14 DAY TRIAL // You'd think that any great claim would be backed by some hard evidence, but Gigabyte deliberately neglected to provide it when it revealed the X11 notebook.
Of course, “revealed” is a bit too much of a stretch because the company only specified its name and that it is supposed to be “the lightest notebook on earth.”
The real launch will happen on May 31, 2012, according to the invitation posted by the folks at Ubergizmo.
The name of the product is X11, where 11 may or may not stand for the screen diagonal (11/11.6 inches).
Considering that the lightest ultrabooks already hover at 2 pounds or so (0.90 kilograms), Gigabyte definitely has its work cut out for it.
We suppose that the case will be made of a less than ordinary material, not aluminum or plastic. Maybe carbon-based.
We also wouldn't be too shocked to hear about the storage device being one of those small mSATA SSDs rather than a normal SATA.
Unfortunately, these speculations are all we have at this point. Gigabyte did not even hint as to what performance we can expect.
We should also issue the warning that the Gigabyte X11 will definitely not be a cheap item, or even a remotely affordable one. Special perks always mean cost additions after all.
Intel and its partners have been trying to bring down the price of ultrabooks in general, even at the cost of build quality and performance. Most recently, a new battery surfaced and even the decision was made to use Sandy Bridge CPUs instead of Ivy Bridge in some cases. Even that was after the storage compromise (half of ultrabooks sold this year will have HDDs instead of expensive SSDs).
Considering the “special” nature of the X11, we don't think it's too risky to believe that none of these compromises will mar it, although, again, the price will hurt.