13.3inch panels with 2560x1440 pixels will start appearing in ulrabooks early next year! All those beautiful slim Ultrabooks on the show floor had typically a 13-inch class, 1366x768 'HD ready' display - yes the same useless 16:9 moviescreen with less vertical real estate than any 5 year old notebook. How will that compare with, 10 inch class iPad 3 2048x1536 display, with not only 3x the pixel count but also much more useful 4:3 aspect ratio?
Enter 'retina quality' Ultrabooks. Early next year, when Ivy Bridge Ultrabook models arrive, expect to see 2560x1440 13.3 inch displays just some 3 mm thick, to satisfy the system thickness requirements. Take a look at the slides...
Now, a 2560x1440 Ultrabook would have a lot of pixels, over 3 and a half million, to be precise, but the wide moviescreen factor would leave many of those unused, even if editing typical photos or documents or web pages. Having a 2560x1600 full 4 Mpixel screen at 16:10 would, here, enable not just better usability but also more beneficial tablet configuration, which some Ultrabooks will offer. A 16:9 tablet screen is just too elongated, except for Angry Birds playing or movie file watching. And, since these are PREMIUM Ultrabooks, the 5% or so that stingy panel vendors save by glass cutting is not worth the trouble on such top end machines.