Toshiba offers McAfee add-on to sweeten Ultrabook deals

Toshiba has launched a promotion to try and encourage business users to invest in Ultrabooks by offering a 12-month subscription to McAfee's Anti-Theft security service.

McAfee Anti-Theft 2.0 offers more features than the anti-virus suites that are typically packaged with Ultrabooks. The software aims to keep information secure as it allows files to be encrypted and devices to be tracked/locked if they are lost or stolen.

Toshiba devices have a reasonably strong foothold in the enterprise and the firm is one of the few to still include features such as an Ethernet jack on its uber-thin devices. The promotion is valid until 31 March 2012 and the models included are:

Satellite U840

Satellite U940

Satellite U840W

Satellite Z930/Z830

Portg Z930/Z830

Satellite U920t

It remains to be seen whether promotions like this will boost sales of Ultrabooks, which have been tepid since they were first introduced at the end of 2011. There are also no concrete figures stating exactly how many have been shipped.

Despite all the major OEMs releasing devices, the availability of cut-priced tablets such as the iPad have proved extremely popular within the enterprise.

The growing trend of BYOD has also been cited as one of the reasons why Ultrabooks have failed to take off, but Intel thinks there will be "significant demand" for the devices in 2013.

The cost of Ultrabooks is also expected to become more competitive to try and mitigate the cannibalisation from smartphones and tablets.