It turned into 2011 and Intel saw a surging fashion in mobile computing, admittedly inspired by Apple's Macbook Air. Notebooks were to turn out to be thinner, batteries had to final greater, optical drives were going away, and overall performance, overall performance failed to should go through too much. Moreover, manufacturers didn't appear to be doing a whole lot to get in this fashion, so Intel driven forward by using making an investment $300 million of its own money to make it appear.

The first Ultrabook specification turned into based on the Huron River platform the usage of the Sandy Bridge architecture. This specification required a minimum battery life of five hours, a resume from hibernation time of 7 seconds, and the computer's frame may be no extra than 18mm thick for thirteen.3” fashions and 21mm thick for 14” fashions. The use of stable-state drives and unibody chassis had been also encouraged (but no longer part of the specification) to help meet those standards.

The extra present day and current Chief River specification is based on Ivy Bridge. The battery lifestyles, resume time and dimensions stay the same, whilst a storage switch charge of 80MB/s minimum has been introduced in conjunction with mandatory USB three.zero or Thunderbolt help.

There are currently extra than dozen 'Chief River' ultrabooks to be had from producers which include Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Gigabyte. Today we are checking out the brand new model from Gigabyte. The U2442F is one in all many U2442 versions, though as the flagship model it’s the maximum high priced and powerful.

Gigabyte U2442F First Impressions

Gigabyte's 14-inch ultrabook measures 339mm extensive, 233mm deep and simply 21mm thick at its widest point, while weighing simply 1.69kg when outfitted with an SSD, HDD and the Li-polymer (11.1V, 47.73Wh) battery.

Gigabyte U2442F 14" ultrabook - $1250

  • 14" 1600x900 LED display
  • Intel Core i7-3517U (1.9 - three.0GHz)
  • Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 2GB GDDR3
  • Intel HD Graphics 4000
  • 8GB of DDR3 RAM
  • Crucial m4 128GB mSATA SSD
  • Toshiba 750GB HDD
  • SD card reader
  • 2x USB three.0, 2x USB 2.zero, HDMI, VGA, audio jack
  • 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
  • 1.three megapixel webcam
  • Chiclet keyboard
  • 1-button trackpad
  • 6-cellular Li-Polymer battery
  • 339 x 233 x 21 mm, three.7 pounds

The lid is an insignificant 5mm thick, featuring a skinny aluminum back that gives the screen a bit more protection and appears fantastic inside the technique. The 14" LED backlit screen sports activities a 1600x900 resolution and matte finish. Personally it makes me satisfied that Gigabyte didn’t go along with a gloss right here.

The display screen has an embedded 1.3M HD webcam which blends seamlessly into the layout. There is a small LED light next to it which lights up when the camera is energetic. Next to the small digicam lens there may be additionally a small hole for the microphone.

Moving to the keyboard, Gigabyte has covered an 87 key 6-row chiclet backlit answer. As with most modern-day notebooks, there are characteristic key combos to quickly permit or disable capabilities which include wireless network, webcam, Bluetooth, trackpad and so on.

The keyboard feels fantastic and I'd fortuitously use it on a each day basis. We additionally found it clean to avoid the trackpad, which measures 95mm with the aid of 55mm. The palm relaxation is plastic but feels satisfactory to relaxation your hands on and does not mark without difficulty.

Underneath the U2442F are diverse small grills to permit cool air in, as well as 4 small rubber feet that improve the pc and forestall it from marking surfaces such as a desk. It isn’t viable to put off the battery from the U2442F with out taking the Ultrabook aside and in reality the best easily reachable factor is the memory as a cowl can be removed exposing two SO-DIMM slots.

Connectivity-smart, you may find an SD card reader, USB three.zero ports, HDMI port and a DC-enter energy jack at the right side. The left aspect includes a Gigabit Ethernet port, D-sub (VGA) port, USB 2.zero ports, microphone jack, headphone jack and a Kensington lock slot.