Acer renews commitment to the Tablet PC

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 26 Sep 2005 at 17:40

Acer has announced a raft of new products, renewing its commitment to the Tablet PC format with a new 'sliding' mechanism that draws the screen back across the keyboard and tilts it up in a single action.

The C200 Tablet PC notebook series is a Sonoma-based Centrino affair with dual-channel system memory support up to 2GB, dual-layer DVD burning, nVidia graphics, WiFi and Bluetooth wireless and of course Microsoft's Tablet PC platform.

Acer also introduced the Ferrari 4000 - claimed as the world's first to use a carbon fiber casing. Under the bonnet is AMD's Centrino rival, the 64bit Turion, along with HyperTransport support. Graphics are provided by ATI's X700 chipset. Again, WiFi and Bluetooth are present, and the 15.4in display is available in resolutions of either 1680 x 1050 or 1280 x 800. The high-tech casing helps keep weight down to 2.86kg.

Acer is also updating its Aspire range of notebooks with the 9500 and 5510, adding in support for VoIP and digital and analogue tuners.

The VoIP function is in the form of a PCMCIA card 'phone' that can be used either plugged in to the laptop or connected via Bluetooth.

The digital and analogue TV tuner is standard with the 5510 and optional for the 9500.

Acer's MG3001-P is its media gateway solution - essentially a network box with support for a wide range of media formats, such as WMV9, High Definition MPEG-2 for HD TV,Divx and Xvid, and mountains of ports - including SCART - to connect consumer electronics and PC equipment. It also boasts wireless capabilities and allows the owner to stream and access content from one source to another.

The company is also looking to build on its European success in the PDA market with a targeted in-car system, in a form that combines GPS sat-nav capabilities with PDA applications such as contacts, picture viewer and media player.

Acer is also launching two new digital cameras, in a market where it admits it has yet to differentiate itself. The Acer CI-6330 and CS-6530 have 6 megapixel CCDs and 3x optical zooms, with the latter boasting the larger TFT size of 2.5in and a 6cm Macro mode. Both are extremely compact.

There are new projectors in the form of the Acer PD322, PD100, PD120 and PD125D. They offer contrast ratios of 2000:1 lumens and native resolutions between 800 x 600 to 1024 x 768. The former focuses on portability, and weighs in at 1kg, while image quality and low noise levels are the priority for the other three in the DLP range, the quietest running at a 27dB whisper in eco mode.

UK pricing has yet to be announced, but for more information visit the Acer website.