Acer Plans A 16 lb. Notebook

jagger writes "Well not exactly gigantic but at 16 pounds and sporting a 17-inch screen this thing is stretching the term portable. It also features a 3EGHz Pentium 4, 1GB of RAM, a 7200rpm 160gb hard disk, DVD-burner and the kitchen sink. ZDNet has a rundown of all of this beast's features." This sounds like a joke (or a typo), but the story says otherwise.

It's less than 7 lbs

[morcheeba]

The heaviest model is under 7 pounds [acer.com]... all it took was a google search for "aspire 1710".

1-hour battery life, 2 hours to charge

[maliabu]

according to Acer's website [acer.com], this monstop is powered by a 12-cell lithium ion battery: up to 1.0 hour life depending on configuration and usage. Battery recharge times: 2.0 hours with system off, 4.0 hours with system in use.

Re:Is it really so much work, Timmy?

[Zed2K]

Yet further down it says:

Average Dimensions and Weights
14.9" (378.0mm) W x 12.6" (320.0mm) D x 1.9" front - 2.2" rear (47.0mm - 55.0mm) H / 14.1 lb. (6.4kg) with combo drive, 15.7 lb. (7.1kg) with combo drive and battery

Re:Compare to a 6.9 lb 17-inch PowerBook

[Zed2K]

And with a gig of memory its $3200. I don't think the apple is worth $1700 more.

Re:Perfect plan to design a laptop that won't sell

[theLastPossibleName]

3) Short battery life

The acer site [acer.com] says the battery lasts only 1 hour.

Re:Perfect plan to design a laptop that won't sell

[Cruciform]

Not exactly their best selling points.

I have a Shuttle SB61G2 with a 2.4 GHz HT P4, a gig of ram, a 120 gig hard drive, and a Radeon 9600. It probably weighs about 7 or 8 pounds.

It's readily upgradable, has a small desktop footprint, and is easy to transport. As long as I have a monitor or TV I can use at my destination it's perfect for work or gaming.

Without the video card it cost me 1000 CDN. I could have shaved off another hundred or more by going with an Athlon, but I was taking heat into consideration with the tight airflow restrictions.

You get a laptop for the convenience of portability at the cost of being able to upgrade. And generally a desktop is a statically placed computer that can be upgraded, but isn't all that portable. They just hybridized the negative aspects of both, slapped on a nice big screen and put it to market.

What type of user is going to derive the most benefit from this?

Re:More large portables, great!

[SuperBanana]

Check out the Max Pac [maxvision.com] for some more insight into this, they put a desktop PC into a briefcase with a 21" LCD on the side.

Portables aren't anything all that new- I used a portable PC with an LCD(the size of a postage stamp, and a nice orange monocolor- not even greyscale) for a science project back in the days of DOS. It was about the size of a very small sewing machine, and the keyboard(which was infrared-based) popped out of one side to reveal the screen. Can't remember the name of it for the life of me, but it had a hard drive, floppy, etc. Datapack? Data-something...hmm.

There's also the infamous Macintosh Portable, aka the Lugable. It was the size of a typewriter, and weighed about 3 times more. The first Powerbook wasn't a leap in portability- it was like a cross-country trip. I think my 17" powerbook probably weighs about the same as the original powerbook, but it's taken about 15 years for that to happen.

Re:Poor move..

[An Onerous Coward]

It's not really a bad idea. Carrying an extra eight pounds is no big deal, especially since that means you can take advantage of cheaper desktop components.

What I think would be really cool: Drop five pounds or so by doing away with the battery entirely. Use the weight savings to pump up the specs even more, or to use more cheap desktop parts. Just keep it hefty, cheap, and lug-and-pluggable, and I'll be happy.

Sure, some will whine about the no-battery thing. But the last laptop I bought would only last 2 hours on a full charge anyways, so it wouldn't be a big loss.

Re:Poor move..

[kommakazi]

Why not get a 17" PowerBook G4, it only weighs 9.1lbs less... You could lug around two PBG4's and it would still weigh less than that abomintion

Re:Is it really so much work, Timmy?

[bhtooefr]

http://www.acer.com/APP/AKC/INTERNET/AACPubli.nsf/ allDocs/RWP5316796DAD14705D88256D55007A13CB?OpenDo cument

Go there, and see that THEY USE THE CHECKMARK WHEN IT'S UNDER 7LB!

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Poor move..

[mczak]

need to correct myself, the 1499$ version doesn't have a FX 5200 Go nor a FX 5700 Go - it has integrated intel extreme graphics, about as slow as it gets... (and it doesn't have a P4 3E neither)
The about 2000$ version has the FX 5700 Go and the P4 3E.

Re:Poor move..

[Ancient Devices King]

The top end model actually comes with a 5700, not a 5200, but that's already been pointed out.

However, the $1499 model:

comes with 2.8GHz P4 (not P4E) instead of 3.0 P4E

has an 80GB hard disk instead of 120GB

has only 512MB of RAM instead of 1GB

has a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive instead of a DVD-R drive

comes with XP Home instead of Professional, and

uses the graphics chipset that comes with the Intel 865G instead of the GeForce.

If you still think that's a good deal, that's your choice. Personally, I can think of other $1500 and $2000 laptops I'd rather have which weigh less, have longer battery life and/or more CPU power.