| Acer Claims Aspire S5 Ultrabook is World's Thinnest, Has Thunderbolt to Boot Posted: 08 Jan 2012 06:27 PM PST  Acer might be splitting hairs over a few millimeters here, but the company claims its new Aspire S5 Ultrabook is the thinnest the world has ever seen. The S5 is a 13.3-inch hunk of notebook that measures a scant 15mm at its thickest point and weighs less than 3 pounds. It has a magnesium-aluminum alloy cover and palmrest with a brushed metallic motif. Acer put considerable thought into the S5's appearance, molding it with "clean and ultra-fluid contours" that can be seen from all angles.
Aesthetics aside, the Aspire S5 packs an Intel Core i processor inside, SSD storage, professionally tuned Dobly Home Theater v4, long battery life via the PowerSmart battery pack (with a 3x longer life cycle that's able to hold up to 80 percent of its original capacity after as many as 1,000 recharges, according to Acer), and a trio of high performance ports hidden behind a "MagicFlip" I/O port panel. These include an HDMI-out port, USB 3.0, and a 20Gbps Thunderbolt port, which finally makes an appearance on a Windows-based PC. "The Ultrabook is much more than just a product segment," said Jim Wong, president of Acer Inc. "It's a new trend that will become the mainstream for mobile PCs, and customers will see the unique features gradually extended across Acer's notebook family." Acer's S5 also includes a couple of quick-use technologies, including Acer Green Instant On (instant-resume functionality in 1.5 seconds), and Acer Always Connect, which continuously fetches Facebook, Twitter, and Outlook email updates when accounts are left open so users can see updates instantly upon resuming. The Aspire S5 will start shipping in the second quarter of 2012 for an as-yet unannounced price. In the meantime, check out our photo gallery below. Image Credit: Acer |
| Lenovo Launches New Lineup of IdeaPad Laptops and Desktops Posted: 08 Jan 2012 04:06 PM PST  It's a new year and Lenovo is wasting no time making the most of it. Like so many others, Lenovo's using CES as a springboard to launch several new and refreshed products, and on tap for 2012 are new laptops in the IdeaPad U Series, Y Series, S Series, and Z Series, plus new K Series desktops and space-saving B Series all-in-one (AIO) PCs.
"Our new lineup of consumer laptops and desktops for 2012 reflects our commitment to deliver bold products that set the standard for innovation and style in consumer technology," said Peter Hortensius, senior vice president, Product Group, Lenovo. "But as technically innovative as these products are, we are more than ever focused on fun. With improved sound and entertainment capabilities on the inside and unexpected candy-colors on the outside, we believe that these new consumer devices will help deliver the complete computing experience that individual customers are seeking." Lenovo's new lineup includes two new Ultrabook models, the U310 (13.3-inch) and U410 (14-inch). Both are built around Intel's second generation Core processor family and include up to 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory, up to 500GB (U310) or 1TB (U410) of HDD storage, 720p HD webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, GbE LAN, USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, HDMI, 2-in-1 media card reader, and other technological knickknacks. These will be available in May starting at $699. The OEM also announced a pair of so-called "mini laptops" -- S200 and S206 -- that for whatever reason it's refusing to call netbooks, though it's clear that's what they are. The S200 sports an Intel Atom N2800 processor, 11.6-inch screen, up to 2GB of DDR3 memory, up to 500GB of hard drive storage (32GB SSD optional), 0.3MP webcam, and Windows 7 Home Premium. The S206 is essentially the same machine in AMD trim (AMD C60 dual-core processor). These will be available in June starting at $349. Moving down the list, Lenovo introduced a pair of Y Series laptops (14-inch Y480 and 15-inch Y580 available in April starting at $899) featuring Intel Core processors and up to Nvidia GeForce GTX660M graphics with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, along with three Z Series notebooks (13.3-inch Z380, 14-inch Z480, and 15.6-inch Z580 available in April starting at $599) in a variety of color options, such as Amber Orange, Apple Green, Cherry Red, Coral Blue, Graphite Grey, and Peony Pink. Lenovo also rolled out three G Series notebooks (14-inch G480, 15.6-inch G580, and 17.3-inch G780 available in June starting at $399) with Veriface facial recognition technology and durable build quality. Rounding out the product announcements (of which there are many) are: - Two B Series AIO desktops, B340 (21.5-inch display) and B540 (23-inch display). These sport frameless screens, Intel Core processors, up to Nvidia GT 650M graphics, and plenty of touch options. Availability begins in June starting from $699.
- IdeaCentre K480 tower desktop with up to 32GB of DDR3 memory, Nvidia SLI and AMD CrossFireX support, RAID 0 configurations, up to 4TB of hard drive space, and Intel Core processor options. Availability is in May starting at $599.
- H520s slim desktop that's half the size of a standard desktop PC. It supports Intel Core processor, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, up to AMD Radeon HD 7570 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 630 graphics, up to 2TB of storage, and Windows 7. This will be available in June starting at $499.
Image Credit: Lenovo |
| Hate Apple’s iCloud? Hop on Acer’s Instead Posted: 08 Jan 2012 03:41 PM PST  If imitation is the highest form of flattery, than Acer has a serious case of Apple envy. At the company's pre-CES conference in Las Vegas, Acer introduced a brand new Ultrabook tablet powered by a new set of cloud services that seem more than a little familiar. AcerCloud, not to be confused with iCloud offers photo, document, and media sharing between your PC or other Android devices.
Of course you might say cloud services weren't invented by Apple, however the similarities on the functionality and naming front make this "me to" offering more than a bit obvious. Photo sharing comes courtesy of "PicStream" (not "Photo Stream"), which automatically uploads your most recent photos for sync on other devices, and retains them for a period of 30 days. AcerCloud Doc's like iCloud offers document sync, and the icing on the cake is the new "clear.fi" media app that lets you upload your music files to the cloud for streaming later. It's great to see more choices, but would it have killed them to be a bit more subtle about the whole thing? (Image Source = BI) |
| Microsoft Brings back Drive Extender Features with Raid Style Performance in Windows 8 Posted: 08 Jan 2012 12:51 PM PST  When Microsoft announced that drive extender was being stripped out of the final version of its new Windows Home Server line, the full wrath of the Internet literally fell upon them. The comments on the on the announcement were less than kind, and even though they had a workaround of sorts to keep your data duplicated, nothing really matched the allure of a single protected pool of storage.
For those unfamiliar with it the concept, drive extender is fairly simple to understand. Take any number of disks, add them to a storage pool, and files copied to it can optionally be duplicated across multiple disks to safe guard against individual failure and are presented as one large volume to the user. Fast forward to 2012 and they are ready to make amends by bringing the feature back, however this time they are going to reach a much wider audience by packing it in with Windows 8. From a feature perspective Windows 8's "storage spaces" operate in much the same way storage pools did in older versions of Home Server, however Microsoft has clarified that the technology behind it is very different and not backwards compatible. Users can continue to manage disks independently of course, but if they choose to use storage spaces an unlimited number of disks can be added using any combination of USB, serial ATA or SCSI. Users will also need to pick either "mirrored" or "parity" for the entire pool, though both offer file redundancy. Parity is described as superior choice for large sequential files or less frequently-accessed content since it has higher random I/O overhead. Of course storage is one thing, but this is Maximum PC, what about performance vs. Raid? Well, according to Microsoft storage spaces also makes use of data stripping giving it performance characteristics similar to raid 0 or raid 10. You no doubt still have questions, but rather than try to address them all here head on over to the Windows 8 blog and check out the FAQ. If you can't find the answer there, we probably don't know either. 
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