Information technology was 2011 and Intel saw a surging tendency in mobile computing, admittedly inspired by Apple's Macbook Air. Notebooks were to go thinner, batteries had to concluding more than, optical drives were going away, and operation, performance didn't have to suffer likewise much. Moreover, manufacturers didn't seem to be doing a whole lot to go on this trend, so Intel pushed forrad by investing $300 million of its own money to make information technology happen.

The showtime Ultrabook specification was based on the Huron River platform using the Sandy Span architecture. This specification required a minimum battery life of five hours, a resume from hibernation time of 7 seconds, and the laptop'southward body could be no more 18mm thick for xiii.3" models and 21mm thick for fourteen" models. The use of solid-state drives and unibody chassis were too encouraged (merely not part of the specification) to aid meet these criteria.

The more modern and current Principal River specification is based on Ivy Span. The battery life, resume time and dimensions remain the same, while a storage transfer rate of 80MB/s minimum has been added along with mandatory USB three.0 or Thunderbolt support.

There are currently more two dozen 'Chief River' ultrabooks bachelor from manufacturers such as Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Gigabyte. Today nosotros are checking out the latest model from Gigabyte. The U2442F is one of many U2442 variations, though as the flagship model it'south the most expensive and powerful.

Gigabyte U2442F First Impressions

Gigabyte's fourteen-inch ultrabook measures 339mm wide, 233mm deep and just 21mm thick at its widest bespeak, while weighing just 1.69kg when fitted with an SSD, HDD and the Li-polymer (11.1V, 47.73Wh) battery.

Gigabyte U2442F 14" ultrabook - $1250

  • 14" 1600x900 LED brandish
  • Intel Core i7-3517U (one.9 - 3.0GHz)
  • Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 2GB GDDR3
  • Intel Hard disk drive Graphics 4000
  • 8GB of DDR3 RAM
  • Crucial m4 128GB mSATA SSD
  • Toshiba 750GB HDD
  • SD card reader
  • 2x USB iii.0, 2x USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, sound jack
  • 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
  • 1.3 megapixel webcam
  • Chiclet keyboard
  • i-push trackpad
  • half dozen-cell Li-Polymer battery
  • 339 x 233 10 21 mm, 3.7 pounds

The hat is a mere 5mm thick, featuring a thin aluminum dorsum that gives the screen a footling extra protection and looks nifty in the process. The xiv" LED backlit screen sports a 1600x900 resolution and matte finish. Personally it makes me happy that Gigabyte didn't go with a gloss hither.

The screen has an embedded 1.3M Hard disk webcam which blends seamlessly into the blueprint. There is a small LED light side by side to it which lights up when the camera is active. Adjacent to the small camera lens there's too a small hole for the microphone.

Moving to the keyboard, Gigabyte has included an 87 primal half-dozen-row chiclet backlit solution. As with well-nigh modern notebooks, there are office key combos to quickly enable or disable features such as wireless network, webcam, Bluetooth, trackpad and so on.

The keyboard feels great and I'd happily use it on a daily basis. We too institute it easy to avoid the trackpad, which measures 95mm by 55mm. The palm residual is plastic merely feels nice to rest your easily on and doesn't mark easily.

Underneath the U2442F are various minor grills to let absurd air in, as well as iv small rubber feet that raise the laptop and stop information technology from marking surfaces such as a desk. It isn't possible to remove the battery from the U2442F without taking the Ultrabook autonomously and in fact the but easily accessible component is the memory as a encompass can be removed exposing two And so-DIMM slots.

Connectivity-wise, you'll notice an SD menu reader, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI port and a DC-input ability jack on the right side. The left side includes a Gigabit Ethernet port, D-sub (VGA) port, two USB 2.0 ports, microphone jack, headphone jack and a Kensington lock slot.