ISN'T IT RICH? - American Business Media

The Irish LawyerLenovo ThinkPad U430u:Ready to hit the road.Dell XPS 13:Light but powerful.could even become high-tech keys; within a law firm, attorneyscould access offices, libraries, conference rooms,and even desk drawers simply by swiping their smartphone.It would mean one less thing to carry—and onemore reason not to lose your phone.BIG, BEAUTIFUL SCREENS. None of us are getting younger,and if your eyes aren’t what they used to be, one trendseen at CES will be especially welcome—bigger, brighter,better smartphone displays. On Android and WindowsPhone platforms, the days of the 3.5-inch screen are drawingto a close. (Apple doesn’t attend CES, although the rumoris that Apple, too, will beef up screen size with the nextiPhone.) Most new models sport displays of 4.3 inches andup. Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone measures in at4.65 inches, the HTC Titan II at 4.7 inches (it also boastsa 16-megapixel camera—unprecedented on a phone), andSamsung’s new Galaxy Note at a whopping 5.3 inches.These are vibrant, high-contrast, high-resolution screens,thanks to display technologies like AMOLED—active matrixorganic light emitting diode. You won’t pay for theirsize with bulk, either; the use of edge-to-edge displays letsvendors boost screen real estate without increasing thephone’s footprint too much.so, but they’re also a response to netbooks—and why thoseproducts ultimately failed. Netbooks were underpoweredand small in all the wrong places, with puny screens andkeyboards. Ultrabooks feature robust processors (but lowvoltagemodels specially made for mobile PCs), and manyuse flash memory for storage—a pairing that makes themquite zippy. They’re also thin, rather than small, so usersget the weight reduction without having to squint and peck.Many feature quick start-up times and some—like Apple’sMacbook Air—can wake up instantly from sleep mode.A perfect formula for a mobile computer? Vendors certainlythink so (particularly Intel Corporation, which hasbeen spending a big chunk of its marketing dollars on thecategory). They showed a host of upcoming models at CES,including Lenovo Group Limited’s ThinkPad U430u; Acer,Inc.’s Aspire S5 (less than 0.6 inches thick); and Dell, Inc.’sXPS 13 (weighing less than three pounds).Intel expects more than 75 Ultrabooks to be releasedin 2012—most of them after the introduction of Intel’snew Ivy Bridge line of processors, expected soon. Unlikenetbooks, this is not bargain-basement hardware: Expectto see prices around $1,000. But we think this is a smarttake on business laptops—fast and light, but not too small.Sometimes, you really do get what you pay for.Legal market in review, 2012ULTRABOOKS. A new generation of lightweight laptops,these have been called a response to tablets. That may beAlan Cohen is a freelance writer in New York. E-mail:alanc31@yahoo.com. SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTIONCover picture: The Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin