New All-In-One And Tablets From Acer

Ever since Asus brought out their Eee PC range, Acer has been right behind it in the race to bring out those new things. You might have noticed that Acer tends to follow up Asus’ announcements with extremely similar announcements of its own within close proximity of each announcement. Sure, other companies are bringing out similar devices but they are not as closely matched as Asus and Acer. So now that Asus has a slew of all-in-ones, Acer can’t be far behind. Same goes for a tablet netbook, more than one in fact.

However, Acer’s products tend to have some more polish and better aesthetics than Asus products. So they have successfully carved out a niche for themselves that is slightly above the Asus price range. Still, performance-wise, they are at more or less the same level.

Acer has already announced the Z5610 all-in-one quite some time back but live pictures of the device have been scarce to the point of not being there. But now that it has been spotted in the omlette du fromage land, we are quite impressed by it.

It has been about one week since Acer announced the product and now we have live shots of the device courtesy a French tech blog called ‘Le Journal du Geek’. Cool name you guys.

The Acer Z5610 is a touch enabled Windows 7 system whose claim to fame is its 24” HD multitouch screen. With 4GB memory, 320GB Storage and ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 graphics, it is not going to kill the Sony Vaio line of all-in-ones but it is good competition for the rest.

Looks like it has other points of attraction as well, now that we have seen the live shots. The ambient lighting and the round edges look pretty good to me. I won’t go as far as Acer who calls it a “timeless piece” in their promo. But I am ready admit that it has the right looks and it looks like Acer is stepping up the design game as well. With an MSRP of $899, the price is just right too. It will of course sell for about $800 once it gets out but that’s what MSRPs are there for in the first place.

Acer has more up its sleeve though. It has been working on tablet PCs for quite some time now and we have been through the usual – rumor followed by leaked images followed by live images followed by official announcement. So what are these new devices?

Actually, if you weren’t told you would think you are looking at multiple units of the same model. But no, Acer has decided to bring out, not one or two, but three 11.6” netbook-tablet convertibles that look like copies of each other. They are called 1420P, 1820PT and1820PTZ. The point here is that this type of convertibles haven’t really caught on yet and there are good reasons behind that.

In the beginning, the software wasn’t up to scratch for a proper touch-based UI, the hardware was weak. Now that we have Windows 7, we will probably have better UI but the fact remains that tablets are still considered to be niche devices that are meant for the professionals. And the hardware is still not all that powerful to appeal to the professionals. Besides, they want a digitizer mostly, not just multitouch.

People might be looking for a nice multitouch surface that is bigger than their touchphones but the fact remains that these tablets are not what they have in mind. They are more of the MID crowd who are looking for better mobility and a more compact form factor. Taking it out, turning it, folding it, using it, unfolding it, twisting it back and stowing it away – too much work to get some quick reading or emailing done in the car or the bus. So it remains to be seen how Acer’s marketing team intends to push these devices.

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