanometer process engineering makes Intel's latest silicon more energy-efficient and makes room for better integrated graphics, but won't bring blazing speed advantages over today's second-generation Core i5 and Core i7 chips.
At any rate, Windows 8 and Android will split what's expected to be a healthy crop of tablets on display at CES (while the iPad and iPhone dominate the roughly 60 percent of the show floor devoted to tablet and phone cases and chargers). The even healthier crop of products—set to challenge 4K by 2K-pixel HDTVs for this year's "the year of the [blank]" hype—is one currently represented in the market by a mere half-dozen devices, but set to explode with 2012 and the advent of "Ivy Bridge": ultrabooks.
Last month, a Consumer Electronics Association research director predicted that 30 to 50 of the super-slim laptops would premiere at CES, amid a heavy marketing push from Intel (so heavy that numerous outlets picked up a Taiwanese trade journal's claim that Intel would be subsidizing each ultrabook to the tune of $100, which the company has flatly denied). Under-three-pound MacBook Air challengers will be everywhere; it's that's the tricky part.