Hasta La Gadget!

I just want to promise the readers that I would never make a joke about one of Sarah Palin’s daughters. Unless I thought of a really good one.

1. Here’s a way to get even more out of an already good deal. Dell is selling the Olympus SP-565 UZ for $90 off, bringing the total to $229.99. That’s a good price, since the 10 megapixel camera offers a 20x wide-angle zoom, anti-blur technology, and face tracking that works with up to 16 faces. But wait, if you enter the code FMSZTHZ7$1QFBT at checkout, you’ll get $30 more off, dropping the price to $199.99. That promotional code expires on June 17, so get moving.

2. Bargain laptops typically offer smaller screens, but here’s a good deal on a 15.6-inch notebook. Office Max is selling the Acer Aspire AS5735-6694 (catchy name, Acer) for $479.99, a $200 savings off the list price. It comes with a 2.0GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor, Windows Vista Home Premium, 4GB DDR2 RAM, and a 250GB hard drive.

3. There are great deals to be found with refurbished computers. Consider the HP Pavilion a6707c desktop. Buy.com has it for $394.99, with free shipping. It’s tricked out with a 2.4GHz Pentium E2220 processor, 4GB RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and Windows Vista Home Premium. You’ll even get a keyboard and mouse.

Acer’s range of CULV-based Timeline machines should be trickling out to US stores any moment now, and if you’re wondering if any of these are right for you, we’ve rounded up a trio of reviews that are guaranteed to be relevant to your interests. If you’re looking to get the long and short of it, here it is: those seeking great battery life in a relatively affordable package need look no further, but performance junkies should definitely hunt elsewhere. All told, Acer managed to concoct a few machines that’ll go eight hours or so under the right conditions, but none of ’em will set any records in the benchmarking department. It’s called compromise people — are you willing to make it? Check the links below to help answer that.

Read – PCPro (“Nondescript looks and plodding performance are elevated by absolutely stunning battery life”)
Read – Laptop (“Lightweight design. Eight hours of battery life. Good-enough performance”)
Read – ComputerShopper (“Delivers great battery life in a lightweight chassis; however, comes up short in terms of features and performance”)

Filed under: Laptops

Acer Aspire Timeline review roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After confirmation of basement experimentations, and then a surprising announcement of product, Acer’s now actually showing off an Android-powered netbook at Computex. Acer is careful to say that this isn’t their actual Android netbook in the flesh, they’re just the Aspire One D250 as a test platform. Naturally, startup and shutdown times are fairly rapid (eighteen seconds up, one second down), and for the most part Android seems unmodified other than its support for the D250’s 10-inch display, though there is one major head scratcher — in PC Watch‘s coverage of this computer they show off a full-ish version of Firefox apparently running on Android, menu bar included, which is a new one on us. Of course, Firefox runs on Linux, and Android is built on Linux, but there are still a few gaps in logic there that we’ll be happy to explore when we get our own look at this thing.

Filed under: Laptops

Acer shows off Android on a netbook, sneaks Firefox into the proceedings originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Moblin — the Intel lovin’ Linux flavor we’ve heard so much about recently — just got some major support from Acer, who plans on slapping it on laptops, desktop PCs, and its Aspire One nettops. According to PC World, a press conference held today saw a wide range of Moblin versions (including Suse, Xandros, Linpus, Red Flag, and Ubuntu Moblin) installed on netbooks from companies that included HP, Asustek, MSI, and Hasee Computer; MIDs by the likes of BenQ and Compal; and even an Eee Keyboard. Not too bad for an OS that wasn’t even an OS when we first laid eyes on it, eh? We’ll keep our eyes peeled for those machines from Acer. In the mean time, how about that Tony Hawk Ride? Man, that looks sweet.

Filed under: Desktops, Handhelds, Laptops

Acer to join the Moblin Linux bandwagon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer’s been straightforward with the fact that it’s been dabbling with Android on netbooks. In fact, the entire industry seems to be. Now we’ve got word that Acer will in fact launch an Android-based netbook in the 3rd quarter of 2009. The move was announced by Acer’s global president for IT products, Jim Wong. The Android netbooks will run Atom (sorry Tegra hopefuls) and presumably cost less than Windows XP-based netbooks that require an estimated $25 tithe to Microsoft. Acer will continue to offer Windows-based netbooks along side the Android builds. Whether Android, an OS designed for smartphones, will succeed in gaining back market share lost to Microsoft remains to be seen. But if Microsoft’s boasting about consumers wanting netbooks offering the same OS experience they’re used to is true, well, how can Android succeed where those early Linux distros failed?

Filed under: Laptops

Acer launching world’s first Android-based netbook in Q3 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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