It looks like most computers announced this week will start shipping in July, giving us clear signal that this delay of dual-core 17W parts was slightly more severe than many believed.
Ivy Bridge dual-cores, including the top Core i7 3667U and Core i5 3427U, will hit the market in new Chief River based Ultrabooks slightly later than many have hoped for. The good news is that both processors and many design wins will still ship before the back to school period.
We are not sure why it was much easier to make a quad-core and then to come up with a dual-core, but in 2012, if you want the decent battery life and get 8+ hours of web browsing and word / excel editing, you definitely want the 17W dual-core opposed to 35W or more quad-cores.
It is the right time to see some nice Ultrabooks with touch screen options as all these machines will get a cheap Windows 8 upgrade option after the official release in Q4 2012.