CES: Intel Talks Ultrabooks With Gesture, Touch Control

A journalist sitting next to me found she had an Asus ultrabook hidden under her seat for her to take away and play with.

We’re settling in for this morning’s press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show by Intel (INTC), which is expected to focus on “ultra book” laptops.

Intel’s Judson Laipply takes the stage, dancing to a bunch of tunes, starting with Chubby Checker, followed by The Village People. (That’s CES for you.)

He yields the stage to Mooly Eden, head of Intel’s PC client group. Eden says he’s not going to talk about the company’s “Ivy Bridge” processor architecture. He teases about something called “Ultrabook Turbo,” which will boost power-efficient processors to the effective power of a higher “thermal design point” of 35 watts versus 17 watts.

Rather, Eden wants to talk about people’s practical expectations. He quips about the annoying “hourglass” effect in computers � people don’t want to wait. “if people hold an ultrabook and say, I love it, that’s the ultimate thing,” says Eden.

Demo time: an associate is on stage to help demo “ArcSoft” image software. Wouldn’t it be nice to take a whole bunch of pictures and compress and then send them to friends quickly? As the associate prepares the album of photos, and resizes the picture, the “turbo” is “kicking in,” says the associate.

Eden moves on to demonstrating a simulation of blowing up a bridge that a train is running across. The processor must calculate the trajectory of every one of the logs in the bridge as it blows apart.

Next up, a demo of a racing game using the DX11 graphics APIs, which Eden says the company will deliver with Ivy Bridge and ultrabooks.

Next up, a demo of Intel’s built-in security, with the online purchase of a hotel reservation. The associate onstage uses “NFC” to fill in the cardholder details, but it’s linked to only that laptop.

Eden is moving on to discussion of the design aspects of the look and feel of the ultrabook. The thickness of the display itself was a challenge. So was the thickness of the battery pack, the disk drive, the motherboard, the package holding the processor, etc.

Eden talks about Intel’s previously stated intention to invest $300 million in ultrabooks. It will lead to “mainstream” prices for ultrabooks. He shows several systems from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), etc.

But now Eden wants to talk about what is next. “on the last thirty years, the number of transistors grew up by 1 million percent. But the man-machine interface, we didn’t evolve it very much. We didn’t have the horsepower.”

Touch controls largerly skipped the notebook, but it’s not going to be missing from the ultrabook, says Eden. In tests in Europe, people have been shown to use touch extensively where it’s available.

Eden has an associate demo flipping through pictures on screen by swiping the screen with his hand. He also shows off sensors allowing for gyroscopic motion control of a flight simulator. All this s being run using Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8.

Eden shows off an ultrabook that flips around to become a tablet.

Next he shows a “Nikiski ” concept ultrabook. It has a touchpad running the length of the bottom edge of the the machine. When the laptop is closed, the touchpad, which is transparent, allows you to continue to see some of the screen and even to manipulate it, for working with information on the go.

Next, Eden says Intel will work with Nuance (NUAN) to bring speech recognition to ultrabooks. It will be a “deep integration.” In a swipe at Apple’s (AAPL) “Siri” interface, the speech recognition will not have to connect to “the cloud” to operate, it will be handled on the machine natively even I’d the machine is “untethered.”

Mandarin Chinese will be supported at some point, though not this year.

Eden moves on to laboratory work on “gesture” control. He’s showing off a video game where the actions are controlled without touching the computer, using the built-in camera to detect hand motions. (Think of Microsoft’s Kinect.)

There are more than 75 ultrabooks in design now, with “many more on the way.” Half the models coming this year will have 14″ and 15″ screens.

How are they going to take it all to market? Eden invites onstage Intel’s head of advertising, Kevin Sellers. Intel has been all about speed and performance. But it’s as important to focus on “experiences,” because that’s what people buy. This is Intel’s biggest campaign since the 2003 introduction of the Centrino platform for wireless, says Sellers. He shows off some TV ads for the ultrabook touting the concept of a “new era.”

Intel will partner with “lifestyle” names.

Sellers asks if anyone wants to try an ultrabook. Tells people to reach under their seats. There’s pandemonium. Fifty people had ultrabooks planted under their seats. The lady next to me found she had a pretty sleek-looking Asus model under her chair.