Acer ships new 17-inch Aspire desktop replacement
updated 02:05 pm EST, Tue January 8, 2008
Acer Aspire 7720
Acer took advantage of the immediate wake of CES' opening to revamp one of its larger Aspire notebooks. At 17 inches, the 7720 is intended as a full substitute for a desktop but tries to balance between this and cost: the system uses a new budget Core 2 Duo clocked at 1.66GHz but balances this with 2GB of RAM and a 256MB GeForce 8400M GS that offloads much of the graphics work for games, HD video, and Vista itself from the CPU. It also carries a relatively large 250GB hard drive.
The system is based on Acer's Gemstone design and adds Dolby Home Theater for improved sound out of the box as well as a lid-mounted webcam. The design is intended for retail and should be enroute to stores today for about $1,049.
