With their ability to blend together the seemingly never-ending quests for high performance, superior battery life and thin/light chassis construction, Ultrabooks are hugely en vogue at the moment.
But are Ultrabooks destined to remain in a category on their own, or is it a matter of time until they go the same route as the netbook?
Terence Barter, Dell product manager at Tarsus Technologies, believes neither of these predictions will come true.
"In fact," he says, "Ultrabooks have such a compelling value proposition that over the next two years they will unseat the machines in the traditional notebook sector and themselves become the new standard for notebooks.
"The will take a couple of years to wash through the industry," he says.
While that process is taking place, Barter says the industry can expect the boundaries to be pushed around what's considered standard fare in the traditional notebook sector.
"Features such as solid state drives, ultra-low voltage processors and cutting-edge battery technology will begin making a limited appearance in conventional notebooks, and in doing so, appraise the public of the benefits these different individual technologies have to offer in isolation," he continues.
"This will in turn pave the way extremely well for Ultrabooks to make their real value known in the coming years," he says.
Barter says all of this is important since corporate and enterprise customers need to be aware of how the market will be shaped over the next two to five years.
"Part of what went wrong when netbooks made their appearance is that the market was unprepared for the arrival of this new category of computers, and as such, ended up adopting them for the wrong reasons," he says.
"With Ultrabooks, we want the market players to be perfectly clear on what purpose they serve so the same mistakes aren't made a second time around," he concludes.
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Tarsus Technologies
With more than 27 years' of experience in the ICT industry, Tarsus is the leading value-added distributor in South Africa, specialising in the supply of the world's foremost PC and peripheral hardware brands to the local reseller channel.
Tarsus strives to meet the channel's needs for credit funding, stock availability and efficient logistics, ensuring resellers are able to deliver the highest quality service to their customers, focus on support and compile the best overall solutions for their end-user customer base at the lowest possible cost.
The company prides itself on its flexibility, adaptability, knowledge, skills and successful track record, combined with an industry-leading ability to manage large rollouts. These are the reasons Tarsus has consistently been rated as the top distributor in the country by international vendors, resellers and the IT media alike.
With its strong commitment to the South African channel, Tarsus is able to not only make the reseller channel more efficient, but more importantly, it plays a vital role in dramatically reducing the costs of doing business in the local ICT market.
Tarsus distributes a range of products from the world's leading manufacturers, including Acer, APC, Cisco, Dell, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Meissner, Microsoft, OKI Printing Solutions and Samsung.
Tarsus' head office is situated in Johannesburg with branches in Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Nelspruit. Tarsus has also extended its footprint into Africa, with branches in Namibia, Botswana and Mauritius.
More information about Tarsus is available at http://www.tarsus.co.za.
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