Intel and partners are said to be showing off some 50 Ultrabooks at CES early next year and some of those are likely to feature a convertible form fact that allows for them to be used both as notebooks and tablets. This is by no means a new development in the notebook world, but it wasn’t a form factor that was expected for Ultrabooks.One problem with building a convertible notebook is that the hinge mechanism and the touch panel in the screen adds to the overall thickness to the system and Intel has some pretty strict restrictions in terms of what qualifies as an Ultrabook. Anything with a screen below 14-inches in size can’t be thicker than 18mm and for models 14-incher or larger the thickness is limited to 21mm in Intel’s books. As such Intel has generously allowed for an extra 2mm of additional thickness regardless of the screen size for convertible Ultrabooks.Further to our own findings, Digitimes has corroborated the fact that there will be Ultrabooks with touch screens, although the publication didn’t specify convertibles, but went as far as saying that this is expected to be done in preparation for Windows 8 which will come with the touch friendly metro UI. Samples of touch modules are apparently already sampling to notebook makers, although we’re not expecting touch enabled Ultrabooks to be part of the first Ivy Bridge based models since without Windows 8 it would be hard to convince consumers and business users alike to go for a convertible Ultrabook

Read more: Convertible Ultrabooks are in the pipeline by VR-Zone.com