Is this all-in-one Core i3 touchscreen PC could be the one-stop solution for your home office?
Expert Reviews – PCs
Acer is packing Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor into the latest model of its TravelMate series of laptops.
The TravelMate P243 will run on an Intel Core i5 Ivy Bridge processor with Turbo Boost technology.
It also features a 14-inch 1366×768 resolution screen, USB 3.0 port, HD webcam for video conferencing, 8GB of RAM, and option for a NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M video card with DirectX 11 support.
Business traveller
As part of Acer’s line of business designed notebooks, the TravelMate P243 includes Acer’s suite of professional software.
ProShield Security offers pre-boot authentication, secure drive encryption, and file shredder utility.
Software is also included for backup and recovery management, wake-on-lan remote access, and tools to help monitor and manage IT assets.
The TravelMate P243 is only slated for the UK at the moment, with a price set at £339 (about 6).
Acer is keeping quiet on when the launch will happen though, with no word either on whether its latest business notebook will be traveling to the US.
Most PCs this size come without an operating system, but this Atom-based system’s price includes Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Expert Reviews – PCs
Asus's Transformer Prime just got some company. Available for pre-order today, the Acer Iconia Tab A510 brings the price of entry for a 10.1" Tegra 3-powered tablet down to a cool 9.99, less than the similarly equipped Asus offering. Like the Prime the A510 features a 10.1" 1280×800 display, the 1.3 GHz Tegra 3 SoC with 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage expandable by microSD. The base battery life on the A510 is an impressive 36.26Whr, not quite as much as the new iPad, but somewhat higher than its prececessor and the Prime. That big battery does lead to a somewhat portly frame, with a thickness cresting a centimeter and weighing nearly 100g more than the Prime. The frame is similar to the A200 we saw in January, but is actually a little thinner and with a textured back for extra grip.
Android 4.0 is on order for software, complete with Acer's Ring UI, a relatively innocuous skin that mainly seeks to put your most commonly used apps in easy reach. When we took a look at the A500, we were pleased with its display quality, not quite IPS but great for a vanilla LCD; we hope we can expect more of the same from this display. Software pre-load includes the usual branded media players and print software, along with Polaris Office 3.5 for productivity. Gone though, is the full-sized USB port, replaced by microUSB, though it remains compatibile with portable HDD up to 2TB in size.
There's no shortage of options for tablet buyers right now, and everyday another pops up. But if performance, battery life and price are your main criteria, the A510 may just be the tablet for you. Pre-orders start today for 9.99 at your favorite e-tailers; no ship dates are available.
True to their word, Acer is announcing the availability of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update for their recently launched A200 tablet. We posted the PR blurb about the A200 in early January, and we were able to get some hands on time with the A200 at CES 2012. The quick summary is that Acer has trimmed a few features from the A500, like the rear-facing camera and HDMI port, but they also changed up the industrial design. While the plastic exterior may not sound as impressive as the aluminum shell of the A500, the reality is that in hand the textured plastic actually feels better (at least in our opinion).
As far as the Ice Cream Sandwich update, while Acer’s press release states that they’re updating all of the Iconia line to Android 4.0 (including the A100, A200, and A500), the reality of the updates isn’t quite so impressive. The update is currently being pushed to Iconia A200 customers (it’s not clear if you can get it faster by checking for a system update or not) and should be completed over the coming week. A100 and A500 users eager to get the ICS update on the other hand will have to wait a while longer—April to be precise.
Besides all the Android 4.0 goodness, there are a few features that are unique to Acer. Chief of these is their Acer Ring, allowing you to navigate directly to apps from the lock screen. While the idea is nice, in practice we haven’t found the Acer Ring to be necessary and at least the one time I looked at it, it felt a bit chunky and sluggish to launch and navigate (though I could say the same for Android 3.x in general on Tegra 2 hardware). The only other extra feature Acer mentions is an improved weather widget.
You can read more about ICS in our Galaxy Nexus review, though obviously there will be some differences when running on a Tegra 2 tablet. It should provide a better UI experience on Tegra 2 tablets, but unfortunately unless you’re one of the users that purchased an A200, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. The A200 8GB is currently selling for 0 while the 16GB model goes for 0. However, at this late stage in the life of Tegra 2, we wouldn’t recommend buying a new tablet running Tegra 2 hardware unless the price is under 0, especially considering Tegra 3 tablets are expected to hit sub-0 prices in the very near future.
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