Intel Nikiski prototype ultrabook demonstrated at CES

[CES 2012] At Intel’s press conference today, the company unveiled its plans to flood the market with over 75 different ultrabooks this year. While most of them weren’t anything out of the ordinary, there was one which caught our attention: a prototype Windows 8 ultrabook called the Nikiski. While it wasn’t mentioned who was the manufacturer behind it, that didn’t stop us from being marveled at its ingenuity.

The Nikiski has a unique design featuring a clear glass touchpad that takes up the space underneath the keyboard which is usually reserved for your palm rest. The touchpad acts like any regular touchpad, but it has the ability to detect when you rest your palms on it to type, so you don’t accidentally move the cursor or select a wrong option unintentionally but that’s just half the story.

When the lid is closed, the see through touchpad serves another purpose – it acts as a window into the display of the laptop, letting you see about a third of the ultrabook’s screen. However what you’ll be seeing won’t be the regular Windows 8 interface – instead, you’ll get a widget view which you can use to check your emails, feeds and notifications. The screen can also be interacted with through the glass touchpad, so you can scroll through stuff, click links etc – making it more than just a colorful ticker. A pretty interesting concept if you ask me, though we’ll have to get our hands on one to see just how useful it actually is.

George Wong
Categories: Computers
Tags: CES, CES 2012, Intel, ultrabooks, Windows 8