

The video cameras at the CES event didn’t do the Dell XPS 13 justice as it’s hard to “get” the ethos of any device on camera, but with Jeff Clarke and Paul Otellii on stage, you knew it was important to both companies. During the Intel keynote with Intel’s Paul Otellini, Dell’s vice chairman Jeff Clarke, stormed on-stage with some serious Texas swagger. Whatever Dell was waiting for doesn’t matter, because they did nothing but impress at CES. I thought they were waiting for Intel’s Ivy Bridge solution that was scheduled for earlier in the year. When Dell didn’t release one by the holiday selling season, people were asking, “what’s wrong with the Ultrabook category”, or “what is Dell cooking up”? When they didn’t introduce an Ultrabook by the back to school selling season, “industry people” started to ask questions. Typically Dell is locked arm in arm with Intel many steps of the way. When Ultrabooks were first introduced in July, Dell was somewhat silent on their intentions. I don’t make that statement lightly as my family is the owner of three MacBooks and I do like them a lot. I have to say, I am very impressed and believe they have a winner here that could take some business from Apple. Does this sound a bit like a MacBook Air? This is what I thought about the entire category until Dell lent me their Ultrabook, the Dell XPS 13, for a few days. If you want to see the details on what constitutes an Ultrabook, let me direct you to an article I wrote in Forbes yesterday. Launched at Computex 2011, Ultrabooks are designed to be very thin and light, have good battery life, have instant-on from sleep, be more secure and have good performance. Intel introduced an industry-wide initiative to re-think the Windows notebook PC, which they have dubbed and trademarked the “Ultrabook”. If you are in the high-tech industry and haven’t heard of the term “Ultrabook”, you’ve probably been on sabattical or have been living under a rock.
