This autumn mass release of a new class of portable personal computers — ultrabooks which concept was developed by company Intel begins. Some firms-manufacturers, including Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba, have presented fresh models of similar devices at exhibition IFA.

What means for mobile computers a prefix «ultra» and how such devices differ from other versions of "..books"? 

The concept of ultrabooks — light, thin and unlike netbooks full-function laptops — has arisen not on an empty place. By way of design and ergonomics ultrabooks are based on MacBook Air, Gadgets from Apple — iPhone and iPad, certainly, became a certain standard for the class of devices. But here that portable personal computers with «the taken a bite apple» set the top rod — it is known not so widely. With the advent of ultrabooks the situation varies, as in the functional plan they incorporate all best from modern notebooks and multimedia tablets. From the first — high speed and small weight, from the second — fast start and long time of independent work.

So what is a ultrabook? It is the portable personal computer in the metal case with usually fixed battery of accumulators. The "hardware" stuffing does not endow productivity to please compactness, providing functionality of the high-grade personal computer. The sizes of the screen vary approximately from 11 up to 13 inches, and weight of the device 1—1,5 kgs, and thickness — do not exceed 20 millimeters. Instead of a hard disk ultrabooks are equipped with the solid-state store (SSD) on the basis of the flash memory, providing fast loading and economy of energy of the battery. The first wave of a novelty will be issued with use of chips Intel Core of current generation (Sandy Bridge). And already in following year in the market there will be models with processors under code name Ivy Bridge. The productivity of chips will increase almost for 40 percent. Practically all the largest manufacturers of portable personal computers this year plan to start deliveries of ultrabooks, thus the price for such device should not be above thousand dollars.

While all have rushed to catch up and overtake MacBook Air, there were hearings that in Apple at all can refuse Intel architecture in favour of ARM. Probably, by 2015 everyone the fifth, and even the fourth sold notebook will work on the basis of the processor with ARM-architecture. According the forecast of experts of analytical agency IHS iSuppli already in following year it will be sold 7,6 million of laptops on the basis of ARM, that will make about 3 percent from the general market share of these devices. Besides new operational system Windows 8 by Microsoft where also have estimated market tendencies, will support competing ARM-architecture.