Acer Aspire Ultrabook

The chassis is only 15mm thick, making it the world's thinnest Ultrabook thus far. While the magnesium alloy chassis is smart, it impresses without being stunning. Part of this is down to the look and feel when you open it up. While other vendors such as Asus have worked hard to give their new thin and lights a fresh appearance, the Aspire S5 carries on from the Acer Aspire S3, giving us a rather bland appearance when opened up – and a torrid-looking but usable keyboard.

As with other Ultrabook launches, Acer made a big thing out of the quick resume time (1.5 seconds) and talked up its 'always connected' tech, Acer Always Connect – a service that enables you to access information on your PC while it's still asleep. A nice idea, but wouldn't you have access to stuff like emails on your smartphone anyway? There is one rather innovative feature - a MagicFlip I/O port panel (as Acer calls it) flips down at the back, providing room for the kind of extra ports that have had to be axed from other thin and lights that have recently made it onto market. As you'd expect, there's USB 3.0 ports on board, plus an as-yet-unspecified Intel Core processor, SSD storage and beefed-up Home Theatre audio. We'd expect the S5 to be launched with Core i5 and i7 processors, though since Acer said during its press conference that it wanted to take Ultrabooks into the mainstream laptop market, it's wholly possible that we'll see an i3 variant sneak in there. While we haven't seen Ultrabooks featuring Core i3 as yet, we know of at least one that's definitely coming. As for battery life, Acer claimed that the battery power would be "three times" as good as vatteries Expect the Acer S5 UK release date and Acer S5 US release date to be sometime in the Spring. 

Source: Tech Radar

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Posted in: Acer,Acer Aspire S5,Acer ultrabooks at CES 2012,Ultrabooks

Lenovo Ideapad Yoga

But it's not a pie in the sky prototype; the 13.1-inch 1600 x 900 touchscreened Yoga is exactly the kind of machine that Intel's Mooly Eden was shouting about yesterday, taking the Ultrabook to the next level with touch and a convertible design so it can be a tablet when you need it. It's like Microsoft's vision for the Tablet PC from 2002. Only good. It's a reasonably standard Ultrabook weight at 1.47kg, while the device measures an incredible 16.9mm thick. Despite the small dimensions, the hinge feels strong and Lenovo says that is one of the things it thought most about with the design - it has patented the hinge itself. 

The convertible is powered by an as-yet undefined Intel Core processor, but we're dreaming of the possibility it could have a forthcoming Ivy Bridge next-gen chip inside. We do have other spec details though – 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. Those kind of figures mean that the Yoga won't be slotting under Intel's Ultrabook target price of $999. Indeed, it'll be considerably more than that. Of course, the key component here isn't the hardware – it's Windows 8, which can be touch-based when the tablet is in viewing or converted mode and a standard laptop when in desktop mode. Lenovo has also thought about other details, too – there's soft touch rubber paint for gripping the device and a leather cover on the palm rest. Side buttons are designed for use in all modes. What's most exciting is that we'll be seeing plenty more devices like this during 2012. We can not wait. 

Source: Tech Radar

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Posted in: Acer ultrabooks at CES 2012,CES 2012,Lenovo Ideapad Yoga,Lenovo Ultrabook