What's the point of expensive non-gaming ultrabooks ?

[SeriouslyMikey]

Cash money? 

[aom]

Programming doesn't require that much cpu power , does it ?

depends on the scope of your project as well as your IDE.

For instance IntelliJ IDEA is crazy at memory and CPU hogging. Burns through 6 gigs of ram and 99% cpu when initializing and debugging my android projects.

 

But on the other hand, visual studio takes next to nothing to run and debug (in VB.NET at least)

[Fgtfv567]

coming from the guy with a alienware:P

all joking aside, me, like many other people, are going off to college, or have a job where they need a laptop that lasts all day. so 8+ hours of battery life would be amazing, because yeah, theres usually plugs, but not always. and the last thing you want is your laptop to die during a 3 hour lecture, or working with a customer.

Im going for the I5 or I7 mearly becuase its such a large investment, and the extra 200$ might double its lifespan. Most super portable ultrabooks/tabletpcs that are sub 700$ are pentiums. common sense is the I5 is going to last much longer then the Pentium.

and if we talk about the xps 13, its a 13 inch laptop that fits in the form factor of a 11inch laptop, HUGE points for portability. its 2.5lbs(I think, know its under 3) which is HUGE for portablilty. and a 10 hour actual battery life. I can go the whole day actually using it and its so light its like its not even there in my backpack. thats what I want for college. thats why Im willing to pay a 400$ premium over something with a 4 hour battery life, and twice the weight.

if the average joe has a deskjob, or this is being used 99$ of the time as a desktop, its a waste. but if your going to lug it around serveral miles of walking everyday, and use it in 5+ places everyday, for 4 years, yeah, its worth it. all depends on use case

OK, yes, portability is pretty important for people like college students, but me and the OP is talking about overpaying for a machine with horsepower that is being unused

[Kyuubixchidori]

OK, yes, portability is pretty important for people like college students, but me and the OP is talking about overpaying for a machine with horsepower that is being unused

oh, many people are complaing that its a lot of cost for not that high end hardware.

 

you can say that about anything though. people spend way to much on cars with to much (actual) horsepower. People can overpay for anything. some people are willing to pay just for the build quality. 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Ever tried making graphs and charts using spreadsheets that have 50+ columns and are thousands (or tens of thousands) of rows long?  I have, and I wouldn't want to do it on an Atom.  

[EpicAdom]

Programming, Business, Education (college), etc.

[NeverNude]

Because people are stupid.

 

[Victorious Secret]

Because I prefer 8+ hours of battery life AND having a powerful CPU + GPU for when I need it, yet not giving up portability since I spend a lot of time on the road so having something that can do 8 hours of word documents or 4 hours of Photoshop (without entirely sucking because its weak) is a benefit. 

The same reason people spend thousands on water cooling setups to fill in a very niche requirement. Not everyone needs it, but those that do have their own reasons that make them happy, without needing to justify it to internet at large. 

[Si3Rra_7]

Because I prefer 8+ hours of battery life AND having a powerful CPU + GPU for when I need it, yet not giving up portability since I spend a lot of time on the road so having something that can do 8 hours of word documents or 4 hours of Photoshop (without entirely sucking because its weak) is a benefit. 

The same reason people spend thousands on water cooling setups to fill in a very niche requirement. Not everyone needs it, but those that do have their own reasons that make them happy, without needing to justify it to internet at large.

"Powerful Gpu" ? HD5500 ?

[Charlie Clarke]

If it's not for gaming , editing or other intensive tasks ( aka has only integrated graphics ) , why do they keep adding i7s and 2.5k+ monitors to ultrabooks ?

 

The XPS video triggered this very angry question inside me . Huge resolutions are mainly for multitasking , photo/video editing , gaming ( all nearly impossible with either such a small display or weak gpu ) . I7s are for the same uses stated above . 

 

Also , people get big resolution monitors because they're willing to make the trade-off of comfortable OS text size with the space it provides for editing , or for gaming ( as i said above ) . But when you put big res monitors on a small , kinda weak gpu wise machine , you're only getting the bad part of the trade-off . 

 

Who are these ultrabooks for ???? ( except Linus where in a infinitely mysterious way manages to cap the laptop's powers with chrome , something i've done on my 8gb of ram only by running skyrim at 1440p fully modded , meanwhile hosting a teamspeak server , and having 10 tabs open in chrome  of skyrim wiki and 2 hours videos )

I have an asus ux31a and it feels like it has been carved out of a block of aluminum. It has an i7 and 8gb ram and 1080p display it is super thin. It cost about $2000. It does have integrated graphics. My dad bought it and gave it to me when he bought a macbook. He was using it for word, powerpoint and chrome. Usually business men buy these kind of laptops and they will spend the extra money for something high end that starts up quickly and won't delay their producivity, because they feel it is necessary.

[Castdeath97]

If you don't want to game, and you have the money and want something portable with a good battery, screen, looks and day to day experience over gaming then why not? Not everybody games on laptops you know. I actually consider gaming laptops to be the ''pointless products'' in my opinion, as desktops give you the modularity and are cheaper. Also, with most gaming laptops having poor battery life I think they fail as laptops. That just my opinion though some people like them, and this may change in the future.