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]

(Source: Hardware Upgrade Italia)

If you didn’t like reading a Russian-language review of the F1000, here’s an English-language one by TrustedReviews.

But like ZOOM.CNews.ru, TR couldn’t give the F1000 unconditional praise. Despite its first class design and strong performance, the weak battery life and lack of optical drive integration prove to be undeniable weaknesses, and resulted in the 12.1″ ultraportable notebook being awarded an overall rating of only 7 out of 10.

TR concluded that, “The Acer Ferrari 1000 is a very attractive package that manages to wear the Ferrari badge with pride due to the brute force approach of an AMD Turion X2 ML-60. The sleek style of the Ferrari 1000 certainly has a lot of appeal but you’ll have to put up with an external optical drive, which seems a step backwards when Intel based rivals can integrate one yet are even lighter. But while you might be able to cope with that, the lack of battery life in an ultra-portable is a flaw that could prove harder to ignore.”

(Source: NotebookReview.com)

Okay, maybe it was a bit harsh to label the recently introduced Asus Lamborghini VX1 notebook as a copycat of our beloved Acer Ferrari notebooks - especially since the yellow-finished VX1 does look pretty spiffy.

But let’s just see which Ferrari notebook the VX1 most closely resembles anyway. 15″ screen, 160GB hard disk drive, 2GB DDR2 RAM and 512MB nVidia GeForce Go 7400VX graphics card - that’s what the Asus comes with. Hmm… I’d say the Ferrari 5000, even though it comes with an AMD Turion 64 X2 and a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card, instead of the X2’s Intel Core Duo and nVidia GPU.

Pricing details haven’t been released, but there’s little doubt it’s going to be competitive - at least, against Acer’s own co-branded notebooks.

[News via NotebookReview.com]