TechieGroups

Acer has formally announced the US pricing and launch date details for the Iconia A200, the follow up to the Iconia A500 tablet it launched mid-last year. The A200 specsheet reads pretty similar to the A500, with a 10" 1280×800 display, Honeycomb 3.2, Nvidia's tried-and-true Tegra 2 computing platform, 1GB of memory, microSD expandable storage, a full size USB port, and your choice of 8GB (9) or 16GB (9) internal NAND. 

Some of the bigger changes include the deletion of the rear facing camera (a 2MP front facing webcam remains), but by far the biggest difference is the change in industrial design. The A200 has a much cleaner and more elegant design than the A500, with a smooth, rounded backplate done in a titanium gray soft-touch plastic (there's also a metallic red model available elsewhere in the world, though the Acer US press release makes no mention of its availability on this side of the pond). 

The overall look is more conventional and conservative than the A500, but it looks like it should have better build quality (our biggest peeve with the A500 being the ill-fitting plastic and metal pieces that made up the chassis) due to the single plastic part making up the body of the device. Also, the rounded edges and corners should make it more comfortable to handle than the previous Iconia. 

The A200 will hit stores on January 15 with Honeycomb 3.2 installed; an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) is promised in the mid-February timeframe. With its budget-oriented price and relative lack of features, the A200 is clearly aimed at the entry-level 10" tablet market. For performance users, Acer is expected to debut a high end Iconia Android tablet at CES next week, so stay tuned.

With all of the noise Intel and some of the OEMs are making about ultrabooks, it's easy to forget that as PC users we've already enjoyed thin-and-light and ultraportable notebooks for a while now. Were they sliver-thin? No, but the magical three pound point is something we've always been able to find. Netbooks, for better or worse, only made portability that much more accessible and affordable.

With that in mind, we have on hand Acer's TravelMate 8481T, a notebook that measures under an inch thick (without the battery) and sports an SSD and matte screen. If you were in the market for an ultraportable, this one may be worth your attention. It's not technically an ultrabook, but in some ways that's not necessarily bad.

TAIWANESE PC MAKER Acer has announced its Iconia Tab A200, a cut down version of its existing tablet.

We expected the A200 to be a follow-on from the A100 tablet, but at 10.1in it’s more of a sequel to the firm’s A500 model. Strangely not much has changed in comparison with the A500 that Acer launched earlier this year.

The A200 has a specifications sheet similar to that of its predecessor with the same Nvidia 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 2MP front facing camera. In other areas the tablet has been downgraded with only 8GB or 16GB of internal storage instead of 32GB and no rear facing camera.

With a newer model we expect the device to be thinner and lighter, which the A200 is. It is 0.9mm thinner at 12.4mm and 45g lighter at 720g than the A500, but this doesn’t look good when you stand it up against tablets like the Asus Transformer Prime, which is just 8.3mm thin and weighs only 586g.

Acer said, “Ideal for sharing good times via gaming, e-books, movies, music, photography, social networking and more, this tablet is an amazing hub of activity for people of all ages, and it comes at a very affordable price.”

The firm said that the tablet will come with Android 3.2 Honeycomb and that an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will arrive in January. The only reason for buying this rather unimpressive looking device that we can see is the “affordable price”.

The A200 will offer eight hour battery life, a microSD card slot, WiFi and a full sized USB port. It’s a bizarre effort from Acer that leaves us wondering how it will sell this. µ

Following yesterday's announcement of the Lenovo U300s ultrabook, Acer and Toshiba have thrown their hats into the ring: Acer with its Aspire S3, and Toshiba with its Portege Z830.

Let's start with the similarities: Both feature a 13.3" screen with a 1366×768 resolution, Sandy Bridge ULV processors, DDR3 memory, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, wi-fi, a webcam, and bluetooth. Both also feature SSDs of varying capacities, though the Aspire S3 will offer a higher-capacity but slower mechanical HDD option (sources indicate that HDD models will feature an embedded SSD to retain the fast boot times required by Intel's Ultrabook spec, but specifics are hard to come by). Both will also launch later this year: Toshiba is commiting to November, while Acer declined to be more specific.

And the differences: the Toshiba model also features built-in Ethernet, a VGA port, a backlit keyboard, and a third USB port, while the Acer model is slightly thinner at 0.51 inches but heavier at about 3 pounds (the Toshiba is 0.63 inches high and weighs about 2.5 pounds, though it should be noted that the weight of each model may vary based on component selection). The Toshiba will also be cheaper, starting at around ,000 (compared to the Acer's ,179).

{gallery 1347}

Looking at these early Ultrabooks, it's becoming clear that these laptops, like netbooks before them, are going to have to fight to differentiate themselves. In these particular models, this is mostly being done with ports: the Acer is the only one to lack a wired Ethernet port, while the Toshiba is the only to offer a VGA out and a third USB port.

This sort of heavy competition can be good, to a point, but I'm hoping we don't see the same thing we already see in the netbook and low-end laptop market: dozens of unexciting computers that are, for most intents and purposes, indistinguishable from one another.

Source: BusinessWire, PCMag

With today's introduction of the Acer Iconia Tab A100, the 7-inch Honeycomb tablet era begins. Vivek and Jarred looked at the new entrant's big brother, the 10.1" A500, and were left . . . well, a little underwhelmed. Some of their complaints are endemic of everything Honeycomb, so far: occasionally sluggish performance, potentially awkward form factor, bugginess. Some of their complaints, though, were fixed on Acer’s 10.1” tablet itself: questionable build quality, uncompetitive pricing, less than stellar viewing angles. So what does Acer’s diminutive tablet offer up?

If you put the spec sheets for the A500 and the A100 next to each other, it might take you a few minutes to see the difference. In truth, the A100 shares the same SoC, memory, and connectivity with the larger tablet (Tegra 2, 1GB RAM, 802.11 b/g/n). The A100 will also launch with Android 3.2; the A500 recently received the 3.1 update, but 3.2 isn't here quite yet (though it's coming). Where the two models differ is in screen size, ports, and software. The 7” capacitive display is driven by a 1024×600 TFT LCD panel, not inspiring on paper, but if it’s related to the shipping panel in the A500 it can still impress with its visuals, even if the viewing angles aren’t spectacular. The full size USB port of the A500 is omitted, and the HDMI port takes on a mini configuration. By the pictures, the A100’s design looks similar to the A500, but with a decorative rear panel that will be available in multiple colors in the future.

Battery life is quoted at 4.5 hours of video playback, about half of what we saw in the A500, which isn’t surprising given it carries a half-sized battery. Pricing, which has gotten more and more competitive for the A500 is coming in a little higher than expected. Originally rumored to be the first sub-0 Honeycomb tablet, the 8GB A100 will come in at 9, while a 16GB SKU will retail for 9. (Hooray for 8GB upgrades no longer costing an extra +, though!)

Like Samsung, Acer has prepared some tablet optimized software to extend Honeycomb's utility a little further. Social Jogger is their riff on a social media aggregator; it’s currently configured for Facebook and Twitter, hopefully with more services to be added soon. LumiRead is Acer’s e-reader software, complete with book store, and there's also Day Planner. Much of the PR for this device focuses on its utility for families and “modern moms,” in particular. Day Planner is a potentially valuable scheduling app that does more than display your calendar and agenda; it also integrates your e-mail, news, weather, contacts, note taking and, even, mapping services. The use case for this kind of software could be huge, and we will be interested in how good the software turns out.

We’ll update more when we have a sample in-house. Until then peep the gallery and judge the tweaked Iconia design for yourself.

{gallery 1302}

Next in our series of Honeycomb tablet reviews is the Acer Iconia Tab A500. The A500 was the second Honeycomb tablet to go on sale, and is one of four on the market at present, all of which are very similar. They share basic specs—10.1” 1280×800 displays, NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 underhood, 1GB LPDDR2 RAM, 16-64GB onboard NAND, front and rear facing cameras with HD video capture, basic wireless connectivity options, and stock versions of Android 3.0/3.1 Honeycomb (albeit with different preloaded software packages). The hardware similarities makes things like design and price that much more important, and the latter is where Acer seemed to have an edge.

Long a sales leader in the budget notebook market, Acer jumped into the tablet game with a price advantage—the Iconia A500 came in at 9, in comparison to 9 for the iPad and 9 for the WiFi-edition Motorola Xoom (though it is worth mentioning that the Xoom comes with twice as much onboard storage as the Iconia and iPad). ASUS released the 9 Eee Slate Transformer soon afterwards, but supply issues meant that the Acer was the cheapest readily available Honeycomb tablet for some time. More recently, some retailers have dropped the prices of the Iconia, with MacMall selling it on their eBay store at one point for just 9. On paper, that’s a screaming deal, but it's decent even at MSRP. How does the Acer hold up in real life? Read on to find out.

TAIWANESE HARDWARE OUTFIT Acer has announced a 60 per cent cut to its target for tablet shipments this year.

According to a report at Reuters, Chairman JT Wang told reporters after a shareholders meeting that the new target for tablet shipments is 2.5 to 3 million instead of the 5 to 7 million set at the beginning of the year.

Acer is expected to sell 800,000 tablets in both the third and fourth quarters of this year. This number seems pretty insignificant when you consider that the Ipad 2 sold one million units over its first weekend.

“The third quarter will be considerably more stable. It will be similar to the second quarter or better,” Wang said at the meeting. “The fourth quarter will be even better.”

Acer is engaged in what’s proving to be a busy and difficult battle for tablet market share. Its range of devices includes tablets running both Windows and the Android operating system.

The Iconia Tab W500 seems to have had the biggest advertising push and is a hybrid between a tablet and a netbook. Whilst this might be a clever idea and appeal to consumers torn between the two it has some stiff competition.

Apart from the fact that every tablet is being compared to the Ipad 2, its main rival is the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, which is another hybrid that runs Google’s Android operating system. The Transformer has had much better reviews – we gave it 10 out of 10 at The INQUIRER – and is cheaper, so it’s a no brainer to choose between the two unless you can’t live without Windows.

Other than tablets Acer has a number of new laptops coming out including the Ethos and Timelinex series. It also has one of the first Chromebooks that will come to the market in the UK, but we’ll have to wait and see how popular these will prove to be. µ

Acer's popular TimelineX line of notebooks has undergone a refresh to Sandy Bridge and brought a healthy number of upgrades to the hardware with them, including a major (and much appreciated) change to the keyboard. With models topping out at just 1.15" thick and 5.6 pounds in the case of the 15.6" model, these notebooks are made for performance in a thin-and-light form factor. So what is Acer bringing to the table today?

Acer's popular TimelineX line of notebooks has undergone a refresh to Sandy Bridge and brought a healthy number of upgrades to the hardware with them, including a major (and much appreciated) change to the keyboard. With models topping out at just 1.15" thick and 5.6 pounds in the case of the 15.6" model, these notebooks are made for performance in a thin-and-light form factor. So what is Acer bringing to the table today?

LAPTOP MAKER Acer has announced its line of Aspire Timelinex laptops with updated design and specifications.

Acer has announced two series of laptops in as many days with the Timelinex range following hot on the heals of the Aspire Ethos series that we saw yesterday. The line-up consists of three different sizes that Acer has said will be available from 1 August.

The three options are a 13.3in 3830T model, a 14in 4830T model and a larger 15.6in 5830T model. They will all have Cinecrystal LED displays with 1366×768 resolution.

These laptops span from 22.2mm up to 31mm in thickness. Weight-wise the smallest weighs 1.87kg and the largest weighs 2.49kg.

Much like the Aspire Ethos models, the Timelinex laptops are equipped with Intel’s range of Sandy Bridge Core i processors. There is the option of Nvidia Geforce discrete graphics and up to 750GB of internal storage. You can also opt for a solid state drive for improved performance.

Connectivity includes HDMI and USB 3.0 ports as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and a 1.3MP webcam.

Acer said the Timelinex laptops will have 25 per cent more power than last year’s series. This apparently equals to up to 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. As with the Ethos series Acer claims that the battery will last over 1,000 charge cycles, which supposedly means a total lifespan of up to 4 years.

Acer’s Timelinex series seems to be quite similar to its Ethos range except with more of a focus on portability and less on multimedia features. µ