Intel's ultra thin Canoe Lake concept laptop

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Posted on 15 Jun 2010 at 11:56

It might only be a netbook on paper, but the ultra stylish, super thin yet stupidly named Canoe Lake concept laptop from Intel set tongues waggling and fingers twitching during Computex in Taipei.

With a futuristic and gorgeous all aluminium design, it was branded as the thinnest netbook ever; and at 14mm thick it's 18 per cent thinner than the equally anorexic MacBook Air. Intel designed the concept to sell the idea that netbooks need not be just cheap and plastic to manufacturers, and it certainly works as far as we're concerned.

The Canoe Lake's design draws a strong sense of curiosity to touch and use it, and left us wondering how Intel fits everything inside. Although the big hole and fat bezels around the TFT screen bring us sharply back down to earth.

In the back there are cooling vents but we've no idea where the air travels because the entire base and sides are all sealed shut. Not that it needs much cooling though - the latest dual-core Atom N550 CPU uses only 8.5W of power at 1.5GHz and includes Intel's GMA3150 graphics core. There’s also 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 44kWh battery and a 120GB hard drive all somehow shoehorned in there.

Despite the screen only being a 10in model, it looks and feels bigger compared to other netbooks we've used. The keyboard in particular is slightly larger and so much easier to use because of it.

As well as being very thin it's also extremely light - we were assured it can be pinched and held between finger and thumb by the Intel gentleman keeping a close eye on it, although we weren't allowed to test this theory and the risk of the only model in existence.

As merely a concept we unfortunately doubt this will ever make the retail market in its current form, but we can see there's hope for the future of netbooks yet. Of course, that depends whether the industry hasn’t already got itself too wrapped up in the wake of tabletitis.

Author: Richard Swinburne in Taipei