Acer to announce ultrabook at IFA

Acer has let slip that it will announce a super-skinny notebook of the type chip giant Intel is calling an "ultrabook" at the IFA consumer electronics show. Emailed invites to the IFA press conference don't mention the U-word, but the text of the message itself does. As you can see from the snap below, Acer promises the …

[Thomas 4]

So....

....once you get past the verbal marketing diahorrea, it's a laptop then?

[Armando 123]

Not entirely

I own a Macbook Air, and I'll replace it with another. It's been beaten to death the last three years, including on drop onto concrete from four feet while it was open and running, but the darn thing keeps running fine. And it is ideal if you have to travel because it's so light but the build quality is still darn good ... unlike a lot of bigger, heavier laptops.

[Tyson Key]

So....

Exactly. They're just putting old wine ("thinner-than-usual/average" laptops) into a similar bottle with a different label on it.

We've been through this before with "netbooks", "subcompact laptops", and "ultra-portable notebooks".

Fail icon - Because you can't pull the wool over my eyes *that* easily.

[JB]

Xbox?

Nuff said.

[Alan Denman]

Acer 722 is darn hot even without the shine.

Methinks an Acer 722 at $250 will do me mighty fine.

A shiny shiny Intel is not for me, even if its 300 grams lighter.

[Matt Devney]

What the heck is...

..."minimal design"?

Acer designer:

"We thought a bit about putting an innovative keyboard on it and a multi-touch trackpad, but thought 'fuck it' and did the same as the previous model as per the 'minimal design' brief"

If they had written minimalist design, I'd give the PR department a bit more respect. But not much more.

I hate PR. And adverts. And marketing. And all that other crap peddled by fuckers who know knob all about the products concerned, but loads about spending a great deal of time and money talking about nothing.

Bastards.

[Giles Jones]

Minimal design

A design is the creating the plans for the construction of an object.So minimal design is surely doing the bare minimum to create something?

Sounds like most laptops then.

Now if they had said minimalist design that would be a whole different thing.

[Andus McCoatover]

Seriously looking forward to the review.

Especially if the review team can let us know if one can stick Ubuntu on it....

[nick47]

Re: Seriously looking forward to the review.

You can stick Ubuntu on a MacBook Air. You can stick Ubuntu on pretty much anything, I would think you'd be able to stick Ubuntu on one of these too.

[Shagbag]

Game on!

I own a MacBook Air and I really regret buying it. Apart from the apoplectic annoyance of no 'Delete' and '#' keys, I paid about £1300 for hardware I could get retail for under £500.

Until prices fall to reasonable levels, I'll never own another Apple appliance (it's the only one I have).

[Turtle_Fan]

Wordplay

Minmal or minimalist, if the acer model looks anything like asus' UX netbook then good things may happen on the design front.

Having said that. I'd love to see some performance and cost figures for this proposition.

Source: http://www.corpasia.net/taiwan/2357/events/47/EN/IR_2011Q2.pdf page 17

[Gio Ciampa]

"That would seem to suggest a MacBook Air clone"...

...so I assume that Apple will sue roughly 37 seconds after the announcement?