Tatum and Denim blog

Filed under: Laptops

If you’re checking out the new “Porsche designed” Acer Aspire 5520 and thinking it looks a little bit familiar — take heart — you’ve seen this guy before, when it was called the Gemstone. Apparently, Acer has axed the Gemstone’s (AKA AS5920) Intel processor, dropped in an AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58 (at 1.8GHz), and badged this baby up with a new number sequence. The system still rocks Vista (of course), features a 15.4-inch display, integrated NVIDIA GeForce 7000M graphics chipset, 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, and an ExpressCard 54 slot. Although it seems like the 5520 has been kicking around for a bit, there’s no word on price or availability (especially for the States).

[Via AVING USA]

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Filed under: Laptops

Yeah, we already knew the 5920 was making its way out, but Acer has finally (read: officially) cast two new Gemstones into the North American market. As you so very well know, the 5920 offers up a 15.4-inch display and an HD DVD drive for high-definition film watching on the go, and the slightly smaller (14.1-inches for those counting) 4710 packs a Core 2 Duo processor, a Dolby-certified sound system, built-in CrystalEye webcam, and Vista Home Premium. ‘Course, these two readily available machines are certainly geared toward very different budgets, and while you can snag an Aspire 4710 for a mere $599, the far more potent 5920 touts an entry fee of $1,999.

[Via MobileWhack]

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

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Acer President Gianfranco Lanci doesn’t look to have minced any words about his thoughts on Vista during a recent interview with the Financial Times Deutschland, reportedly telling the publication that “the entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista.” As if that wasn’t a big enough shot across the bow, Lanci further went on to say that it’s “not going to change in the second half of this year,” adding that “I really don’t think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista.” Lanci apparently didn’t have quite everything out of his system just yet though, also lambasting Vista for not being ready when it was released, saying that “stability is certainly a problem.” We some suspect he won’t be too pleased with Microsoft’s recent pronouncements on the matter either.

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

Filed under: Laptops

Acer has begun quietly introducing its Gemstone laptop to the US market by slipping the design-minded Aspire into Best Buy’s retail catalog, thus marking the debut of the company’s stylized new computer on these shores. The 5920, which we mentioned back in May, is officially on sale now at the chain stores for $1299 (but they’ll want you to get that extended service plan too). To refresh your memory, the system is based on the seemingly-ubiquitous Santa Rosa chipset, with a Centrino Core 2 Duo turning the gears, a 15.4-inch, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT-powered display, an HD-DVD drive, and 802.11a/g/n. Other bells and whistles include Bluetooth, a 5-in-1 media reader, built-in webcam, and Acer’s amazing V.92 high speed modem.

[Via TGDaily]

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

Filed under: Desktops

While this one may seem a tad out of left field, rumors are swirling that either Acer or Elitegroup Computer Systems could be fixing to pick Shuttle up if it decides to sell itself. According to an admittedly brief writeup at DigiTimes, ECS reportedly has a “good relationship with Shuttle,” and is being named “by market sources as one of two potential buyers” with Acer being the second. Interestingly, “sources” at ECS purportedly insinuated that there “was no need to acquire Shuttle” in order to meet its strategic goals, and while spokespeople for Acer were tightlipped, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched for the partnership-happy firm to ink yet another deal.

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

Filed under: Laptops

We already had a pretty good idea of what Acer’s first Gemstone laptop, the Aspire 5920, would look like, but we’ve now got the full rundown of specs, along with a price, courtesy of Acer’s Thailand site. As we knew before, it’s a Santa Rosa-based machine, boasting a 15.4-inch WXGA display, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics, and an optional HD-DVD drive, among other not too shabby features. What we didn’t know is that it’d come with your choice of T7100 or T7300 Core 2 Duo processors, up to 4GB of RAM, and a max 200GB hard drive. Also notably lacking until now was any word on price, which has now been revealed to be 46,900 or 59,900 baht depending on the configuration, or roughly $1,425 and $1,820 for those of you outside of Thailand.

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

Filed under: GPS, HDTV

The folks over at The Inquirer sneaked up on an Ferrari-branded Acer c500 and snapped this grainy picture before getting kicked out of the booth by the camera-shy Acer peoples. At least we’re almost positive it’s the c500, The Inq wasn’t able to get any specs or a model number, but this shiny bugger looks to be the exact unit we saw hit the FCC a few weeks ago, which features WinMo 5, a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen, a 300MHz Samsung 2442 processor, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and a decent complement of storage and RAM. We’re guessing we’ll know more about this sucker soon enough, Acer was never one to keep a random and possibly ill-conceived Ferrari-based concept under wraps for long.

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

Filed under: GPS

It looks like Acer has yet another GPS device destined for parts other than North America, with its new budget-priced V200 model apparently exclusive to France for the time being. This one boasts a decent enough 3.5-inch QVGA display, along with the ever-present SiRF Star III GPS receiver, Samsung’s 300 MHz S3C2442XL processor, 64MB RAM, 64MB ROM, and an SD/MMC slot for expansion. You’ll also get a a 512MB SD card preloaded maps of France courtesy of Navteq. Nothing too remarkable there, but Acer’s hoping the device will make something of a name for itself with its price, which comes in at just under the 150€ (or $200) mark. While there’s no word on when we might see a similar model available elsewhere, those in France will apparently be able to get their hands on one any day now.

[Via Navigadget]

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

Filed under: Laptops

While Acer did make a quick stop to confirm that this Gemstone brouhaha was indeed becoming a reality, the firm has apparently gotten around to fleshing out the rest of its healthy Santa Rosa lineup. On the consumer side of things, the the Aspire 5720 touts a 15.4-inch CrystalBrite display, integrated CrystalEye webcam, Dolby Digital Live audio, and a choice of ATI graphics cards. The 7720 steps it up by packing more powerful Core 2 Duo processors, a 17-inch widescreen display, an ATI graphics card with up to 512MB of RAM, webcam, and an optional DVB-T tuner, while the 9920 takes things to the extreme with a 20-inch screen, NVIDIA’s DX10-capable GeForce 8600M-GT, and an HD DVD drive to boot. Meanwhile, the TravelMates are also seeing updates, as the 6592 packs a Core 2 Duo CPU, 802.11a/b/g/n, dual-layer DVD burner or HD DVD drive, ATI’s Mobility Radeon X2300-HD graphics, and a 15- or 15.4-inch display. The 6492 loses an inch of screen space, steps down to integrated X3100 graphics, but sports up to 8.5-hours of battery life with a secondary cell installed in the media bay, and the 6292 wraps things up with a 12.1-inch display, WiFi, ezDock II compatibility, and a lightweight design. No word just yet on pricing or availability, but at least you’ve got a smattering of choices on the Acer horizon to decide upon.

Read - Acer TravelMate lineup
Read - Acer Aspire lineup

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

Filed under: Laptops

Well, that must have been all the buzz Acer could take — just a week after cryptically teasing the “Gemstone” concept and five days after “officially” unveiling the new design, it’s announced the Core 2 Duo-powered Aspire 5920, the first machine to feature the new look. Acer’s bizzare PR campaign notwithstanding, there’s a lot here to distinguish the top-of-the-line 5920 from the rest of the thundering Santa Rosa herd: a 15.4-inch screen powered by 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M-GT graphics, Intel’s Robson cache-to-flash technology, an HDMI port, an HD DVD drive, a DVB-T tuner, and Acer’s Bluetooth VoIP phone, which charges when it’s stored in the 5920’s ExpressCard slot. No word on pricing or availability, but at the rate Acer’s going, we wouldn’t be surprised if they unveiled a new design concept to replace this one tomorrow.

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

Filed under: Laptops

Acer certainly didn’t waste much time teasing out its new Gemstone laptop, with only a couple of days separating its first mysterious announcement and today’s official unveiling. While it unfortunately doesn’t appear to be quite ready to reveal much in the way of specs, Acer is more than willing to wax eloquently about the laptop, saying that it adds “a new level of emotional involvement to the Acer mobile experience, dressing the Emperor in new clothes.” Still not convinced? Then perhaps the “neon media flow that carves a delicate energy line from the DC input all the way through to the touchpad” will be enough to sell you on it. For those looking for something a little more conventional, Acer has also unveiled its new TravelMate ProFile laptop design (check it out after the break), which is also light on specs at the moment but does promise some increased sturdiness while still keeping the weight down. As you might have guessed, Acer isn’t providing any details on pricing or availability either, although it’ll apparently have more to say on that later this month.

[Via Electronista]

Continue reading Acer reveals Gemstone, TravelMate ProFile laptop designs

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

Filed under: Laptops

There’s no need to fix it if nothing’s broken, and apparently Acer isn’t deviating from the lucrative automotive partnerships anytime soon. While the Ferrari lineup tends to cater to the high-end laptop buyer, the company has now partnered with BMW to provide stylish, automotive-inspired machines to “the average consumer.” The team will collaborate to refresh the Aspire series (dubbed Gemstone), and while specifics aren’t entirely clear, we do know that users can expect a curvaceous design and a dash of Santa Rosa under the hood. Additionally, the BMW lappies will offer up WiFi, Dolby surround sound, and HDMI, and there was even a hint of a 17-incher and an option for HD DVD. Best of all, it sounds like users will have a choice between an AMD or Intel processor, and although pricing information wasn’t divulged, Acer did state that “no premium for the extra design work” would be tacked on.

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

Filed under: Handhelds

This isn’t the first Ferrari-branded Pocket PC we’ve seen from Acer, but they’re still a relatively rare breed compared to the many, many Ferrari-themed laptops coming out of the company. Unfortunately, the FCC hasn’t exactly given us the best look at the device’s added stylings, but we do at least have a good idea of its specs, which are pretty much in line with its non-Ferrari namesake, Acer’s c500 Pocket PC Travel Companion. That means you’ll get Windows Mobile 5 for an OS, along with a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen, a 300MHz Samsung 2442 processor, 64MB SDRAM, 128MB NAND flash, and built-in Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS, with an SD slot to cover to expansion needs. As with most products that make their first appearance by way of the FCC, however, there’s no word on pricing or availability.

[Via PC Joint, thanks Staska]

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

Filed under: Laptops

We really don’t have much of a clue what Acer is up to here, but it’s a bit of an exception when Acer isn’t doing something completely predictable with its product lineup and design direction, so we though we’d give you a heads up. The “Gemstone concept” is apparently a new Acer Aspire laptop line, or so it seems — the promo material is a bit obtuse. It could very well look totally gaudy, but we suppose we’ll find out on Friday, and it’s pretty much impossible to look much more ridiculous than Acer’s Ferrari lineup, so how can we lose?

[Thanks, Olivier]

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

Filed under: Laptops

You’ve got to hand it to Acer for holding strong while lesser manufacturers folded in the face of cries over “consumer safety,” but the Taiwanese giant has finally caved and issued a voluntary recall of about 27,000 Sony-made laptop batteries over eight months after Dell pulled back the first four million,and half a year following its initial consultations with Sony. Affected models include a slew of TravelMate and Aspire notebooks sold between May 2004 and November 2006, so Acer owners should hit the Read link to match up serial numbers — and then shutdown immediately in favor of AC power if they do happen to sport one of the explosion-prone packs. As usual, the company will replace your battery for free as long as you visit the proper site or dial the toll-free blah blah blah…can we finally put this meme to bed already?

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

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

It looks like Acer has managed to find itself on HP’s bad side as of late, with the latter company accusing the former of patent infringement and both companies now headed to court to sort things out. According to HP, Acer’s been violating five of patents in a number of its desktops, laptops, and displays — in particular, those relating to “DVD editing, processing ability, and power consumption and efficiency,” The New York Times reports. As a result of that alleged bad behavior, HP’s now asking for an injunction to prevent the products in question from being sold in the United States, as well as demanding the ever-popular “unspecified damages.” For its part, Acer appears to be staying mum on the matter, and we suspect that’ll be the case until the whole brouhaha’s been resolved.

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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: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

If you think LG has a mess on its hands, it’s suddenly not alone, as six other manufacturers touching one point or another in the LCD TV supply chain are now facing a patent lawsuit from Honeywell. In what smells awfully like another patent instance of patent trolling, Honeywell is suing Acer, AU Optronics, BenQ, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Renesas Technology, and Denmos Technology as it claims that a patented “method of stopping liquid-crystal displays from flickering” has been unrightfully used. The firm has reportedly “sustained damages and will continue to sustain damages in the future,” which they feel should translate into receiving incredible amounts of cash in order to resolve the situation. Reportedly, five of the six outfits under the lawsuit said that they “had not been informed” about the issue just yet, but we doubt it’ll be too much longer before it floats to their respective legal departments.

[Via Inquirer]

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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!