Acer Group, Asustek Computer and Lenovo Group, the companies that are among the largest makers of notebooks on the planet, are said to prepare ultra-thin notebooks powered by Intel Corp.'s forthcoming Sandy Bridge microprocessors. At present it is unclear whether the notebooks will be aimed at consumers or business users.

The three manufacturers plan to release new ultra-thin notebooks in 13.3" and 14" form-factors based on Sandy Bridge platform in Q1 2011, reports DigiTimes web-site. At present it is unclear how thin those notebooks will actually be as 14" screen size clearly puts notebooks into mobile workstation and multimedia category, not into ultra-portable class.

It remains to be seen whether Acer, Asustek and Lenovo will compete against consumer machines like Apple Macbook Air with their forthcoming products and will pursue "the thinner the better" strategy, or will introduce ultra-thin business-class machines that do not compromise any features, such as Lenovo ThinkPad X300/X301 machines.

Since Intel Sandy Bridge processors are produced using 32nm process technology and consume less energy than currently available Core i chips, it is logical to expect other manufacturers of notebooks to introduce their ultra-thin models based on the new chips as well.

The first notebooks featuring next-generation Core i-series central processing units will employ higher-end quad-core models and will be aimed at consumers seeking for maximum performance possible. As a result, the machines will use 15" and larger displays and will likely be equipped with various additional hardware that boosts multimedia capabilities as well as improve performance. In particular, it is logical to expect notebooks with discrete graphics processing units as, Blu-ray disc drives, high-quality audio systems and so on.

Acer, Asus and Lenovo did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, ThinkPad, Intel, 32nm