14 DAY TRIAL // Ultrathin laptops aren't exactly among the best selling of mobile PCs, but they do have their own target market segment, one that Apple addresses with the likes of the MacBook Air and which Samsung wants to gain more control of with the 9 Series.
Ultrathin laptops have always been a tricky endeavor for any PC maker, as they do not have overly high performance yet their prices are above those of more powerful but less thin machines.
As such, some of them were abandoned by their makers while others didn't really gain much traction in the first place.
Of course, if one were to find a product that did, so far, hold its own, the Apple MacBook Air could certainly qualify.
Samsung is now on the verge of officially introducing the so-called 9 Series of laptops, set to be available in screen sizes of 11.6 inches and 13.3 inches.
The 11.6-inch machine is powered by the previous-generation Calpella platform (the 1.33 GHz Core i3-380UM), and has 2 GB of RAM, integrated graphics and a SSD with 64 GB of storage.
It will have a price of $1,149 and all the hardware packed inside a frame with a thickness of 0.64 inches and made of Duralumin.
Meanwhile, the 13.3-inch 9 Series will be available in two base configurations, though they both utilize the Intel Core i5-2537M CPUs, a SSD of 128GB and 4 GB of RAM.
The cheaper one, priced at $1,599, has Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and runs Windows 7 home Premium, while the $1,699 one boasts WiMAX and Windows 7 Professional.
The laptops were actually announced back at CES 2011 but only now are reaching availability. South Korea will be the first to receive them, in a few days that is, followed by other markets in March. The battery life of each newcomer is of up to 6.5 hours.