Notebook Hunter

For $2,199 the lengthily named 18.4in Acer Aspire Ethos AS8950G-2638G1.5TBnss (also called Acer AS8950G-2638G and LX.RCN02.034) is a truly epic allrounder. If the enormous full HD screen wasn’t enough, there’s 1,500GB of hard disk drive storage and a dedicated graphics card powerful enough to run newer games like StarCraft 2 on high settings. This is in many respects the offspring of a gaming and an entertainment notebook, although the asking price is rather high overall.

An Intel Core i7-2630QM (2GHz) is a high-end processor that’s a good fit in the partly aluminium AS8950G, and it helps out multi-tasking thanks to the Hyper-Threading Technology that allows each of the four cores to deal with two tasks at once. Throw in 8GB of RAM, and you’ll be smoothly running a large number of programs on the colossal 18.4in full HD screen.

Multi-tasking is just the start though. A Blu-ray player makes it a cinch to watch Blu-ray movies in their native resolution on the TV sized screen. Gamers will get plenty of mileage out of the powerful AMD Radeon HD 6850M dedicated graphics card as well. Portability is low, but when the screen is so huge it’s not surprising. Overall the AS8950G weighs 3.8kg and is 39.4mm thick, so don’t expect to lug it around without difficulty.