Two months before the release of Macbook Air last week, Intel manage to perk the interest of the media and enthusiasts by promising a new breed of Ultrabooks that will deliver specs and razor-thin chassis making it a great contender for Apple’s MBA notebooks. At that time, we confirmed Asus UX21 is on the top list along with Lenovo Ideapad U300S. The reason for my excitement? Its price hanging below 1K USD compared to the cheapest Air at $999. Sadly, it appears this won’t be the reality at all.
According to several insider reports from Taiwan, there’s a chance Acer, Dell and Lenovo might not be able to push their Ultrabooks this year since its panel product – a key component on manufacturing these super thin notebooks – are in short supply. In fact, it appears Asus is the only company that might be able to pull its grandiose release this year (we expect to be the UX21) since it’s the first company to place order of up to 450k ultra-thin notebooks to its manufacturer.
So we still have the UX21 for this year – hooray! The sad part? Asus announced yesterday that it won’t be able to release UX notebooks with a price less than 1 grand unlike the previous statement of Intel last quarter. The reason? The price on producing such components would mean the company will hinder UX’s specifications to Core i3 only. This means those UX21 notebooks that will be infused by Core i5 Sandy Bridge CPU are expected to hit more than 1,000 USD. Likewise, this puts the $999 Macbook Air 11-inch with Core i5 CPU as users’ cheapest choice if they want a notebook with the same superthin form factor, and a fruit-shaped emblem on its back.
Expect the first batch of UX notebooks to hit its release date this September.
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