Acer has become one of the first PC manufacturers to launch an "Ultrabook", Intel's ambitious attempt to breathe new life into the laptop market
Several PC manufacturers have ushered in Ultrabooks - Intel's term for a new class of exceptionally small and lightweight laptops - at the Berlin IFA tech showcase.
Acer's Aspire S3 Ultrabook partners a "mainstream" price with "uncompromising performance", according to the company. Measuring 13mm at its thinnest, and 17mm at its thickest point, the magnesium-alloy chassis of the S3 weighs a claimed 1.3kg.
The ultra-slim 13.1in, 1,366 x 768 LCD is actually bonded to the aluminium lid to keep it as thin as possible, and Acer's "thermal comfort" design moves all the hot-running components away from the wrist-rest, and positions them near the single exhaust vent at the rear of the laptop, which blows hot air away from the user.
InstantON technology allows the Aspire S3 to resume from sleep in under two seconds, and Acer claims 50 days of standby time in the laptop's "deep sleep" mode.
A claimed battery life of seven hours puts Acer's Ultrabook just behind Lenovo's claims of eight hours for its IdeaPad U300s, but Acer gave no details of battery capacity or the type of battery testing conducted.
Intel's low-voltage second-generation Core processors take centre stage, and we expect Acer to follow suit with the other manufacturers by using a 1.6GHz Core i5-2547M CPU.
With models available with both traditional HDDs and SSDs, Acer said that pricing would range from 799 Euro (around AU$1,064) for the entry-level model, right up to 1,199 Euro ($1,597) for the SSD-equipped version, but made no mention of Australian pricing.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk
