According to the latest tech chatter, Acer has the MacBook Air in its sights and plans to offer a competitive product in the form of an ultra-thin measuring a scant 1.9 centimeters.
Rumor also has it that Acer plans on cramming one of Intel’s next-gen Calpella ULV processors into its upcoming ultra-thin. We’re talking about one of Intel’s ULV Core i5 or i7 processors here, which would be no small deal. These chips come rated at up to 1.2GHz, but can ramp as high as 1.8GHz and 2.26GHz in Turbo Boost mode, and they also support Hyperthreading.
If this thing comes to fruition, it would offer traditional notebook-like performance in a frame smaller than the company’s existing Timeline series.
No other details are yet available, including price or availability.
Image Credit: Acer (Timline notebook displayed)
It doesn’t matter how good you’ve been all year, Santa won’t be placing an Atom N450-based netbook under the Christmas tree this year. But on the bright side, you may not have to wait long. According to reports, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, and MSI, all of which originally planned on launching Atom N450-based netbooks this month, will release the units on January 11, 2010.
The decision to hold off until then complies with their agreement with Intel to only launch the products after January 10. There will be three versions of Atom N450-based netbooks using different OSes, the most popular (and expensive) expected to be Windows 7 Starter. The other two include Moblin Linux and Windows XP Home.
Atom N450 is part of Intel’s Pine Trail platform architecture, which moves the GPU and memory controller onto the CPU die. This results in a smaller package that consumes less power. It will come clocked at 1.66GHz and sport 512KB of L2 cache, along with a 200MHz graphics clock (compared to 133MHz on the Atom N270 platform).
Image Credit: Intel
The busy guys and gals over at Acer have put the final touches on the company’s revamped AspireRevo R3510-U9012 "one-liter nettop." Kicking things up a notch over its predecessor, the refreshed PC now sports an Intel dual-core Atom 330 instead of a single core Atom 230.
It also comes built around Nvidia’s Ion platform, 2GB of DDR2 memory, a 160GB hard drive, six USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, eSATA, WiFi, and Windows 7 Home Premium, fast becoming an obligatory OS in any new OEM setup. Not a bad spec sheet for a $330 nettop.
"The AspireRevo is a practical and highly adaptable nettop for the home — powerful enough to take on games but so thin, it can be neatly hidden from view," said Susan Hu, Desktop Product Manager for Acer America. "It’s also energy-efficient and quiet."
One of the coolest features of the AspireRevo is its ability to connect to the back of an LCD or TV panel with a VESA attachment. In essence, you could turn your swank LCD HDTV into a respectable all-in-one. And did we mention it’s only $330?
Image Credit: Acer via HotHardware
