If you thought Apple had a monopoly on attractive design, think again. Intel turned heads with its next-generation notebook design yesterday, and while Intel doesn't manufacture laptops itself, the company is partnering with design firm Ziba to make the Intel Mobile Metro notebook a reality. Less than an inch thick and weighing 2.25 pounds, the Mobile Metro has essentially every next-generation Intel chipset and technology there is, including some that aren't on the market yet.

The Mobile Metro will have Intel's upcoming Penryn chipset, which promises high efficiency and low power requirements. Because the chipset is low-power, the battery will give you 14 hours of juice, and the extra power will be used to power all the technology Intel plans on putting under the hood. The notebook will come standard with WiFi, EV-DO, and WiMax, solid-state storage, and more. The EV-DO and WiMax chipsets are slated to be released at the end of 2007 or early 2008, so that alone indicates that this laptop won't be a reality anytime in the immediate future.

The features don't stop there, however. Intel also plans to include biometrics such as fingerprint scanning, and security functions such as remote disk wiping (it is solid state, after all) to protect your data should the laptop fall into the wrong hands. The Mobile Metro will also include a noise-canceling microphone array for quality VoIP calls, and an attractive portfolio sheath as a kind of "sleeve" for the notebook. The sheath itself is impressive technology: It wraps around the notebook and attaches magnetically, and will serve as a wireless battery charger. The sheath also will contain a large color e-ink display that will display your calendar, recent e-mails, photos, or anything else Vista's sideshow can display.

If all of this sounds too good to be true, it very well might be. The design is just a project, and the idea of a .7-inch thick, 2.25 pound laptop with all these features is more than impressive. Intel and Ziba admit that designing such a laptop and making it so small and light will mean high manufacturing costs, and likely a high purchase price. Even so--it's gorgeous.

[ via SlashGear ]