Acer Preps 15-inch Ultrabook Model
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Being a technology enthusiast sometimes feels like a series of tradeoffs. Want a balls-to-the-wall gaming notebook? Be prepared to sacrifice portability and battery life. Looking for an ultra-slim laptop you can toss in your bag and hardly know it's there? Intel's new Ultrabook form factor has your name written all over it, but only if you can be content with an 11-inch or 13-inch screen. Acer's about to change that.
In speaking with sources entrenched with the Taiwan-based supply chain, DigiTimes claims Acer is working on a 15-inch Ultrabook, but you haven't heard the kicker yet. Not only will it sport a standard sized notebook panel while retaining the Ultrabook form factor's slim design, but Acer is apparently going to sell the thing for $699.
DigiTimes says Acer is pleased so far with sales of its regular Ultrabooks (11-inch and 13-inch), and so the company is willing to roll the dice on a larger model. That's it for the details, but if we're to speculate, it will probably be similar to the Aspire S3 and feature a hard drive / solid state drive combo rather than a dedicated SSD in order to hit its pricing target, or go with a low performance SSD like the one Toshiba stuck in its Portégé R835-P330, which was selling for $699 at Best Buy last week (it's now back up to $799).
Image Credit: Acer
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Nexing
December 23, 2011 at 10:51pm
Nice step forward, Acer.
I do know plenty of people that wants to have a powerful, portable, battery lasting -at least for daily duties-, price competitive... sleek laptop.
And this Acer's ultrabook does come close, except for the terrible omission of Intel's "Ivy bridge" 22nm CPU, which means that whatever CPU this ultrabook, (or any other released up to May 2012) comes with... will bear the almost obsolete 32nm "Sandy Bridge" CPU technology. Which means that this whole early ultrabooks generation will not be battery efficient+powerful enough, will not run cool enough (not to be used at bed, on a coach, on your legs, etc).Very different story to the REALLY new ultrabook laptops to be released somewhen after 2012 Q2 that will come with Ivy Bridge CPUs...
And to worse matters, those who actually buy one of these pre-Ivy Bridge Ubooks will never be able to upgrade into the coming 22nm tech, just because Intel said so (it is technically feasible and the norm for actual Sandy Bridge desktops, confirmed to be upgradeable)... So good luck with the niche & soon-to-be-obsolete 2011/Q1 2012 Ubooks,
BUYERS BEWARE!!!...Suddenly, this price reduction (and others related going on) make much more sense.
razorpetti37
December 21, 2011 at 2:15pm
I literally was just telling someone the other day that I really like the form factor of the Samsung Series 9 and other Ultrabooks that are of similar thickness/weight, but I just don't think I can sacrifice the screen real estate compared to a 15 inch screen. I was seriously considering getting the Dell XPS 15z, but again, it has a thicker and heavier body. This Acer looks like the perfect solution for me, I just hope that they make a model with a Core i7. Maybe by the time it is available, it will have Ivy Bridge? Sooner the better....
tony2tonez
December 21, 2011 at 12:55pm
I actually clicked on your Acer sponsor ad on top of the one pages. The Acer Zen UltraBook look really nice. full SSD and 11.1 and 13.3" screens. I was looking into getting one but they werent available in US from what I saw on the Acer website. I did not look much further.
It still looked awesome, light, and the specs were great with core i7. I like and portable, the 13.3" would suite me just well.
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