The 26th iteration of the world’s second largest computer show, Computex 2006, opened in Taipei today with Taiwanese exhibitors like Acer, BenQ and Asustek taking full opportunity to strut their stuff.
As many of you might already know, Acer will be displaying their latest offerings at Computex, which includes 5 highly anticipated notebooks: The Ferrari 5000, Ferrari 1000, Aspire 9110, Aspire 9510 and Aspire 9800.
Sheesh, why can’t we go?
In the press release that announced two of Acer’s HD-DVD notebook offerings for Computex 2006, Acer also unveiled the Acer Aspire 9510 – a 17″ HD-DVD-enabled entertainment notebook.
Besides being equipped with the expected Intel Core Duo processor, the 9510 will bring a dual-lamp design into the picture – which promises what Acer calls “ultimate video fidelity”. You will also be looking at a 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7900 graphics card, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, and two hard disk drives for up to 240GB of hard disk space.
Overall, it’s a very solid replacement for the aging Aspire 9500. Hopefully, Acer will stick to its low-cost, high value model for this notebook as well. 
Edit: Picture added, courtesy of Digitimes.
Acer’s pushing the High Definition (HD) bandwagon with even more HD-DVD-enabled notebooks. Besides the 20.1″ Acer Aspire 9800 monster we heard about earlier, Acer will be launching a more “conventional” HD-DVD-equipped notebook, the 15.4″ Aspire 9110.
Specs-wise, we are looking at an Intel® Core Duo processor – either the T2300E (1.66Ghz) for the 9112WLMi or the T2500 (2.0GHz) for the 9114WLMi – 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 100GB or 120GB hard drive, a 256MB GeForce™ Go 7600 graphics card, and a hybrid analog/digital TV tuner. It will also come equipped with the 1.3 megapixel Acer Orbicam, though Acer’s Bluetooth VOIP phone is optional.
If you can wait (and of course, are willing to fork out more cash), the Aspire 9110 looks like a much better option compared to the Aspire 5670 launched earlier.
Edit: It seems that the Aspire 9110 is already out in Europe. The guys over at NotebookForums.com already have some pricing info on hand: The 9112WLMi is priced around £1173 (US$2188) while the 9114WLMi is priced at £1367 (US$2550). Of course, you can expect much lower prices when they are launched stateside.
The past three reviews on the Acer Aspire 9500 were placed under the Aspire 9504WSMi name. So, this time, I thought it would be more comprehensive to place at least one review under the 9500 name for those who couldn’t care less about exact model names.
Anyway, the review in question is an average-length SMB IT review published yesterday. Like the previous reviewers of the Aspire 9500, this reviewer was clearly impressed by the Aspire 9500’s performance, and of course, relatively low price.
His verdict? He says that the Aspire 9500 is, “…lighter than most 17-inch footprint multimedia behemoths, but this jobbie still isn’t really meant to be a traveler. But for as an excellently priced all-in-one multimedia, work and gaming notebook, the Acer Aspire 9500 is right at the top of my list.”
It’s been a really slow week, with barely any interesting Acer-related news. So, here’s yet another review of the Acer Aspire 5672WLMi to tide all of us by.
The review itself is a short one, so we’ll skip right to the verdict: “Now that I’ve got the ugly parts of the notebook off my chest, I’ll come back to why this notebook is noteworthy. The battery life is commendable as it can last at least three hours after a full charge. Plus, the built-in Acer energy manager tool comes in handy in maximising the battery life. And so, despite the brash sound and the appalling webcam, the overall performance of the notebook makes it a good companion for work and play. ”
Surprisingly, this reviewer commended the 5672WLMi’s battery life, unlike the previous two reviewers which criticised it (though different performance settings could have led to differing battery life measurements). Other than that, the three reviewers gave mostly similiar conclusions.
Following up on earlier reviews of the Aspire 5670 by PC Authority and NotebookReview.com is an OCWorkBench.com review.
But even as it comes weeks after the earlier two reviews, its conclusions are pretty much similiar: “We tested the notebook and found it to be a bit warm. The system ran through all the benchmarks we threw at it without fail. As the notebook comes with a ATi Radeon X1400 mobility edition, it enhances the system for 3D games and better image quality for playback of DVD. You can also use the AVIVO video converter to take advantage of the video processor unit in the graphics core to speed up conversion of video formats. I would probably use the features of the ATi for better DVD playback with attachment to DVI out or Svideo out from the notebook.
We tested it with 3Dmark05 and it scored 1643 3dmarks. 3Dmark06 also ran without a problem and scored 850 marks with Sm2 at 242, HDR/SM3 at 349 and CPU score of 1318. PCmark05 scored 305. As we do not have an equivalent speed Single core centrino notebook to compare, we aren’t able to compare. The CPU score in the 3DMark06 shows that it is dual core at work.
As for wireless connectivity, we have no problems connecting to bluetooth devices and WiFi seems to be able to detect networks that are in the neighbourhood with ease.
Overall, the notebook is a winner in almost all aspects but it is just the weight and 3 hr battery life that might turn people away for smaller size and longer battery life. ”
Acer has launched 4 new 17-inch notebooks to extend its Acer Aspire line. Two of them will be powered by the higher end Pentium M and Core Duo processors, while the other two will be equipped with only Celeron M chips.
The higher-end notebooks are the Aspire 9400 and 9410, equipped with Pentium M and Core Duo processors, respectively. Both come with Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics cards, and up to 120GB of hard disk storage. The lower-end notebooks are the Aspire 7100 and 7110, equipped with Celeron M chips and Acer’s own wireless card (instead of the standard Intel-made Wi-Fi cards).
At the time of writing of this post, information on pricing and availability has yet to be released.
[News via Reg Hardware]
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]
