Shane McGlaun23 June 2009, 7:30 PM
New Acer notebooks are cheap and did I mention they were cheap?
Notebooks are rather like fast cars -- you can have cheap or you can have fast, but not both. Acer has
announced some new notebooks that deliver on the low cost desire of many people during the poor economy, but lack the power you really wish you could afford.
The Acer Aspire AS5536 notebook has a 15.6-inch screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio that is LED backlit. The rig runs an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor at 2.1GHz and has 3GB of RAM. Graphics are via ATI Radeon 3200 GPU and storage is to a 320GB HDD. That hardware won't break any performance records, but the rig should outperform your typical netbook. The RRP for the modest rig is $US479.99 ($612), not much more than your average netbook.
Above: Acer 7735Z Notebook
Acer has also announced the Aspire AS7735Z, which offers a larger 17.1-inch LCD with a 2GHz Intel Pentium T4200 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 250GB HDD. Graphics for the notebook are via Intel GMA 4500MHD. The MSRP for the notebook is $US599.99 ($AUD763).
The highest performance of the new mode;s is the AS5739G with a 15.6-inch LCD, a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo T6500, 4GB of RAM, GeForce GT130M graphics, 250GB HDD, and a Blu-ray drive. The machine starts at $US749.99 ($AUD954). All three machines offer multitouch track pads, 802.11b/g/n, and backup manager software. Acer also announced earlier this month that it would be offering
Android-powered netbooks in Q3, which we are very keen to see.
Acer Australia hasn't yet announced availability of these three models in Australia, but we'll keep an eye out.