The Tech-pert: What are Ultrabooks and Why Should You Care

What's the biggest buzzword at this year's Consumer Electronics Show? No, it's not "Beiber." It's ultrabooks. Three guesses what they are:

1. Regular books, only super-better.

2. Kindle-style e-book readers plated with shiny titanium.

3. Super-thin, super-light laptops that used to be known as "ultraportables," "ultralights," and "subnotebooks."

Yep, you guessed it, ultraportables are just the latest breed of thin, lightweight laptops—Windows-powered champions to the MacBook Air throne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook).

Indeed, Apple pretty much perfected the category years ago, but it wasn't until Intel coined the term in 2011 that anybody knew the Air was an "ultraportable."

If I sound a little jaded, it's because I'm still scarred by the whole netbook craze. Netbooks, you'll recall, were all the rage in 2010, offering slowpoke processors, tiny screens, cramped keyboards, poor battery life, chunky designs, and other compromises for a few dollars less than full-fledged laptops.

I was not a fan.

The good news is that ultrabooks have almost nothing in common with netbooks. The former are sleek and shiny, often polished to a high finish, standing less than an inch tall, and weighing less than three pounds.

Even better, they're powered by Intel's latest low-power (but still very powerful) processors: Core i5 and i7 "Sandy Bridge" chips. (Even faster "Ivy Bridge" versions are due later in 2012.) Another great design amenity: solid-state drives (SSDs) in place of hard drives. That helps them boot faster and run longer on a charge.

Most ultrabook models have 13-inch screens, though you'll see a few with larger or smaller displays. I tend to look upon 13 inches as the sweet spot for productivity and portability.

Just as they did with netbooks, all the major PC manufacturers (and plenty of minor ones) are hopping on the ultrabook wagon. Watch for new models from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba, among others.

Now for the bad news: ultrabooks will cost you. As with the MacBook Air, pricing starts at around $1,000 and rises sharply from there. A fully loaded model with a blazing-fast processor and high-capacity SSD could easily run you close to $2,000.

I'm sure prices will come down as the category takes off and the market gets saturated, but for now you should expect to pay a premium for ultra-style and ultra-portability.

Is it worth it? Ultrabooks are cool, no doubt about it, especially the ultra-thin, ultra-MacBook Air-like models. (Come to think of it, if you're going to pony up that much cash anyway, why not just get the bar-setting, still-unparalleled Air?)

That said, as a card-carrying cheapskate, I can be just as happy with a traditional laptop that's a bit thicker, a bit less sexy, and a whole lot cheaper.

Your thoughts?