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Acer unviel world’s thinnest 13.3-inch Aspire S5 Ultrabook at CES 2012

PC News Zone — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:54:00 +0000

Not surprisingly, Acer's jumping on the quickly-expanding Ultrabook bandwagon here at CES 2012, with the Aspire S5 being the initial out of the chute. It's a 13.3-incher that'll check it at under three pounds, offering up Instant On functionality, a magnesium-aluminum alloy cover (in Onyx Black), HDMI / USB 3.0 / Thunderbolt (!) ports and an SSD for correct measure. We're told that it'll commence shipping in Q2 of this year, but other details remain under wraps.

8 Jan 2012 Acer Unveils World's Thinnest Ultrabook: Aspire S5 Acer unveiled the world's thinnest Ultrabook with the Aspire S5, an ultra-slim device that measures only 15 mm at the maximal point. It weighs less than 1.35 kg (less than 3 lbs.) and is built with a 13.3-inch (34 cm) LCD. In addition, it features the unique Acer Green Instant On technology for fast boot and resume, and Acer Always Connect, which lets users manage their multimedia and data on all their devices at anytime, anywhere - even from sleep. "The Ultrabook is much more than just a product segment," said Jim Wong, president of Acer Inc. "It's a new trend that will become the mainstream for mobile PCs, and customers will see the unique features gradually extended across Acer's notebook family." Instantly on and always connected Innovative Acer Green Instant On and Acer Always Connect technologies enable data upload and retrieval anytime, anywhere, and deliver power-saving features as well. Acer Green Instant On provides instant-resume functionality (in 1.5 seconds) and ensures battery life that lasts several weeks. Acer Always Connectgets users online faster than conventional connections for better productivity and infotainment enjoyment. With their Facebook, Twitter and Outlook email accounts open, users can see updates instantly upon resuming. Furthermore, Acer Always Connect can wake up the Aspire S5 from a remote device like a smartphone. Access to all documents, music, pictures and video files is fast and always available. Ultra-fluid contours Adorned with a delicately curved chassis in Onyx Black, the Aspire S5's cover rim wraps around the system body like a protective shell. A magnesium-aluminum alloy cover and palmrest provide a slimmer and sturdier form, while the metallic brushed detail presents subtle elegance. The clean and ultra-fluid contours seen from all angles make the S5 a vision of beauty. Magical I/O port panel The Aspire S5 is Acer's first Ultrabook to feature a smartly designed MagicFlip I/O port panel concealed just below the hinge. This design feature enhances the overall slenderness and streamlined form of the S5. When needed, a press of the MagicFlip key opens the panel to reveal a selection of I/O ports: HDMIÂ®, USB 3.0 and 20 Gbps Thunderbolt. Performance and eco-friendly features The Aspire S5 features an IntelÂ® Coreâ„¢ processor, SSD storage for speed and increased shock resistance, professionally-tuned DolbyÂ® Home TheaterÂ® v4, long battery life via the PowerSmart battery pack (with a 3X longer life cycle1 than traditional batteries), and is equipped with a chiclet keyboard. The Aspire S5 will start shipping in Q2 2012.

Acer unviel world’s thinnest 13.3-inch Aspire S5 Ultrabook at CES 2012

PC News Zone — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:54:00 +0000

8 Jan 2012 Acer Unveils World's Thinnest Ultrabook: Aspire S5 Acer unveiled the world's thinnest Ultrabook with the Aspire S5, an ultra-slim device that measures only 15 mm at the maximal point. It weighs less than 1.35 kg (less than 3 lbs.) and is built with a 13.3-inch (34 cm) LCD. In addition, it features the unique Acer Green Instant On technology for fast boot and resume, and Acer Always Connect, which lets users manage their multimedia and data on all their devices at anytime, anywhere - even from sleep. "The Ultrabook is much more than just a product segment," said Jim Wong, president of Acer Inc. "It's a new trend that will become the mainstream for mobile PCs, and customers will see the unique features gradually extended across Acer's notebook family." Instantly on and always connected Innovative Acer Green Instant On and Acer Always Connect technologies enable data upload and retrieval anytime, anywhere, and deliver power-saving features as well. Acer Green Instant On provides instant-resume functionality (in 1.5 seconds) and ensures battery life that lasts several weeks. Acer Always Connectgets users online faster than conventional connections for better productivity and infotainment enjoyment. With their Facebook, Twitter and Outlook email accounts open, users can see updates instantly upon resuming. Furthermore, Acer Always Connect can wake up the Aspire S5 from a remote device like a smartphone. Access to all documents, music, pictures and video files is fast and always available. Ultra-fluid contours Adorned with a delicately curved chassis in Onyx Black, the Aspire S5's cover rim wraps around the system body like a protective shell. A magnesium-aluminum alloy cover and palmrest provide a slimmer and sturdier form, while the metallic brushed detail presents subtle elegance. The clean and ultra-fluid contours seen from all angles make the S5 a vision of beauty. Magical I/O port panel The Aspire S5 is Acer's first Ultrabook to feature a smartly designed MagicFlip I/O port panel concealed just below the hinge. This design feature enhances the overall slenderness and streamlined form of the S5. When needed, a press of the MagicFlip key opens the panel to reveal a selection of I/O ports: HDMIÂ®, USB 3.0 and 20 Gbps Thunderbolt. Performance and eco-friendly features The Aspire S5 features an IntelÂ® Coreâ„¢ processor, SSD storage for speed and increased shock resistance, professionally-tuned DolbyÂ® Home TheaterÂ® v4, long battery life via the PowerSmart battery pack (with a 3X longer life cycle1 than traditional batteries), and is equipped with a chiclet keyboard. The Aspire S5 will start shipping in Q2 2012.

FXI Cotton Candy Demo: More Power than You Can Shake a (Thumb) Stick at

PC News Zone — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:54:00 +0000

Anand and Jason had a chance to enounce with FXI a while back, but at the time they werenâ€™t able to give him any hands-on time with their micro-computer plan device, codenamed Cotton Candy. Theyâ€™re demoing the hardware at CES, and this time we were able to play around with the draw and derive a taste for what it can do. At a lofty level, the view is beyond doubt simple: select your typical SoC device, strip away the display and battery, and add a couple USB connectors and an HDMI output. The result is a completely functional computer in something roughly the size of a thumb driveâ€”at least, a larger thumb plod circa 2008. The core SoC in Cotton Candy is the latest Exynos chip running at 1.2GHz, giving you twain ARM Cortex A9 cores and a Mali 400 GPU. This is one of the fastest 40nm SoC solutions currently available, and itâ€™s capable of running any compatible OS. (Future versions of the hardware can of class slither to newer, faster, smaller SoCs.) FXI had several Cotton Candy demo units on hand demonstrating different OSes; Android 2.3.4 is the farthest along in the Android ecosystem, although they did have an Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS = Android 4.0) construct running in software rendering mode (and the fully functional construct of ICS is expected in the next few months). Besides flavors of Android, FXI had another unit running a Ubuntu build. Thereâ€™s no flash storage built into the SoC itself, or even in the â€œUSB stickâ€; the units instead have a micro-SD slot for storage, and the OS and data all resides there. That opens up the potential for a single hardware draw that could nothing else but run multiple operating systems with fair a easy swap of the micro-SD chip, which has some beyond doubt cool possibilities for those that like to try out modern OS releases but may not want to root/wipe their current OS. Another interesting aspect of Cotton Candy is how it interfaces with other devices. The simplest mode consists of plugging the HDMI connector directly into any HDMI-compatible display, using the full size USB connector to provide power (via an AC-to-USB adapter). The OS boots in roughly 15 to 20 seconds, and if you have the strict hardwareâ€”e.g. FXI used a USB Bluetooth radio with a keyboard and mouseâ€”you can begin using your computer. Thatâ€™s nothing particularly noteworthy, but itâ€™s only one of several options. Plug Cotton Candy into another PC and matters change; after a 15-20 second delay for the draw OS to boot, Cotton Candy presents itself as a storage draw on your desktop/laptop. Run the strict executableâ€”Windows, OS X, and Linux binaries are includedâ€”and you derive an application that shows the Cotton Candy OS, all in a virtualized environment. (Note that the virtualization is fair for the display and input options on the host computer.) You can also plug Cotton Candy into tablets and smartphones, where again the input devices and screen are virtualized and you derive a touch interface. (Presumably this will require an strict virtualization client for the host device, so Cotton Candy may not work with every tablet/smartphone out there.) Now granted, running Android with a keyboard and mouse in place of a touch-screen interface feels a bit clunky depending on what youâ€™re doingâ€”swiping through screens with a mouse fair isnâ€™t as intuitive, and Angry Birds isnâ€™t as fun when youâ€™re not poking at the screen with your fingerâ€”but for web browsing and other traditional PC-centric tasks it works fine, and 1080p video also played without issue. Using a tablet or smartphone fair to drag up another tablet/smartphone fashion OS may also seem a bit unusual, but there is a goal in all of this. So FXI has put a small and fully functional computer inside a thumb stick, capable of running some of the latest OSes at 1080p without trouble. Thatâ€™s fine, but why exactly carry out we need this? FXIâ€™s view is that as SoC hardware continues to advance, devices like smartphones and smart TVs are rapidly consigned to the scrap heap of history. While that might be stunning for a smartphone that gets upgraded every year or two, it doesnâ€™t work as de facto with TVs, car computers, or other â€œsmartâ€ devices that may be used for 5-10 years (or longer, assuming they sustain up). Whatâ€™s more, as people shove towards Cloud-centric computing models, all they beyond doubt need is a general user interface that lets them derive to the cloud. Thatâ€™s where Cotton Candy comes in, as you could potentially carry one draw around that has access to all the apps and data that you want/use and the UI stays the same wherever you go. Besides a USB input (for power and data) and an HDMI output, the current units also include a micro-USB harbour that can interface with acceptable USB peripherals. FXI had a PS3 controller connected at one point playing a recreation on the Ubuntu stick. Of course, thatâ€™s a little bizarre looking as the controller is many times larger than the rest of the hardware, but it works and it adds potential for other interesting uses of the hardware. Finally, the thumb adhere includes wireless networking and Bluetooth preserve as well. FXI is aiming to have hardware available for â€œwell underâ€ $200 by the end of the year. $200 would probably be too high, considering Appleâ€™s iPod Touch goes for $200 and comes with a display, speakers, case, etc. The FXI hardware is faster than the current iPod Touch, but thatâ€™s over a year old. If Apple releases an updated iPod with hardware similar to the iPhone 4S/iPad 2 at the same $200 price point, we propose a price closer to $100 as fair for Cotton Candyâ€”similar to what many media streamers cost. Whatever the price, however, there will likely be buyersâ€”software developers as one example might be interested, particularly given the potential to nothing else but swap between micro-SD cards and OSes. Depending on what other features are bundled into the device(s), and what interesting software is created to leverage the hardware, thereâ€™s a lot of room for creative and innovating solutions. We see forward to seeing where matters sprint from here, and hopefully as final hardware nears completion weâ€™ll be able to provide some extra testing and evaluation of Cotton Candy.

Verizon bringing storage to mifi with Seagate LTE mobile drive

PC News Zone — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:54:00 +0000

If you want a small more enterprise-friendly functionality in your broadband mobile router, Seagate and Verizon have a treat for you. Their new combination storage/mobile access draw allows for sharing both a Verizon LTE mobile connection and files across the built-in hard drive. The 500GB conventional crawl acts as a faithful shared drive/file server for up to three busy users, fair like Seagateâ€™s similar WiFi-only FreeAgent product available today. It comes with a battery as well, so untethered access should be god for a few hours, though immoderate use of the hard crawl will lower this. The unit is being developed for corporate customers at the moment, with consumers coming some time after initial release. To that end, the crawl also includes remote server access built-in t its software. Connect to your FTP site, and files can be automatically downloaded to the driveâ€™s on board storage. To keep matters fascinating while youâ€™re waiting for your flight, it connects naively with Netflix and streams it to any computer or mobile draw â€“ no app required. The draw has no set free date, but a Seagate representative said theyâ€™ve been working on it for 18 months, and it would be available soon.