Acer held a media event today showcasing some of their upcoming laptops and tablets for 2012. The event kicked off with Acer’s Country manager Gregory Nizovsky, giving us a brief on where Acer as a brand stands in the Middle East followed by what their plans for 2012.

Following Gregory, Mark Prosser, Product Marketing Manager, Mobility Products, Acer Computer (M.E) Ltd took stage and disclosed the new laptops and tablets in the region. The following models can be expected from Acer in the months ahead.

Acer V3

The Acer V3 will be branded with the Olympics logo and features a premium finish with 14″, 15.6″ and 17.3″ models powered by Intel’s Core family of CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs. The 1600×900 resolution LED backlit screen will make sure Blu-ray movies look good won it.

Acer Aspire S5

Dubbed as the world’s thinnest Ultrabook that measures only 15 mm and weighs less than 1.35 kg, the S5 features the magical I/O panel that reveals itself when needed through a key press and houses the first thunderbolt port found on a PC laptop. Powered by Ivy Bridge and SSD drives, this next-gen Ultrabook has instant resume in 1.5seconds and a battery that lasts weeks on standby.

Acer Timeline Ultra M3

If you love your notebooks to be thin and light but also like to game on them, then the Timeline Ultra M3 with a dedicated Kepler (NVIDIA GT640M) GPU should keep you chugging- especially with that eight hour battery life. Measuring just 20mm thin, this laptop also comes equipped with Core CPUs from Intel and SSDs.

Acer Iconia Tab A700

Super hi-res displays is what is going to drive the next generation of tablets and Acer is well prepared for that with it’s ICONIA TAB A700 tablet with a 10.1″ screen featuring a full-HD 1920×1200 resolution. Along with the impressive display, Acer is equipping this tablet with a Tegra 3 SoC and a 9800 mAh battery.

I’m at the HP Global Influencer Summit 2012 in Shanghai, and in between product showcases and forums, I slink away to get a closer look at what HP is demoing at the show. While the entire show floor is abuzz with activity, there is a growing mob of people desperately trying to get a glimpse of a particular product – the HP Envy Spectre XT. While HP have launched a whole host of products at the show, this is one Ultrabook that got everyone’s attention. I was lucky enough to have some ‘quiet time’ with the unit to really find out what made this Ultrabook so appealing.

At first glance I have to say that the unit does look very similar to another device that’s “lighter than Air”. Having said that, the Envy Spectre XT comes in a beautiful aluminum finish and looks gorgeous from any angle.

Taking a quick tour of the device, on the left hand side is full-sized Ethernet port, USB, and HDMI ports as well as a Kensington security slot.

On the right side is another USB port, SD card reader, AC input, headphone jack, and power/HDD indicator. While I would have liked just one more USB port somewhere, I think the selection of ports available will keep most people happy and free them from carrying around various dongles that other Ultrabooks seem to require.

The chiclet-style keyboard is backlit, which is a welcome addition to any laptop or Ultrabook. While the keys were comfortable enough for a quick typing test, I did have to fiddle with the arrow keys which are of different sizes. The trackpad is responsive and responded fairly quickly to my rapid double clicking.

Like with most of their lineup, the Envy Spectre XT comes with Beats audio, and features four speakers for optimum sound; two near the base of the Ultrabook and two hidden in the display hinge. I wasn’t able to check out how the audio sounded, but generally the Beats lineup does not disappoint.

The model I looked at was running Windows 7 Professional x64, with an Intel i7-3667U 2.5GHz processor, and 4GB of RAM. You can also configure the device with a 256GB SSD which I believe was what was in the demo unit. The only two downsides I found were that it only has integrated graphics, and the price point starts at around USD$ 1,000. Still, it’s hard to resist the allure of the Envy Spectre XT, as evident by the hordes of people trying to snap a photo or play with the device.

Acer continues its Aspire brand with the Aspire One 725, powerful laptop optimized for a terrific multimedia experience. The laptop combines a Radeon 6290 graphics card, AMD C-series dual core processor, and 4GB DDR 3 RAM to provide a great visual experience regarding videos, images and video games, all displayed on Acer’s CineCrystal LED-Backlit display. Full press release below:

Press Release:

The Aspire One 725 was designed to skillfully combine a tasteful and stylish look with terrific performance enabling users enjoy a sensational visual experience for superb multimedia – movies, games, photos, videos – wherever they go. This netbook delivers a state-of-the-art user experience and amazing HD visuals anytime, anywhere.

The Aspire One 725 definitely stands out and not only for performance. Available in two color options, Caribbean blue and Volcanic black, it flaunts a gorgeous glossy, glittery cover. The soft matte finish of the palm-rest matches the color of the cover, for a more pleasant look, and prevents fingerprints and palm smudges. Thinner than 1-inch and around only 1.2 kg, it easily fits into any handbag or backpack while providing a comfortable viewing thanks to the 11.6” screen.

This new netbook comes with a high-brightness Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit display, with both HD resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio, making it ideal for both entertainment and productivity.

To provide a seamless experience, it’s equipped with an HDMI port to easily connect to HDTVs, widescreen monitors or projectors and share Hi-Def video content.

And, to chat face-to-face, capture photos or video-conference there is the Acer HD CrystalEye webcam with Acer Video Conference Manager to enhance image quality and allow for photo, document and screen sharing on the spot!

With AMD APU Fusion technology, combining AMD C processor and AMD Radeon™ HD 6290 graphics, supporting the latest graphic standards, real time image processing and edge sharpening, the Aspire One 725 accomplishes any task in a breeze. Now it’s possible to experience full high-definition video over the web, up to 3 times faster online video streaming and enjoy HD movies.

What’s more, the Aspire One 725 not only is ready to make the most of web browsing and to take advantage of today’s more visual digital universe, but it can efficiently perform everyday tasks, such as emailing, chatting, photo viewing, document editing and delivers multitasking capabilities, even with demanding applications.

It’s no hidden knowledge retained by a privileged few that Intel’s push (and rather creation) for “Ultrabooks” comes after increasing pressure from tablets and Apple’s MacBook Airs. The fact that no company could do what Apple did – pack in almost top notch hardware in an impressively small frame with incredible battery life to boot – Intel had to step in with $300M to make OEMs do something about the falling sales of Intel notebook processors.

And since last year we have seen a ton of ultrabooks hit the market. Many have made an impression on us, and despite mimicking some of the aesthetics of the MacBook Air, nothing has really come close to providing that quintessential ‘Apple experience’.  That is until now; the Dell XPS 13 promises to be what we secretly always wanted ultrabooks to be, a MacBook Air with Windows without the high cost.

The Design

So let’s have a look at the XPS 13 and see what it brings to the table. The first thing you’ll notice is that if it weren’t for the Dell logo on the lid, the XPS 13 looks almost exactly like a MacBook Air. The dimensions and the cuts and the sweeping angles look very like an MBA. The other major distinguishing factor comes from the carbon fiber on the back that gracefully wraps the rear end of the XPS 13. Better yet is the small metal flap that hides your Windows 7 serial key behind the XPS logo.

The XPS 13 is designed to look extremely simple, and as such there are hardly any nooks and crannies. The number of ports is minimal, with the power, USB 2.0 and 3.5mm jack on the left, and on the right we have one mini-DisplayPort and one USB 3.0 port. There’s nothing on the back or front side.

Well, there is one cool small strip of white LED light on the front to indicate the power state of the XPS 13. Also, there’s a battery level indicator on the right side, very similar to MacBook Pros (although there it’s shown in green light).

Keyboard & Monitor

Opening up the XPS 13 we’re greeted with a pleasant looking chiclet keyboard with large indented keys. The keyboard is, of course, backlit with white LEDs. The palmrest area is magnesium alloy with a soft felt paint finish that easy on the hands, while the glass touchpad is nice and large, although I’m not a fan of the squishy mouse buttons at the bottom.

The Corning Gorilla glass display feels very sturdy, and is actually easy on the eyes with a rich contrast, but the glossy finish takes away from the appeal during brightly lit conditions. One of the best things about the display was the 1cm black edges, making the 13.3-inch screen look larger than it is. Viewing angles are typical in this class of laptops, with anything over 120° from the sides bringing in the “negative” effect, and if the screen isn’t tilted directly towards your eyes you’ll start seeing dark shades on the top.

Usage

With the Core i5-2467M @ 1.60GHz (Turbo boosting up to 2.30GHz), 4GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory and 128GB SSD the XPS 13 has all the right components to make it good enough for general daily usage. Of the 128GB, only 98.9GB is available after formatting. And after the Windows install and all the bloatware from Dell, just over 73GB is available. Using this with one or two games and a couple of hundred MP3s is fine, but forget storing anything huge as the drive space will be sucked up quicker than you’ll realize.

Overall using the 1.3kg XPS 13 was a pleasure. It’s fairly fast thanks to the Core i5 processor, and the 4GB of RAM is adequate for watching HD movies, doing office work and browsing the net. Heck, weak as the integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics are, I still managed to play DOTA 2 on it, albeit with lowest settings.

That said, the XPS 13 gets fairly hot when under full stress, which I experienced while running benchmarks and playing gamers. The carbon fiber bottom keeps the XPS 13 comfortably warm; however, the center metal plate is too hot to touch directly. HW Monitor showed the chassis maxing out at 85°C while CPU itself touched 85°C. And just when the heavy duty stuff kicks in, the puny fan inside kicks into high gear, which may or may not be irritating depending on your tolerance levels (and whether you’re wearing headphones!).

Benchmarks

Since performance on most ultrabooks remains the same, what I decided to do this time around was to test the performance depending on the power modes. So first I ran PCMark 7 with the XPS 13 set to ‘High Power’ and plugged in. Then with ‘High Performance’, but unplugged. Finally I ran PCMark 7 with the XPS 13 on ‘Balanced’ and unplugged. Running it on ‘Power Saver’ mode results in a performance hit that’s felt even when browsing the internet, so no point in benchmarking in that mode.

Not bad, but we a performance drop of 5.4% when the XPS 13 is unplugged, and a further 7.5% when running in ‘Balanced’ mode. Not too bad, because the battery life I clocked in with ‘Balanced’, browsing the net and watching YouTube HD was just over 6 hours.

Conclusion

The Dell XPS 13 brings nothing new to the ultrabook market, as the basic performance shows. But what it does do, and with a lot of class, is an ultrabook form factor that’s desirable by many. You’re not stuck with different aspects of a design you may or may not appreciate. The XPS 13 is a class act from Dell, and if you ignore the rather liberal inspiration from the MacBook Air, then the aluminum chassis with carbon fiber composite base presents an aesthetically pleasing design. The light weight and 18mm – 6mm thickness is something that makes for an ideal ultrabook. Also, starting at $300 cheaper than a similarly specced MacBook Air, you can’t go wrong with the XPS 13 at all.

Press Release:

Acer has unveiled the V3 Series, a range of notebooks optimized for today’s digital needs, available in 14-, 15.6- and 17.3-inch models. With excellent performance, entertainment enhancements, communication tools and a classy design, these notebooks are intended for tech-savvy users who want daily high-definition audio and visual experiences.

The latest generation Intel Core family processors, plus NVIDA GeForce GT Series graphics ensure excellent performance for multitasking with lots of apps, music, Internet video, movies, games and more.

Specialized entertainment enhancements include the Acer CineCrystal HD+ 1600 x 900 LED-backlit display on the 17.3” screen and , Dolby Home Theater v4 and a Blu-ray Disc drive. Users can even enjoy notebook entertainment on an HDTV via the HDMI-out port.

The V3 Series features Acer InviLink Nplify Wi-Fi CERTIFIED wireless connectivity and Gigabit Ethernet to keep users online, and the Acer Crystal Eye HD webcam guarantees high-resolution face-to-face communication.

Acer clear.fi 2.0 automatically connects all digital-home devices. This lets users manage, share and enjoy media from any device in any room at home.

Sharing files among other digital devices is also possible via a multi-in-1 card slot, Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 2.0/3.0 ports (with USB power-off charging).

Design-wise, the cover has a glossy finish and its color matches the screen bezel and palm rest. The Acer chiclet keyboard is stylish, ergonomic and complemented by a multi-gesture touchpad for enhanced comfort and productivity. The V3 Series comes in Midnight Black, Dawn Gold, Nightfall Gray and Thunderbolt Silver.

HP today announced the launch of its ENVY 14 Spectre notebook, which features some rather impressive use of glass. Rather than encasing the laptop in metal or plastic, HP have opted to use a scratch-resistant glass on the lid, display, and palmrest of the laptop, giving it a distinctive look and style.

“Sleek, midnight black glass on the outside and stark contrast silver on the inside make Spectre extraordinary, defying conventional notebook design,” said Louis Perrin, director, consumer products, Personal Systems Group, HP EMEA. “We chose the name for our first ENVY Ultrabook to evoke mystery and to satisfy those who expect the unexpected.”

Featuring a full backlit keyboard, Beats Audio, a 128GB SSD and the latest Intel processors, the ENVY 14 Spectre is sure to turn heads wherever you go. It is now available at select retailers at a price of AED 5,599.

In a recent survey by UK’s Open University of over 2000 students, a very interesting insight has been revealed. A lot of people nowadays claim that the younger generation is more tech-savvy than the older, simply due to the fact that they’re growing up with modern devices. That’s not the case at all.

“Our research shows that the argument that there is a generational break between today’s generation of young people who are immersed in new technologies and older generations who are less familiar with technology is flawed,” says Dr Jones. “The diverse ways that young people use technology today shows the argument is too simplistic and that a new single generation, often called the ‘net generation’, with high skill levels in technology does not exist.”

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), led by Dr Christopher Jones of the Open University was done with first year students at five British universities. The research showed that an overwhelming majority (97,8%) of students owned a mobile phones, 77.4% owned laptops and 38.1% had desktop computers. And while 2/3rd of the students were satisfied with their access of computers, 83.2% said they would miss not having access to their mobile phones.

More importantly, though, the level of IT related skills between males and females was negligible; males being more confident in their usage of “spreadsheets, graphics, audio/video, computer maintenance and security.” Interestingly most students who had been exposed to a wide variety of technology lacked proper understanding of specialized software.

Although where social networking is concerned, 95.7% of students under the age of 20 use social networking, whereas those over the age of 35 amounted to just 21.5%.

AMD’s latest entry for their Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) is going to come out soon. While both desktop and laptop variants will be out almost at the same time, we have a sneak peak at the A10 Trinity mobile APU.

The prototype laptop AMD had brought along with them had undisclosed specs, but they confirmed that it was running their top of the line A10 quad-core APU. This test unit specifically was running just the APU, there was no discrete graphics card within the laptop, ergo no CrossFire.

While they didn’t allow us to run the built-in benchmark on Dirt 3, we did get a chance to see the game running on the A10 APU with everything set on high and 2xMSAA. Check it out for yourself below.

Next up is a short demonstration of one of the new features AMD is implementing in the A10 APU. The AMD Steady Video technology is implemented at a hardware level on all Trinity based APUs, and one of the videos AMD demonstrated this image stabilization tech with was the extremely shaky Triple Tomcat Launch.

Lastly we wrap up the A10 Trinity demo with a short interview with AMD’s Stefano Chiavegati, Head of Commercial and Component Marketing for EMEA. We asked about the A10 Trinity’s launch, comparison with Ivy Bridge, CrossFire compatibility with HD 7600 series cards.

So expect the AMD A10 Trinity APUs to be out by the end of June. We’ll have more updated coverage on the new platform closer to release.

Features

Plextor is more commonly known for their excellent optical drives, especially in this region where any performance enthusiast knows that Plextor drives are the ones to get for reliable burning. So when I was approached to review their new M3 Pro SSD, I was pleasantly surprised (even though I shouldn’t have been) to see that it comes with some really exciting features.

Firstly, the Plextor M3 Pro is unlike most other SSDs reviewed in the past, in that it uses a Marvell Controller. Secondly, unlike Intel’s NAND Flash that’s used in most drives, we’re seeing Toshiba’s Toggle Mode Flash chips. Last, but not least, is Plextor’s own firmware which provides a host of performance improvements including their True Speed technology.

Build

While SSDs are enjoyed by PC enthusiasts who love fast performance, it’s also favored by laptop enthusiasts who want lower power consumption in addition to just raw performance increase. Plextor has not only these two markets covered, but have also designed the M3 Pro to be completely future proof. With a height of just 7mm, the M3 Pro is one of the first SSDs on the market that can fit right into an ultrabook. Furthermore, the M3 Pro uses an incredibly low 0.1w when idling, and 5w when active. Our comparative Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD uses 0.46w when idle and 2.05w when active.

So basically when idling, the Plextor M3 Pro draws almost 98% lesser power than one of the fastest SSDs on the market; 76% when active. You do the math on how much battery life this can save on your laptop.

Inside the brushed aluminum SSD we find the Marvell 88SS9174 controller, two 256MB SDRAM chips for cache and, of course, eight synchronous 32GB Toshiba Toggle Mode NAND flash in 24nm size. Each of the chips is attached to the external aluminum casing via a thermal pad for efficient heat dissipation.

The last bit I want to talk about the Plextor M3 Pro is that it comes bundled with a 3.5mm bracket (plus screws), a molex to SATA power cable as well as a copy of Acronis True Image for backing up the data from your old hard drive.