In Greenpeace’s first Guide to Greener Electronics, Acer was ranked 12th out of the 14 top mobile and PC producers worldwide. The scorecard ranks companies on their use of environmentally harmful chemicals and electronic waste recycling, so it normally wouldn’t be surprising for an Asian-based producer like Acer to score so badly.

But even LG Electronics – a Taiwan-based company like Acer – ranked 7th on the list, while five other Asian companies were ranked within the Top 10, indicating that Acer has quite a lot of work to do playing catch up.

All 14 companies, however, failed to reach the necessary standards for a “green” ranking.

[News via WebWire]

(Source: MP3 Newswire)

As the latest addition to Acer’s media player stable, the MP-340 comes in with a 1.8″ TFT display (smaller than its bigger sibling’s 3.5″ screen), with the capability to tackle MP3/WMA audio formats, plus the JPEG image format and H.264 video. According to early news releases, it doesn’t support the staple AVI format nor DRM-type codecs.

Storage-wise, it comes with a 20GB hard drive, plus an SD-card slot. Dimensions-wise, we’ll be looking at 3.7″ x 2.5″ x 0.8″. And if Acer’s claims are to be believed, the MP-340 lasts 10 hours on a single charge (with the display off).

P.S.: It’ll come with Sudoku in-built too, and is apparently being sold in Germany already (for US$280 to $318).

[News via MP3 Newswire]

Not much (or rather, any) detail here, except that the China Economic News Service (CENS) reported yesterday that Acer has unveiled 5 models of ultra-small desktops – presumably in Taiwan. No pictures or tech specs were available.

There is hope, however, that these desktops will be announced for the international audience soon since Acer has predicted that it would sell 2 million units of these PCs next year in its effort to gain a 30% global market share.

[News via CENS]

(Source: Acer)

Another British magazine weighs in on the Acer Ferrari 5000. This time, it’s PC Advisor, and like Computeract!ve before this, they have lots of good things to say.

As usual, they loved the design, but for a reason much different from others: Because th F5000 came with less red than usual. An interesting viewpoint, and one I have to admit crosses my mind every time I have a look at a picture of the stylish notebook. Of course, general performance was good, battery life was excellent, but game performance fell short of greatness.

Overall, one of Acer’s most stylish notebooks gets a thumbs up, with a rating of 9 out of 10 for build quality, 8 out of 10 for features and 7 out of 10 of value for money.

(Source: Acer)

Its previous reviewer didn’t find it too impressive, but neither does PC Advisor in their assessment of the Acer CP-8660 digital camera.

They did, however, award it a marginally higher overall rating, i.e. 7 out of 10, and were pleased with the clean images produced by the CP-8660 – even on lower ISOs.

All in all, they thought that, “The Acer ticks many of the right boxes, but struggles to deliver overall, with focusing and white-balance concerns compromising the generally good image quality. For £249, we’d expect better.”

(Source: TrustedReviews)

After a dearth of reviews in the initial stages, the Acer Aspire Idea 500 is now getting the attention it deserves.

PC Pro, as you would have expected, loved the design, its range of features and of course, the excellent price (£853 inc VAT). They loved it enough to award it 5 out of 6 stars – though they did not that its default warranty wasn’t good enough (upgradable though).

Overall, they concluded that, “It’s one of the most well-balanced media centre systems yet and accordingly takes its place on the A List.” Of course, we agree (did you expect otherwise?).

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

If the recent exploding notebook fiasco and large scale battery recall over at Dell has gotten you worried, rest assured. Acer has officially announced that their notebook batteries are safe.

Based on information available so far, only Sony manufactured batteries are affected by Dell’s recall (which encompasses 4.1 million batteries BTW).

P.S.: If you are still worried though, just make sure you don’t place your notebook on your lap. Yeah, I’m sure you get my drift.

[News via The Daily Telegraph]

20% off at Tesco, and a whole bucket load of complaints pour in. Well, that’s what happened recently when Tesco advertised that it would be selling “all camcorders, laptops, digital cameras and sat navs” – including an Acer Aspire laptop – at 20% off at selected stores nationwide. It seems that Tesco ran out of stock of a certain JVC camcorder and Aspire notebook, and was reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Not surprisingly, the complaints were not upheld as Tesco managed to demonstrate that it made sufficient effort to “…anticipate demand… and maintain stocking levels.”

But this does show how popular Acer Aspires are, eh?

P.S.: Anyone knows the exact model of the notebook involved?

[News via IT Week]