Filed under: Tablet PCs

Earlier this month, Mr. Khalil Zaidan of Portland, Oregon, sued Acer, Gateway, Toshiba, HP, IBM, and Fujitsu for violating his 1996 patent “Hinge Assembly for Electronic Devices.” A closer reading of the patent indicates that Zaidan seems to have patented the basic principle behind a tablet PC, allowing a computer to perform “rotational adjustment.” Still, the case — filed in United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division — seems like a pretty easy way to milk these big companies for some cash, given that tablet PCs have been around well before November 2006. Nevertheless, while Zaidan is asking the court for damages on patent infringement be decided in a jury trial, we’re betting that this gets settled out-of-court pretty quick. We’re pretty sure that if Zaidan could actually build a Commodore 64-esque tablet (that’s what his diagram is supposed to represent, right?), he could just make money from that instead of going through all this legal nonsense.

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Laptops

We thought that Acer was all done for the time being with announcing its latest Core 2 Duo lappies, and boy are we pleasantly surprised to be wrong — the company has just paraded out two swanky new models for us to enjoy: the TravelMate 6460 and 6410. Sadly, deets on the TravelMates are few for the time being, but we do know that they’ll come with the latest Merom action (no word on what speed), “omnipotent communication” (WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, 1.3 megapixel integrated webcam), DVI-D out with HDCP support (on the 6460 only), fingerprint-based login, and a 15.4-inch display. Yo Acer, how about some pricing and availability info to go along with your spec sheets, hrm?

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Acer‘s been quite busy as of late, demoing everything from GPS units to its new sleek laptops, not to mention its new personal media player, the MP-340. Just when we were getting into that upcoming newer, cheaper Acer device, our friends in Taiwan go out and show off what may be an update to the previous MP-500. This new slick little box, more technically known as the MP-400, has many of the same specs as the MP-500, including a 3.5-inch screen, MP3, WMA, DivX, and MPEG-2/4 support, an SD card slot and AV in/out — and as Anything But iPod points out, it looks a slight bit like the iRiver Clix, what with the clean face and all. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to find out how much of your vids and snaps the MP-400 will hold, nor what it will retail for or when this little black bundle might be be our own (assuming it ever actually comes to the US).

[Via Anything but iPod]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

If you woke up this morning craving a bit of Merom juice in a 12.1-inch tablet then check the TravelMate C210 from Acer. Like the C200, the “Vista Premium Ready” C210 features a sliding-track to easily move from slate-style tablet to keyboard mode. Inside you’ll get a range of Intel’s new Core 2 Duo procs, 256MB GeForce Go 7300 graphics, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory and 160GB “or higher” (whatever that means) disk, and fingerprint reader for a bit of security when left behind at happy hour. Slap in an optical drive and 6-cell battery and you’re looking at a 5.5-pound tablet. Sorry, no ship date or price yet but you can expect this to cost about the same as the C200 it’s replacing, or about $1900.

[Via laptoping]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

So Acer’s upcoming MP-340 PMP doesn’t really hold a candle to the last media player we saw from the company — it’s pretty sparse in the video codec department and has a smaller, lower-resolution screen — but on the plus side, it’s infinitely more pocketable and probably a whole lot cheaper. Unlike the MP-500 which preceded it, this model’s got just a 1.8-inch, 160 x 128 TFT display (a little too small for extended viewing sessions, in our opinion) and only supports H.264-formatted video; however, you’re still getting a 20GB hard drive, MP3, WMA, and WMA DRM compatibility, along with voice recording and the obligatory JPEG photo playback. Also on board are an SD slot for a little expansion action, two headphone jacks for sharing that tiny screen with a friend, a 10-hour rechargeable battery (with the screen off, of course) and a number of preloaded games, including everyone’s new favorite, Sudoku. Since this model is officially debuting at IFA in Germany next month, pricing and availability are still a closely guarded secret, but if you happen to be in Berlin from the 1st through the 6th, try to stop by the Acer booth and smooth talk that info out of the booth babes company reps for us.

[Via MobileWhack]

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Filed under: HDTV, Laptops

Now that those new AMD Turion 64 X2 chips are out and about, Acer is looking to put them to good use and has crammed some of that 64-bit, dual core goodness into their new Aspire 5100 laptop series. There are plenty of specs to go around: a 15.4-inch display with 16ms response, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 option, gigabit Ethernet, DVI-D, four USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, 5-in-1 card reader, ExpressCard and PC card slots (though it could be “or,” specs aren’t clear), and S-Video out. To go along with its new chipset, the 5100 packs a new ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 integrated graphics card, that boasts a 33 percent performance boost over its predecessor, and 512MB of video RAM (128MB of that dedicated). You can get a SATA drive up to 160GB in capacity, and beyond the “DVD super-multi double layer drive” there’s even an option for HD DVD upon availability. We’re not sure about the price to spec breakdown, but the series starts at a comfortable $899, and should be available now.

[Via MobileWhack]

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Filed under: Laptops

Acer’s Ferrari 1000 is likely to be nominated for sexiest ultraportable, but even if not, this 12.1-inch widescreen machine looks pretty impressive; not too far back we announced that this thing was hitting the street, and now it’s been properly test-driven. As expected, the Ferrari 1000 utilizes the AMD Turion 64 X2 and comes stuffed with 1GB of RAM, 120GB SATA hard drive, 1.3 megapixel webcam, external DVD+/-RW optical drive (where are the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray drives?), ATI Radeon Xpress 200M graphics chipset, 1,280 x 800 WXGA screen, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, and reads practically every flash card we’ve ever heard of. cNews in Russia found very little to grumble about: the 3.7-pound machine wheeled through benchmarks, but apparently left reviewers disappointed by fingerprints showing on the carbon fiber. Going for about $4,000, this notebook ain’t cheap, but if you want an ultraportable to match your Enzo, you can take delivery later this month.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

There's some new HD goodness from Acer in their new PH730, PD525PW and PD527D projectors. All three include HDMI, DVI, VGA, Component, Composite and S-Video inputs, and the PH730 (pictured) manages a 1280 x 768 resolution. The other two rock the XGA, but all three can work with 720p/1080i at a 16:9 aspect ratio. For contrast ratio, the PH730 does 2500:1, compared to the 2000:1 of the other two, but the PH730 only does 1,200 lumens while the PD525PW and PD527D go for 2,700 and 3,000 respectively. All three have a lamp life of 4000 hours, but we're not sure exactly when these will be for sale, or for how much.

[Via Crowdedbrain]

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV

We're not sure how business savvy it is for a company to announce in a press release that two of the 16:10 LCDs it's just unveiled -- in the same release -- will be made obsolete by key spec bumps in just a few months, but that didn't stop Acer from revealing that both the new 22-inch AL2216W and 26-inch AL2616W will be replaced by HDCP-capable versions during the fourth quarter. Reason being,  the current iterations of these models -- both members of the company's Value Line -- lack the necessary digital inputs to support the HD copy protection standard, although that's not the case with the the third display released today, the DVI-sporting, 24-inch AL2434WR. Like the AL2616W, the 24-incher -- part of the Office Line -- features a 1,920 x 1,200 WUXGA display, 6-millisecond gray-to-gray response time, and a 1000:1 contrast ratio, while the AL2216W is slightly quicker (5 milliseconds) than both, but offers less pixels (1,680 x 1,050) and a lower contrast ratio (700:1). As of this writing, pricing has not been revealed for any of these new units, but if you're interested in the Value lineup, we're thinking that maybe you should just save your pennies anyway and hold out for HDCP.

[Via BIOS]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Laptops, Media PCs

Along with the 15.4-inch 5670 and 20.1-inch 9800 notebooks that we'd already known about, Acer formally unveiled at Computex two other HD-DVD- and Centrino Duo-toting models from the Aspire line that we hadn't seen before: the 17-inch 9510 and 15.4-inch 9110 (pictured). All four models are being billed as all-in-one multimedia centers, and with all but the 5670 sporting 1,920 x 1,080 resolutions, S/PDIF and HDCP-capable HDMI outputs, optional analog and DVB-T tuners, and of course those high-def, backwards-compatible optical drives (still waiting on those Blu-ray models, though), it sure sounds like Acer knows what it's talking about. Both of the new-new notebooks also offer up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM and nVidia graphics cards, but the 9510 rocks the GeForce Go 7900 GS with 512MB of RAM and up to 240GB of hard drive space, while the 9110 has to settle for the GeForce Go 7600 with 256MB of RAM and a HDD that maxes out at 120GB. Unfortunately, Acer was so busy selling us on the benefits of all these new machines that they forgot a few important details, so both pricing and release dates for each and every one remain a big fat mystery for now.

[Via Notebook Review]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Media PCs, Wireless

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Filed under: Laptops

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Laptops

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

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Filed under: Laptops

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Filed under: Displays

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Filed under: Laptops

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