This week has pretty much been a slow week in terms of Acer news and reviews. Actually, I’m sure you would already have realised this (from the lack of posts and uhmm… dryness of post content?) already, but no harm adding a formal excuse for the lack of posts this week, right?

Anyway, on the regional side, Acer is offering cheap PCs to students in Indonesia and Singapore (unconfirmed), with desktops being the primary target over at Indonesia, and notebooks in Singapore.

According to the news release, Sempron 3100-equipped desktops, with 80GB hard disk drives and 256MB SDRAM, are going at a pretty low price of US$300 (around Rp 2.75 million). I’m not too sure about the exact details over at Singapore, but certain Junior Colleges are hosting Acer notebook road shows.

The PCs offered are a little low end for the more techy (and well off) students to take advantage of this promotion, but I guess catering for this bunch of students was never part of the goals for this promotion.

Acer recently announced that it has withdrawn its representative from Taiwan-compatriot (or rather, spin-off) BenQ’s board of directors, in a move to “…avoid conflict over their competing businesses…” and increase its focus on its own core business, i.e. IT products.

As a result, Acer will soon be selling a large bulk of its remaining shares in BenQ, as part of or more likely on top of a plan announced late last year when it sold 50 million BenQ shares. Currently, Acer still owns approximately 7 percent of BenQ’s shares.

(Source: NotebookReview.com)

My initial post on Acer’s upcoming 20″ HD-DVD monster, the Acer Aspire 9800, didn’t have a picture to give you at least some idea of the size of this notebook.

So, here it is, along with more detailed specifications from NotebookReviews.com. Some extras I failed to note earlier include an integrated hybrid TV-tuner (for both analog and digital signals) and the option of going for a slot-loading DVD Super Multi Drive instead of a HD-DVD drive.

[News via NotebookReviews.com]

(Source: T3)

We’ve had two TravelMate 3012TMi reviews already, so it’s high time we had one on its sister: The Acer TravelMate 3012WMi. T3 tries to fulfill this task with a short TM3012WMi review in its April edition.

T3 highlighted the sheer dual-core power and competitive price of the 3012WMi as pluses, but just like the reviewers of the TM3012TMi, they didn’t find the poor battery life and average screen satisfactory. Overall, the TM3012WMi was awarded 3 out of 5 stars, plus a short and sweet conclusion: “Not a winner here, then, but this is still a powerful option for those who don’t stray too far from a mains socket.”

(Source: Acer)

Today, we will be having more Acer Ferrari F-20 review goodness from Tom’s Hardware. Unlike the rest of the reviews we’ve seen here though, this review awards a mere average rating to the Ferrari F-20 - which is probably a plus for consumers given the many favourable reviews on the F-20 already.

The primary negative they saw with the Ferrari F-20 was its poor sound reproduction, but their conclusion wasn’t too favourable either. They concluded that, “What’s our final assessment of the F20? In fact, the difference in performance from the Acer AL2032W, which we tested recently, wasn’t significant. So if your budget is a little tight and you’re hesitating between the two, you can rule out the Acer F20. Given what you get for the high price, the F20 will probably remain more a showpiece for Acer than anything else. Too bad, really, because the monitor’s finish is excellent, as is the general concept behind it.”

Ever wondered what the Empowering Key on your Acer keyboard actually launches? Yes, we all know its some sort of “friendly and intuitive” software that provides users an overall interface to access the various software pre-installed within the Empowering suite. But there’s actually quite a bit more to it.

If you’re interested, I suggest reading an IT News Online article on the Acer Empowering suite published slightly more than a month back. Not only do they explain the various aspects of the technology, they also highlight the diffrent configurations of the technology on different IT devices manufactured by Acer (e.g. notebooks, desktops, etc.).

But while the “specs” for Acer’s Empowering Technology seem alright, response towards this software suite has been surprisingly negative. A recent Acer Travelmate 3010 notebook review highlighted that the Empowering suite merely added an additional, and unnecessary layer of complexity.

In my opinion, the Empowering suite isn’t particularly useful, and I doubt I’ve pressed the Empowering Key more than five times so far. I usually have everything organised pretty well on the desktop, Quick Start menu, and the Start Menu. But I’m sure some Acer users do use it, and there really is little reason not to have it pre-installed. You could just ignore it if you don’t want to use it after all.

(Source: The Inquirer)

Acer’s press release on this came out a couple of days back, but for some reason or another (Read: Utter blurness on my part), I thought it was old news. I must have confused it with AMD’s recent sponsorship of the Ferrari F1 team.

Anyway, the site responsible for “waking” my blur head up (and providing the image above) was The Inquirer. As you can see, Acer’s logo is firmly placed between the rear tire and Vodafone’s logo.

So, the Acer-Ferrari partnership, dating back to February 2003 when Acer became Ferrari’s Official Supplier, finally reaches its apex. But I wonder how much the sponsorship is valued at. After all, Acer’s logo isn’t exactly small.

(Source: TrustedReviews)

Acer will soon be entering the large-screen plasma TV market with a 42-inch plasma screen. But given Acer’s slant towards affordability, you can expect the plasma screen to be somewhat of an entry-level product.

Why? Well, the screen will only have a native resolution of 852 x 480, making its HDCP compliance and support for 720p and 1080i signals almost useless. Moreover, the screen will probably be void of extras, e.g. motorised stands (like on the 42-inch Hitachi).

However, for Acer is to come up with its usual price points, I suppose the low specifications are inevitable.

[News via TrustedReviews]