Intel to Make Touch Screen Windows 8 Powered Ultrabooks

Now that Samsung has set a time period for the launch of its Windows 8 tablet, everyone else wants in. At the Intel Capital Global Summit today, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that touch screen “Ultrabooks” will be the main focus in the next year.
If you don’t know what an Ultrabook is, think MacBook Air. After Apple’s success with the MacBook Air, (its thinnest laptop available) other companies finally decided that they wanted in about six months to a year ago. Intel took the lead by developing special processors for Ultrabooks that would make them powerful, yet energy efficient.
No Ultrabooks have actually gone on sale yet, though, and Intel’s new processors are probably going to be pretty expensive, which will make the actual Ultrabooks more expensive than certain models of the MacBook Air.

Otellini noted the expensive price and said that to get more customers from the mainstream laptop market to buy Ultrabooks, they would have to get the price of the touch technology down. Otellini said, “To hit the volume price points, we need to span $699 and up, and that’s the goal for next year.”
$699 would be a great price point to be at. It would be about $200-300 lower than Apple’s lowest priced MacBook Air. To hit the volume price points, we need to span $699 and up, and that’s the goal for next year.” To get the price down to $699 would be pretty good. It would be about $200-300 lower than the lowest priced MacBook Air is right now.
Otellini explained just how Intel was going to do that, “To do that, we have to get touch to a lower cost. This is particularly important, as we move to the launch of Windows 8. The iPad and the iPhone have made touch a paradigm.”
Intel says that the launch of Windows 8 will make Ultrabooks a lot more popular, especially its new touch based ones. It will be kind of like one of those tablets with a detachable keyboard in the sense that when you just want to relax and enjoy media, you can just use the touch screen and Metro, but when you want to get a lot of work done you can use the keyboard and the classic desktop mode.
What I don’t understand is why Intel isn’t making the keyboard detachable. I mean it would make sense. Why would you want there to be a keyboard just awkwardly hanging there when you are using the touch screen, and I’m not sure how comfortable using the touch screen when holding the Ultrabook like any laptop would be.
Nevetheless Intel still tries to prove its touchscreen Ultrabook idea will work, “Starting with Windows 8, you have a mainstream operating system incorporating touch. Our view is that in the ultrabook lines, touch is a pretty critical enabler. When users see that new Windows interface, they’re going to want to touch it.

Intel Very Happy About Windows 8′s Current Direction

Windows 8 is certainly changing the way Windows works with its new interface, Metro, and its ability to support ARM processors.
It is no secret that the ARM processor giant, Qualcomm, is very excited about the future of Windows thanks to its support of ARM and its move into the tablet market.
Qualcomm hopes to use Windows 8 to move into new markets creating robust Windows 8 laptops and even desktops that use ARM technology versus the current standard of x86.
With Qualcomm’s big push with Windows 8, you might think that Intel would be feeling the pressure from the move. So how does Intel feel about the changes that Windows 8 brings to the table? It seems that they are highly ecstatic about where Windows 8 is going.
According to Intel CEO Paul Otellini, “Windows 8 is one of the best things that’s ever happened to our company”. This seems like an interesting statement, and is it really how they feel or simply a PR move to make them seem unaffected?
Otellini has talked fairly extensively about what he calls “myths” surrounding Intel and Windows 8 .
These myths largely covered the idea that ARM will hurt Intel, that the PC is dying breed, and that the chip giant can’t compete in the mobile market due to x86 architecture just not being worthy due to issues like heat and power consumption.
A lot of these alleged issues that Intel is running to have a strong link to Windows 8. Here’s what Otellini said about Windows 8:
We are very excited about Windows 8. I think it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to our Company. And it’s a very good operating system, not just for PCs, but we think also will allow tablets to really get a legitimacy into mainstream computing, particularly in enterprises that they don’t have today. A lot of the enterprise managers are worried about security, they’re worried about the difficulty affording their legacy applications over to an Android tablet or to an iPad.
What Microsoft is doing is making that seamless for them. And they have a new experience, which they call Metro, that’s the interface up there. But for Intel-based machines, there is also one button that basically takes you back to your classic Windows experience and that’s a software button essentially.