Starting from 9th November in the US you’ll be able to buy a Windows 8 PC, a full Windows 8 PC, that weighs just 1.27lb / 658gm lighter than the good old handheld ultra mobile PC favorite, the Viliv X70EM and lighter than any full-size iPad. The Acer Iconia W510, part of the Acer Iconia W5 Series, runs a dual-core 1.5Ghz Clover Trail CPU with turbo boost to 1.8Ghz, a newer GPU, 32BG of solid-state storage, an optional keyboard dock, a claimed 9hrs of battery life and a 1366×768 IPS multitouch capacitive touchscreen. The Viliv X70EX started at about $600/ The Acer Iconia W510 starts at $499. In Europe you’ll get the dock thrown in for a total of 500 Euro.
Let’s take a closer look at the W510 and think about what it says about the state of ultra mobile PCs in 2012
You know what’s coming? The biggest personal computing fight, ever.
Windows 8 and the expansion of the laptop into smartbook territory will go head to head with an important launch in the handheld computing space the iPad Mini. Following that, Windows Phone 8 and a non-desktop Windows tablet, Microsoft Surface with Windows RT, will start shipping. There has never been a month in history where the personal computer has had such an upheaval. No-one really knows what’s going to happen.
Some of these products could fail showing us again that what people want is not always what the manufacturers think. Touch-enabled sliding and convertible Ultrabooks is one of those risk areas. Windows RT, I believe, is another, at least for the time being but I think there’s a product category that has fantastic change. The SmartPC, Smartbook could finally succeed with Windows 8 on Intel Atom.
Acer is preparing to launch the Aspite M3 Touch with Windows 8. the design is based on a previous iteration of an Acer Ultrabook — the Acer M3. The M3 Touch is a 15.6″ touchscreen Ultrabook which competes with other big Ultrabooks like the Asus S56 and Vizio Thin and Light CT15 (indirectly however, as the latter two lack a touchscreen). Notebook Italia tracked down the M3 Touch for a brief hands-on and also uncovered European pricing.
On an earnings call yesterday, Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, told journalists that Ultrabooks would reach $699 by ‘fall’ – Q4 of this year. Does he not read Ultrabooknews? Ultrabooks are already selling for under $699. Take the Acer Aspire Timeline M5 for example.
Our pal Avram Piltch of LaptopMag got his hands on Acer’s new Aspire S5 Ultrabook and has an in-depth review available for your perusal. Does the S5 stand up to the competition? LaptopMag rated it 3 stars out of 5, but certainly not because of its record breaking SSD array.
Acer America has just announced two new Ultrabooks as part of a new ‘Timeline Ultra’ series. On offer is a 14″ and 15.6″ display, the latter of which has a full numpad on the keyboard. The bezels appear to be nice and thin but the resolution leaves much to be desired. Discrete graphics from Nvidia are included as well as optical drives. Both come in at rather affordable prices, but we’re unsure that the inclusion of the optical drive is such a great idea.
The Acer S3 isn’t the best looking Ultrabook. I think most agree on that but this Champagne-coloured version is a step in the right direction, especially with the high-contrast keyboard which fixes one of the minor complaints I had about the original S3. In this video I give you a quick overview of the changes. I’m assuming the S3-391 is available immediately.
At the Acer press event at CeBIT today we heard about the S5, the levitating Ultrabook!
It’s still the ‘thinnest in the world’ and still 15mm thick but we did manage to confirm some specs and get a little look at the device manager.
At the moment it’s being marketed as a 2nd-gen Core Ultrabook but it’s clear that unless Intel have some more, major delays on Ivy Bridge production that it will launch as a 2nd-generation Ultrabook with 3rd-generation Core CPU.
More images, along with the hands-on video, below. DOn’t forget to check the related posts below for information from CES.
