Consumer refresh pinned on cheap MacBook-Air killers

"They are sleeker, stylish and very thin (less than a kilo)," said Phil Cronin, managing director of Intel Australia at the Intel Solutions Summit on the Gold Coast this week.

ULV notebooks will have greater performance than netbooks but smaller screens than 15-inch or 17-inch desktop replacements and will focus on size, weight and aesthetics, in a similar way to the MacBook Air. Longer battery life, closer to six or seven hours, is also an aim for the category. Screen size is generally larger than 10 inches but no larger than 13 inches.

The 13-inch screen Air weighs 1.4kg, is under 2 centimetres thick, omits an internal optical drive and has a claimed five-hour battery life. Actual battery life is closer to four hours for light activity and two and a half hours for heavy use.

The notebooks will not run on the Atom processor, which will be reserved for netbooks. Instead they will use Intel's ultra-low voltage versions of Celeron, Pentium and Centrino 2 chips to avoid heat build-up, a problem with thin designs. Some early owners of the Air complained of overheating that caused the CPU to lock up.

However, the non-Apple ULV notebooks will have a price range of between $1299 and $1999, said Cronin. Retail stores will probably divide their mobile computing displays into netbooks, ULVs and larger laptops with 15-inch screens and up.

The Australian market, which buys three million laptops a year, is a prime target for ULV notebooks, added Cronin.

Although the netbook's sudden rise to fame has eaten away at the lower end of the market, the greatest impact on consumer expectations had come from the top. The release of the MacBook Air early last year had encouraged consumers to look at aesthetics first because a notebook was considered a personal possession, according to Intel executives.

Several notebooks in the thin and light category were on display at the Intel conference, although they were three to six months away from full-scale production, according to organisers.

The jury is still out on how much impact netbooks will have on notebook sales and whether they will cannibalise or be supplementary devices, said Cronin.