Translator
By N2H
Acer is preparing a new 10.1-inch netbook armed with an Intel Pineview processor. The Acer Aspire One 532 (AO532h) is listed on Acer’s driver pages and it seems that this model is already listed by some e-tailers where the specs were found.
The Aspire One 532 will come with a 10.1-inch high resolution (1280 x 720) display and will be powered by the upcoming 1.66GHz Intel Pineview N450 Atom processor and GMA 3150 graphics. It will also come with 1GB RAM, a 160GB/250GB HDD and Windows 7 Starter.
Other features include a 3-cell battery, 5-in-1 card reader, 0.3MP webcam and three USB ports. It will be available in four different colours (Blue, Red, Black and Silver) and prices look like they’ll start from €299. If that price is true, Acer could have a winner on their hands! Check out the evidence after the break.
Source: www.netbookchoice.com
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The original Acer Aspire One has proved one of the best selling netbooks, we hear, helped along by its competitive price circa-£200. That first model had a 9in screen and ran a friendly graphical Linux operating system; now we find Acer has kept the bankable Aspire One name and followed the crowd with a 10in Windows XP mini laptop.
The Acer Aspire One 531 model here has a similar spec to the Packard Bell dot s – unsurprising since PB is now owned by Acer – although we see £20 has been shaved off the price on this Acer.
Like the dot s, it takes only a 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card, and Bluetooth connectivity has been stripped out of this version sold by PC World.
In our performance test, it earned 38 points in WorldBench; a remarkable result when you consider that it uses the older N270 Atom CPU rather than the marginally quicker N280.
Build quality is up to the task, feeling solid enough despite a relatively thin main chassis. It features VGA video out on the left rear corner and ethernet on the right, both angled gently away from the perpendicular. You can switch Wi-Fi wireless off and on from a tiny slide switch under the netbook’s front edge.
Read more @ www.pcadvisor.co.uk
Acer is planning to launch an 11.6-inch ultra-thin model, which is based on Intel’s CULV platform, in July according to Digitimes. The new model will fit in Acer’s Timeline series of ultra-thin notebooks and will be manufactured by Quanta.
We recently heard that Acer is looking to rein back shipments of its 11.6-inch Aspire One 751 (AO751h) netbook, following disappointing sales. The report goes on to say that Acer will either look to phase out the 751 or drop its price when the new 11.6-inch ultra-thin launches to clearly define the difference between both 11.6-inch offerings.
Specifications for this new 11.6-inch ultra-thin are unknown right now, although it looks like Acer has realised that one of the shortcomings of the Aspire One 751 was its 1.33GHz Z520 Atom CPU. The Timeline series of notebooks is based on Intel’s Celeron ULV platform and there is no reason why this new model wouldn’t support the same processor. At least with this platform, Acer would make the most out of its 1366 x 768 display by enabling smooth HD 720p content.
Source – www.netbookchoice.com
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“Take one of the greatest games consoles ever made, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Then gut it to place a fully working PC inside of it.” Words spoken from the brains of a true modder.
This is the Acer Aspire SNES 1. It’s an 8.9-inch Acer Aspire One A150 / Super Nintendo Entertainment System (UK) remix built from the genius of two British super-hacks by the names of quangDX and DuPPs.
Their masterpiece isn’t quite finished – they’re waiting for a few bits and pieces from Hong Kong – but you can already appreciate what a great job they’ve done. Some clever use of LEGO blocks to get the components to sit at the correct levels and a USB to joypad converter for your mouse, or what have you, but the best touches have got to be the 4-LED SNES logo on top and the way that the Super Mario World game cartridge is used to house both a webcam and a slot-loading DVDRW. Nice touch.
Full mod at – Asobitech
Acer, the world’s third biggest PC maker, on Tuesday said it would launch the world’s first notebook computer to run on Google’s Android operating system in the third quarter of this year.
The marriage of Taiwan-based Acer’s low-end Aspire One netbook with Google’s Android operating system, which was originally designed for mobile phones, highlights a continued blurring of the lines between smartphones and computers.
It also poses a challenge to Microsoft by offering an alternative to its Windows XP operating system, which dominates the netbook market with a roughly 80 per cent market share. Microsoft charges about $20 a computer for XP and $40-$45 for the newer Vista version of Windows, analysts say, while Google does not charge for its Android system.
While the price of Acer’s new notebook, which runs on both XP and Android operating systems, will not reflect the free Android operating system, it will be cheaper than the current Aspire One models, the company said. Acer declined to comment more specifically on its pricing strategy for the new product.
Sandy Lin, the software product manager at Acer who headed the project to bring Android to computers, said price “was not our main concern. We wanted to offer users the flexibility [of using both operating systems]”.
Jim Wong, president of IT products at Acer, said the main attraction of using the Android system was its fast start-up time. “No other operating system allows users to power up [the computer] in 18 seconds and power down in one second,” he said.
He added, however, that “we have to make sure the old choice [Windows] doesn’t disappear”.
Source - FT.com
The Aspire One 751 already provides separate access panels for the HDD, memory and Wi-Fi. When opening the Wi-Fi slot, it can be seen that there are two Mini PCI-E slots with only one in use. The 751 is completely taken apart in the disassembly guide, the motherboard and internals are all laid out for all to see. Modders out there can add 3G HSDPA functionality to the 751. See a selection of pictures after the jump.
Thanks to www.netbookchoice.com for the info.
Sam on our forum has successfully replaced the Bootlogo on his AAO250. “this works for others as well I guess, at least all these which use InsydeH2= Bios driver.”
Full details on our forum
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A lot of people are trying to get a bead on the market for netbooks and what it means for manufacturers and operating systems. According to one of the largest Taiwanese hardware companies, the netbook trend will grow more quickly than some Western analysts have predicted.
Global shipments for netbooks will reach 25m – 30m of the recession-priced laptops this year, Acer chairman J.T. Wang told Digitimes earlier this week. That jibes with Garner’s forecast of 21m.
Next year, though, Wang says IT spending will turn around, but buyers will still keep it cheap. That’s why Wang predicts the global netbook market will double to 50m. By comparison, Gartner did not project netbooks reaching that level until 2012.
Wang’s claim is also notable because it means that 1 in 4 laptops sold next year will be a netbook. In other words, many buyers – whether for home or business – don’t really need the extra power of a Core 2 Duo CPU, multiple gigabytes of RAM, a bigger screen, and ports for various accessories.
If he’s right, it means less income for hardware makers, and probably for Microsoft, which will have a hard time convincing buyers of $300 netbooks to pay extra to upgrade their version of Windows XP or Windows 7. Still, despite the lean margins, competition for netbook sales will be fierce – it is one of the few growth areas in the PC industry.
Source – www.computingsa.co.za
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The new Acer Aspire One 531 is a perfect example. While the screen has received a much needed size increase, the chassis has been slimmed down considerably, with excess fat being shaved off at almost every turn. The result is a lappie that offers both a larger, more practical screen than its 8.9-inch predecessor, and a weight that’s pretty much the same. The new slim design looks better than ever too.
The new processor – an Intel Atom N280 – offers only a marginal GHz increase, but it generates less heat, and thus less fan noise, and its basic operation is noticeably faster too. You still won’t be editing HD videos on it, of course, but for day-to-day email, web browsing, editing Word docs or listening to music, it’s easily up to the kind of tasks you’ll be asking of it. And this time you can actually run multiple programs at the same time without reducing speeds to a frustrating crawl.
These aren’t the only improvements either: the ghastly trackpad with the peculiarly aligned mouse buttons, which were the bane of the original Aspire One, has been replaced with a proper trackpad. It’s fast, precise and it has the mouse buttons finally in the right place.
Not much has changed on the keyboard front, but that’s no bad thing. The Aspire One’s keyboard was already one of the strongest around – at 89% of full size, it’s a doddle to get your fingers used to and you can expect to be up to full typing speeds in no time.
It isn’t completely perfect though – the arrow keys are still a little too cramped for comfort and this time Acer, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to cut the top off the Enter key to slip in a ‘’ key, which really should have been positioned elsewhere. The result is that it becomes all too easy to hit Enter and when you’re searching the web. It’s a real shame, because on a system that offers improvements in so many other places, it seems like a staggering oversight.
The new Aspire One provides the same healthy range of connectors and connections as before, with the addition of 3G data connectivity. You’ve got three USB ports (two on the right, one on the left), a VGA output, Ethernet and, uniquely, a pair of card slots. One of them will read multiple card memory types, while the other is for SD only and designed to enhance the system’s storage space. Although with over 140GB on board as standard, you’re not in much danger of running short.
Full review @ www.t3.com
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Acer is planning on launching a new 8.9-inch netbook that will be WiMAX enabled according to some documents that have passed through the US FCC. I find this somewhat strange given yesterday’s news that the company is in the process of phasing out its line of 8.9-inch netbooks.
The documents reveal that the unit will carry the model name of Aspire One Z5G. The WiMAX module will be embedded into the netbook itself which maybe highlights that it will be carried by wireless carriers who will look to bundle the netbook with certain data contracts. No other information such as pricing and availability is available so far.
