Acer on Monday added three 16:9 ratio notebooks to its media-centric Gemstone Blue designs that all focus on price over raw performance. The 15.6-inch, LED-backlit Aspire 5739G is the fastest of the trio with a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, an 8X Blu-ray drive and a GeForce GT 130M for video. It comes with a multi-touch trackpad and ships at the end of June for a particularly low $750, making it the least expensive new Blu-ray notebook today.

The Aspire 5536 is an AMD-based, lower-cost alternative at the same size. It reaches $480 by switching to a 2.1GHz Athlon 64 X2, integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics, 3GB of RAM and a DVD burner. The notebook gets a slightly larger 320GB hard drive, however, and is shipping today.

One desktop replacement-class system, the Aspire 7735Z, brings a 17.3-inch LED-lit display to budget systems. At $600, the portable has a 2GHz Pentium dual-core, 4GB of RAM and the same storage as the 5536. It also ships today.