| MacUpdate Weekend Sale | :This weekend MacUpdate has slashed prices on Painter 12 and Painter Lite. Painter 12 retails for $429, but has been reduced by 54% to $199. Painter Lite has seen a 58% price cut from $69 to $29. Hurry, because these deals are only available until May 19th 2013. |
Aside from unveiling the Aspire R7 with the "Ezel" hinge, Acer also revealed a number of other mobile computing options at its media event. The Aspire P3 is billed as a slate computer that can convert to a notebook with its keyboard case, while the Aspire V5 and V7 notebooks are said to bring thinner and lighter designs to the company's notebook ranges.
Acer has revealed a new notebook with a floating touchscreen, one that it previously teased alongside Star Trek footage. The Aspire R7 holds its 15.6-inch 1080p multitouch display on an "Ezel" hinge, allowing it to be viewed in the normal notebook way, lying flat on a table, flipped to face away from the user, and also closed with the display facing out and making it resemble a tablet.
It turns out that we're not quite in the "post-PC" world just yet. While the cheap, poorly-performing netbook trend has died -- some would say thankfully -- the burgeoning market in the industry besides tablets is ultrabooks. As defined by Intel, ultrabooks are designed for reduced bulk without a corresponding hit on performance and battery life. Nearly all of them are "inspired" by the MacBook Air, and feature solid-state drives and specific engineering to keep the laptop strong and durable. Does the new 11.6-inch Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook live up to the lofty goals set forth by Intel?
Earlier today, Acer America announced the newest addition to the Aspire series, the Aspire V5. Options include two display sizes and processor options including 3rd generation i3 or i5 Ivy Bridge CPUs. A budget option offers second-generation Sandy Bridge processors at the low end. The notebooks are aimed at students and budget-conscious customers.
On April 29, Acer will release a new iteration of its Aspire notebook line with Intel's third-generation Core processor inside. In addition to a 2.1GHz Core i7 processor, the new Aspire will support up to 8GB of RAM, and comes with a 750GB hard drive.
Intel has set ambitious targets for the number of ultrabooks it hopes will sell this year, part suppliers understood late Wednesday. Supposed internal roadmap details passed on to Digitimes had between 20 million to 30 million ultrabooks shipping in 2012. That number would double or triple in 2013, according to the claims, as the supply chain would be truly ready for mainstream adoption, such as reinforced plastic to emulate the rigidity of metal without some of the cost.
Hardware maker Acer will bring out its AcerCloud online storage service this April, DigiTimes claimed. This launch will be restricted to mainland China and North America only, however, with other countries going live in the fourth quarter of the year. It will come to PCs as well as Android and Windows Phone mobile operating systems, with iOS support coming in the near future, the company hinted.
Acer has introduced the Aspire Timeline Ultra M3-581TG, an ultrabook that is claimed to be the first to be equipped with one of NVIDIA's Kepler-based GPUs. The GeForce GT 640M card is claimed to enable the ultrabook to play Battlefield 3 on the game's highest detail settings on the 15.6-inch 1366x768 display.
ASUS' ultrabook refreshes could include some of the first truly discounted, mainstream ultrabooks. New leaks stemming from the same source for The Verge had two 13.3-inch models, the UX32A and UX32Vd, coming in at under $800. Both would still get Intel's low voltage Ivy Bridge Core i3, i5, and i7 processors, but only sometime after they shipped; initial batches would use the outgoing Sandy Bridge generation, insiders said.
Acer's Christoph Pohlmann in remarks Tuesday at CeBIT revealed that the company was selling ultrabooks at extremely thin margins. The base version of the Aspire S3 was being sold at a stricty break-even price at $799, he mentioned to The Verge. It was only viable at all as higher-end models had enough of a premium to make a small profit.
Acer reported some of the first good news for its performance in some time after it generated its first profit in nine months. The company managed to earn the equivalent of $2.5 million after two consecutive losses in 2011. The profit was bittersweet as it contrasted with a $132 million profit one year earlier; total revenue also fell 14 percent to $4.3 billion.
An investment note from JPMorgan analyst Mike Moskowitz on Tuesday downplaying the likely impact of Windows-based ultrabooks was backed by support from PC resellers. He saw most competitors pursuing the MacBook Air and going for "more of the same" in computers, largely trying to replicate what they'd seen before instead of trying something new. The emulation was ironic for an industry that had initially downplayed the Air, he said, although he saw there being a number of practical competitive issues as well.
Acer chairman JT Wang made more comments at his company's Lunar New Year event that outlined more of how Acer planned to survive Apple and the computer market. He made the prediction that ultrabooks and netbooks would fold into a single category within the next 18 to 24 months. Digitimes didn't glean how this would happen, although the company had predicted $499 ultrabooks by 2013 that would leave little gap between the two.
Acer chairman JT Wang chose the unusual venue of his company's Lunar New Year ceremony to make predictions about early 2012 sales. With Digitimes and others in attendance, he thought Acer had a good chance of being profitable in its first quarter of 2012 after a 2011 defined by losses. The Chinese holiday and hard drive shortages would make January a low point, but the rest of the quarter would do well.
Acer chairman JT Wang mentioned late Wednesday that as much as a third of of his company's entire notebook line may be ultrabooks. With Digitimes listening, Wang expected systems like the Aspire S5 and Timeline Ultra to account for 25 to 35 percent of all Acer's notebooks in 2012. The recently unveiled systems would be a foundation of the line and ship in spring, but more models were coming in the summer, the chairman said.
We've had the opportunity to try Acer's Aspire S5, and we've come back pleasantly surprised so far. The magnesium and metal chassis, which is matte, feels good to the touch, is thin and light, and isn't cutting corners like some others. More importantly, the keyboard and trackpad are genuinely nice to use; it doesn't have the full suite of multi-touch gestures, but it's generally responsive, supports two-finger scrolling, and isn't too hard to properly right-click with the invisible buttons.
Acer ahead of its formal keynote has unveiled two ultrabook-class systems. The Aspire S5 is billed as the world's thinnest ultrabook and measures just under 0.6 inches thick. The black, magnesium-and-metal body weighs 2.97 pounds. Along with the thinnest, Acer touts the S5 as one of the first Windows-based ultrabooks to carry Thunderbolt, which it backs with USB 3.0.
Acer President Jim Wong has continued a string of comments on mobile late Wednesday with remarks expecting steep price drops in ultrabooks. Although they were sitting at $1,000 at the end of the year, the notebooks could get to between $799 and $899 by spring next year, he said with Digitimes in attendance. He fully expected prices to drop even steeper, down to just $499 in 2013.
Acer saw rare optimism for performance this year after company President Jim Wong said the company would return to profit for the fall. The company's successive losses for the past six months were clearing up now that it had finished selling off the "abnormalities" of unsold notebooks. The company is still expected to be in the red for 2011.
Acer won't quit netbooks like Samsung is rumored to do, VP Scott Lin insisted late Monday. With rumors of Samsung backing out in 2012, he mentioned to Digitimes that developing countries, such as China, India, and Indonesia, were still focused more on netbooks than tablets. IT often tended to buy models in bulk in the area, the executive said.
Acer and ASUS are reportedly developing very high density displays to try to head off the iPad 3's 2048x1536 display, a new rumor claimed Wednesday. AU Optronics and Chi Mei Innolux were said by Digitimes' industry contacts to be working on 1920x1280 (incorrectly marked as 1928) LCDs that would go into new ultrabooks as soon as January or February. The Retina Display effect would be "forcing" upgrades at PC builders.
Acer has announced that it is now shipping upgraded configurations for its Aspire S3 notebook, enabling customers to choose a Core i7 processor rather than the Core i5 chip that ships with the base model. The latest offering brings the notebook in closer competition with the MacBook Air, which also provides a choice between Core i5 and i7 CPUs.
Contract supplier Wistron is developing a new material to help ultrabook makers who have been finding new materials for their designs after being squeezed by Apple. The firm's president Robert Hwang was working with a new notebook chassis partner to create a new material to use as a substitute, he told local news outlet Apple Daily. It wouldn't have connections either to metal or to substitutes that have been used in its place, such as carbon fiber or fiberglass.
The rumored very thin 15-inch MacBook may already have seen some of its earliest part shipments. A rumor emerging from the parts chain told Digitimes that unnamed components were already being sent to Apple. Their nature wasn't known, although test runs of the LCD had purportedly taken place in the past.
Lenovo may be one of the first Windows PC builders to significantly undercut the current MacBook Air in price. An escaped roadmap (PDF) has a 14-inch "mainstream" ThinkPad ultrabook arriving in May or June. At a price closer to $800, it would be significantly less expensive than the current model.
Acer late Thursday partly rejected talk that it had to cut back ultrabook shipments. The PC builder claimed that the Aspire S3 ultrabook was selling well and would hit its rough sales target of between 250,000 to 300,000 units in the fall. Sales were going well to date, it said.
Acer and ASUS were understood late Wednesday to have cut their current ultrabook orders by 40 percent after poor sales in the first month. Having originally targeted their total orders at between 250,000 to 300,000 each, Digitimes heard from contract ODMs (original design makers) that systems like the Acer Aspire S3 and ASUS Zenbook were down to between just 150,000 to 180,000. Their relatively high prices for normally budget-focused PC builders wasn't the only factor, the sources claimed, as the PCs themselves weren't stacking up to the MacBook Air.
Intel's Asia-Pacific GM Navin Shenoy in an interview Tuesday said that ultrabooks weren't likely to get down to typical Windows PC levels in the near future. While Intel was helping to find ways to lower the price, Shenoy told Reuters that "more work needs to happen" from partners to dip much below the $999 price set by the originator of the category, the MacBook Air. The magic $699 price thought to bring mainstream adoption would come, but it wouldn't be in the first wave.
Acer continued to struggle in coping with Apple on Friday after it posted a loss equivalent to $36.3 million. The drop wasn't as steep as the $234.2 million from the spring thanks to the Taiwan PC bulider writing off the $150 million in 'abnormalities' of unsold PCs in Europe. The result still dashed earlier hopes of turning back to profit for Acer, which still expects to post an overall loss for the year.
Acer's MacBook Air-fighting Aspire S3 is now available for pre-order at Amazon for $900. While ship dates aren't yet being revealed, the full specs of the Amazon system are. The mid-range S3-951-6646 model will get a 1.6GHz Core i5 ultra-low voltage processor, a 320GB hard drive, and a 20GB SSD to go with 4GB of RAM.
Acer claimed the distinction of being the first to ship to the US outside of Apple in Intel's new ultrabook category by proving launch details for the Aspire S3. The very thin 13-inch notebook will try to undercut Apple on price by carrying an $899 price tag when it ships to the US and Canada this week. The base trim gives it a low-power Core i5 along with 4GB of RAM and a rare mix of both a 20GB SSD for speed and a 320GB rotating drive for space.
Any low ultrabook shipments may be a virtue of chronic aluminum shortages running through to 2012. An industry news tip stemming from Digitimes has some of the key companies making aluminum panels for ultraportable notebooks, including Foxconn and Catcher, fully occupied until at least the end of 2011. MacBook Air competitors that use aluminum, such as the Acer Aspire S3, Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, and Toshiba Portege Z830 might all be constrained as a result.
Netbooks may have faced another crucial setback as Intel's Cedar Trail platform was moved back again. Once intended to arrive for end users in the fall, the next-generation Atom platform should now ship to partners in the fall but won't be in end user devices until 2012. Netbook and hybrid division marketing lead Cindy Ng suggested at the Intel Developer Forum that it was coming out of a pair of technology additions.
The first batch of ultrabooks attempting to take on the MacBook Air might be produced with intentionally low production numbers to test the market, notebook industry insiders purported late Monday. Systems like the Acer Aspire S3, Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, and Toshiba Portege Z830 may all ship in early production runs under 50,000. The move Digitimes understood would be for "testing the water" to see if a market exists for non-Mac versions of the ultraportables.
The Acer Aspire S3 ultrabook has been priced for Europe where it will start at 799 euro for the entry model, through to 1199 euro for the top-end model. The notebook, previously known as the Aspire 3951, is one of the first to be built according to Intel’s new ultrabook specifications. Like its MacBook Air inspiration, the 13-inch notebook also weighs in at 3 pounds, in this case thanks to its magnesium-alloy and aluminum construction.
Acer is prepping to launch its new ultrabook at the IFA exhibition in Berlin on Friday. Based on banners appearing at the show in advance, the company has rebranded the MacBook Air rival as the Acer Ultrabook S3. Previously, it had been alluded to as the Acer Aspire 3951.
The Acer Aspire 3951 ultrabook has been spotted live and given the hands-on treatment. The production model looks unchanged from the promotional shots that have previously leaked. On of the first notebooks on the market that has been built according to Intel's ultrabook design specifications, the MacBook Air clone is designed to go head-to-head with Apple's MacBook Air range as an ultra thin Windows alternative.
Acer's answer to the current MacBook Air, the Aspire 3951, has had its release moved up to September, a story in Taiwan's Commercial Times [reg. required]. Once thought due in December, the 'ultrabook' would move up to September. The ostensible goal was to compete with the ASUS UX21 and not necessarily Apple.
Intel is refusing calls from Windows PC builders to cut chip prices as steeply as they'd like to help them drop prices below Apple's MacBook Air, notebook industry contacts alleged late Monday. The companies had wanted to drop ultra-low voltage Core i5 and i7 prices by half to let them keep profit margins while competing on price. At best, Digitimes heard, the biggest PC designers were getting 20 percent discounts.
A hinted-at Acer ultrabook may have had its first public sighting through leaked renders and details in Vietnam. The 13.3-inch Aspire 3951 would borrow more than a few cues from the MacBook Air Intel's ultrabook spec is meant to imitate and would have a supposedly 0.51-inch thick, aluminum, 3.09-pound shell. In a nod to the Dell Adamo, however, Sohoa's look showed that most of the ports would be moved to the back, where the hinge design would make sure they stayed available.
Acer retail channels are being told that the Iconia Tab A100 will launch in the US sooner than thought. The seven-inch Android 3.2 tablet is now due to arrive in early August and will cost well below the 10-inch A500, at $300 versus $450. It still has a Tegra 2 processor but, apart from the smaller screen, will pare back the storage to 8GB and halve the RAM to 512MB.
Acer has expanded its notebook lineup with the Aspire 5755, a midrange device geared for multimedia purposes. The computer can be purchased with a range of Intel's Core-series processors, including the i7-2820QM, while graphics are handled by NVIDIA's GeForce GT components with automatic switching between discrete and integrate hardware for power optimization.
ASUS CFO David Chang on Friday commented that his company and others might face a ripple effect from Acer's European overstock writeoff. Depending on what systems had gone unsold, they could either have only a minimal effect or create shockwaves, he said. If the unsold inventory represents current PCs using Sandy Bridge-based Intel processors, the writeoff could amount to price dumping as the systems hit stores at steep discounts and temporarily boost Acer's European market share while squeezing out ASUS and others.
Acer has given a treat to buyers of the second-generation Aspire One Happy by giving them access to more advanced hardware than the regular model. The new versions use the dual-core 1.66GHz Atom N570, a speed upgrade from the 1.5GHz original, as well as 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive as standard. They also represent the first 10-inch systems to get the unique "ripple" molded lid from the Aspire One 722 and have fresh new blue, orange, pink, and yellow lids themed after desserts.
Acer's shift to mobile may have taken an immediate effect on its production, part supplier insiders said Monday. Orders for its Aspire One netbooks are supposedly being gradually replaced with its Iconia Tab models this month, with the A500 now on sale at Best Buy. As many as 400,000 to 500,000 of the 10-inch touchscreens for the Android-based A500 and Windows-based W500 had been ordered for April, Digitimes said.
Acer is reportedly set to introduce an updated version of its Aspire One 721 netbook, which will carry the model number 722. Like its predecessor, the new model is said to integrate a dual-core AMD processor running at 1GHz. Both variants also share an 11.6-inch display with 1366x768 resolution, though the new model offers stylish lid with a liquid appearance.
AT&T on Friday started up another Windows Phone 7 promo in hopes of driving sales of Microsoft's mobile OS. Those who buy either an LG Quantum or a Samsung Focus will get an Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830 for free. The 11.6-inch system comes in its base spec with a 1.2GHz Core i3 and Windows 7 Home Premium.
Some of Acer's unveilings from CES came closer to reality today as its Aspire One 522 came up for pre-order at Amazon. The company's first netbook based on AMD's Fusion should sell for $330 and ships in three to five weeks. Amazon's edition comes in a single trim with the 1GHz dual-core C50 chip, Radeon HD 6250 graphics and a 250GB hard drive.
Acer has expanded its Aspire notebook lineup with a new flagship and several midrange models. The AS8950G represents the company's highest-performing notebook, pairing Intel's quad-core i7-2630QM processor with ATI Radeon discrete graphics and 2GB of dedicated graphics memory. An 18.4-inch display features 1080p resolution and LED backlighting, while the trackpad can be switched from gesture mode to a media console mode for playback control.
Acer has expanded its Aspire series with a new network-connected media player, the RevoView. The DLNA-certified box offers 1080p video playback, an Ethernet port, optical audio, two USB ports, and a memory card reader. Users can also load media onto swappable 3.5-inch internal hard drives, with a tray that can be shared with the company's Aspire M Series desktops.
