Review As the name might suggest, Acer’s TravelMate family of notebooks are aimed at the mobile users, with an eye on business bods after something a little more stylish than the standard issue grey slab. A new addition to the range is the Timeline X TM8481T with just a couple of variants at present.
Road runner: Acer’s TravelMate Timeline X TM8481T
The version I’m looking at here is the memorably monikered 2463G32nkk which is powered by an Intel Core i5 CPU. If you want a bit more grunt then there is the 2634G32nkk which is Intel Core i7 powered and around £150 more expensive. Read the rest of this entry »
Review PC manufacturers clearly haven’t been reading the script. They were supposed to over-hype their forthcoming Android 3.0 tablets as iPad-killers (check!), miss their initial launch dates (check!) and then let us all down by delivering a hunk of poorly designed, obsolete tat (er…).
Acer’s Iconia Tab A500: lighter than a Xoom, heavier than an iPad 2
Acer has spectacularly failed in that last endeavour. Its Iconia Tab A500 is a terrific piece of kit, well-connected, respectably powerful and boasting loads of potential. My work ensures that I’m surrounded by many different tablet and touchscreen devices all the time, but I missed the Iconia Tab A500 when it was sent back. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Aimed squarely at those of us who simply don’t see the point of Android or iOS, Acer’s Iconia Tab W500 is a Windows 7 Home Premium slate complete with decent graphics, a handy detachable keyboard, a sizeable chunk of storage and a realistic, if not cheap, price tag of £520.
Acer’s Iconia W500: use it as a tablet…
Aesthetically, the W500 is a rather amorphous lump though the slightly sparkly screen surround is a nice visual touch. There’s no question marks over the built quality, though: it’s as solid as a rock, and the W500′s rounded corners and edges make it comfortable to hold. Read the rest of this entry »
If you thought the netbook market was already flooded, Intel’s recently-launched ‘Pine Trail’ platform means you can expect another new batch to come through. We’ve already seen Asus’ take on Pine Trail with the Eee PC 1005PE – reviewed here. Now we have Acer’s Aspire One 532h.
Acer’s Aspire One 532: ‘Pine Trail’ pioneer?
Like the 1005PE, Acer’s 532h is powered by Intel’s 1.66GHz Atom N450 processor. This is joined by 1GB of DDR 2 memory and integrated GMA3150 graphics – as with all Pine Trail netbooks, the graphics and memory controllers are both housed on the CPU. Intel claims this results in enhanced battery life and improved performance.
The 532h is an attractive piece of kit. Its glossy lid – silver, blue and red are the colour options – might be a prone to a few smudge marks, but it looks striking and features smooth, curved edges. Read the rest of this entry »
2010 is supposed to be the year that 3D breaks into mainstream home entertainment but most of the PR puff has been focused on expensive TV sets. Acer does a good job of making this currently tiny market a damned sight more interesting with its H5360, a sub-£600 ’3D Ready’ digital projector.
3D ready? Acer’s H5360
The H5360 is a small-ish (268x192x80mm) and light-ish (2.2kg) DLP projector built into a shiny white casing that will look at home in a modern living room, and pretty smart in a boardroom. Home movie theatre enthusiasts should note that it’s ‘HD Ready’ credentials extend to 720p only, not 1080p: the H5360′s native resolution is 1280×720 pixels. You can use an enhancement mode to mimic 1920×1080 resolution, but interpolating pixels like this never works as well as you wished it would.
The lens can be adjusted for a zoom using a dial lever conveniently located on top of the unit. Focus, however, is adjusted using a notched ring, snugly and inconveniently located around the red-hot lens itself. So many projectors are built like this, but why? After setting up a projector, you only ever set the zoom once, but fiddle with the focus all the time. Read the rest of this entry »
