Chipzilla has been bending the ear of any one who will listen at CES claiming that not only is the PC alive and kicking, 2013 will see more innovation than there has been for 15 years.

Navin Shenoy, Intel vice president and general manager said that the development of thin and lightweight ultrabooks and hybrid laptops with detachable screens that fold back and convert into tablets will be a major change for the industry. He told Computerworld that these designs are a far cry from the thick, heavy and fairly static laptop designs that the industry produced for years and will offer the world up to 13 hours of battery life.

If you believe Shenoy, Intel became involved with the whole ultrabook thing to get innovation flowing in the PC industry. For years the world had put up with machines that were thicker than Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and less sexy than John Major’s racy biography 38.7 Shades of Grey. But Shenoy expected to see more innovation in the next 12 months than we had in the last 18 years.

Intel has been showing off detachable hybrid prototype codenamed North Cape which designed to run Intel's upcoming fourth generation Core chip. The computer, has batteries in the base of the machine, as well as in the detachable tablet. It can run for 10 hours without a recharge. At that point, it can be reattached to the base and used either as a laptop or to recharge the tablet.

But Intel has to face the fact that Ultrabook sales in 2012 were less than anyone expected. It seems that Intel has not given up hope especially for hybrid ultrabooks.