I’m sure you’ve seen people running 4 windows per screen before, all arranged neatly in a square grid. Besides the oomph factor that comes with having the screen size (and the tech smarts) to do something like that, it does help improve productivity, at least if you know what you’re doing.

Well, that’s actually what the Acer GridVista tool helps you to accomplish. It provides you predetermined grid configurations (as shown below), dividing your screen into blocks to place your windows in. And it supports dual-monitor rigs as well, so that’s up to 8 windows displayed at once. One extra feature you may not see on competing software is the transparency option, which allows you to set certain windows as transparent – helping you organise a multi-window workspace.

Most Acer notebooks should already have it preinstalled, but if you happen not to have it, download the software from Acer’s support website. Just choose any new notebook model, e.g. the Aspire 9920, and pick up the GridVista tool for that notebook.

Oh yes, there are competing tools available. My personal favourite is running a combination of Ultramon for proper multi-monitor support and GridMove (freeware) for the multi-window grids. You can find more alternatives at Lifehacker’s post on GridMove.

(Source: ModusLink)

Normally, news like this wouldn’t merit a post here, even if Acer PCs were being bundled with these Windows Vista “Express Upgrades” late last year. But being in the UK, and seeing the problem first-hand (ok, second-hand given that some of my friends were the victims) made ModusLink’s (and by extension, Microsoft’s) farce unforgivable.

Considering that Vista was released at the end of January, how “Express” is it if some UK customers (who made their orders in November last year) are only getting their Vista upgrades now (in April!)?

Read more about this at Channel Register.

(Source: Yahoo!)

While Dell plays the love-love game with Google, Acer has decided to play catch-up with a recently announced multi-year partnership with Yahoo!.

The deal starts with a co-branded toolbar and start page (based on the Yahoo! personalised home page, of course), which will be preloaded on all Acer PCs worldwide starting from 1st October, 2006. Localised versions will be developed for many countries as well.

(Source: Norton)

Since January, new owners of Acer notebooks and desktops would have spotted a cute, little Norton CD pre-loaded with either Norton Antivirus or Internet Security 2006. That was part of a 3-year deal Acer made with Norton, which for some reason or another, has been modified this week.

What will happen is that Norton’s software will now be pre-installed, rather than pre-loaded with new Acer PCs. The install will be for a 90-day trial, which you can opt to buy when the trial period runs out.

Good? Bleh. Yet another so-so pre-install, and only a trial too. But if you’re a Norton-lover, like many mainstream users are, then you probably have nothing to complain about.

(Source: Acer)

Alas, while nVidia will power HD-DVD playback, graphics card-wise, on the recently announced HD-DVD-enabled Acer Aspire notebook series, CyberLink will continue to be the media software provider for those notebooks. Under the Acer Arcade brand most Acer users (and reviewers) should be accustomed to, CyberLink will provide the all-in-one software necessary to play HD-DVD media.

We might seem a bit prejudiced here, but let’s just say we’ve found Acer Arcade to be little more than an annoyance so far – with dedicated software for individual media playback serving our purposes far better, even those from CyberLink itself.

However, this shouldn’t matter too much for those who were going to pump their notebooks with their own media playback software. For those who aren’t willing to spend some dough on dedicated software though… Acer Arcade really isn’t that bad…

Webaroo, a piece of software that will effective keep a cache of the web on your PC, will come pre-installed on Acer notebooks worldwide. This piece of news was announced around a month back, but I didn’t want to report about it until trying it out myself.

On the conceptual side of things, Webaroo will cache webpages ranked within the Top 20 of search engine results in order to power its offline search engine, and this will be backed by a technology that allows its software to compress information by a factor of 25,000. But users will get to choose which web packs (clusters of sites or search terms) they want to install in order to optimize the amount of space Webaroo takes up on your hard disk drive.

I found it pretty interesting while traveling without access to the net recently, but not as useful as I had expected. For one, I already tend to “cache” articles I find interesting (which I want to read or blog about) myself, so Webaroo doesn’t help too much in that respect. Furthermore, some of the sites I’d wanted to read based on a particular search term were outside the Top 20. So, no cached copy for me.

Overall, it’s interesting to see how Webaroo develops from here. Their revenue model is primarily based on the keyword-related ads displayed when a user searched through Webaroo’s library, and this is solid enough, but only if there’s enough users to encourage advertisers to come flocking to Webaroo. After all, wireless access is spreading fast, even if storage could “spread faster”, and techies will always find ways of getting some sort of internet connection. As such, I’m not so sure a techy audience would need Webaroo, and non-techies won’t really need the net while travelling, will they?

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.