Asus has announced that it will start selling its first two ultrabooks. Dubbed Zenbooks, probably because they might be as ephemeral as a cherry blossum , the ultra thin and light laptops to hit the market today.

There will be an 11.6-inch UX21 and the 13.3-inch UX31, and will be among the first entrants in the ultrabook category being championed by chip giant Intel. Intel is betting the farm on the technology, which it hopes will be a rival to tablets. Armed with a keyboard, ultrabooks are a little more useful than a tablet but benefit from the same long battery life, instant-on capabilities and constant Internet connection. Intel has insisted that all this comes with a sub $1000 price tag.

Asus Chairman Jonney Shih announced the new Zenbooks at a launch event in New York yesterday. According to eweek Shih said that Zenbooks will compete with the increasingly tablets and Apple’s MacBook Air, the lowest-end model of which costs $999. Acer’s Aspire S3 is well within the Ultra spec, being priced at $899. The Asus’ UX21 starts at $999. The Zenbook UX31 will be priced starting at $1,099, and going up as high as $1,499. The UX21 will have a brushed metal exterior and be .13 inches thick at its thinnest part.

The Zenbook can boot up in about two seconds from standby mode. They are powered by Intel’s Core “Sandy Bridge” processors and run Microsoft’s Windows 7. Asus’s systems use 128GB hybrid solid-state disk (SSD) which makes it a little different from what has been offered from Acer. The latest ultrabooks from Acer use a 20GB SSD and a 320GB conventional drive combo. It is this that meant that Acer could keep the cost down.

More here.