Event: Acer Mission - Connect, Share, Play and Shield

Notebooks Guide

Event: Acer Mission - Connect, Share, Play and Shield

Mission Commence

With the previous launch of the Acer Iconia and the surprise preview of the Iconia Tab A500, Acer has taken a great leap forward and introduced not two, nor three, but more than thirty products in an unprecedented unveiling that was staged at the Crowne Plaza's Grand Ballroom. The products included a wide assortment of mobile devices, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, servers, and a short-throw projector. Here is a brief preview of some the sights and sounds that we encountered during the grand launch.

This time, Acer fully showcased the Iconia Tab A500 as a tablet powered by the latest Android 3.0 OS, more popularly known as Honeycomb.

During the previous launch, our encounter with the Iconia Tab A500 was just a short preview. But this time, Acer went all out and showcased the A500 coming with a shiny new OS - the much-awaited Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). Within its confines, the A500 is powered by a 1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 250 chip and sports a 10.1-inch WXGA display with a native resolution of 1280 x 800. Slated for local release hopefully by the 2nd half of 2011, the A500 will be offered in 16GB and 32GB variants. Storage also is expandable through a microSD slot that can support up to 32GB capacity.

The next member of the Iconia family that Acer revealed at the launch was the Iconia Smart S300, the company's next offering in its growing array of Android-powered smartphones.

The Iconia Smart S300 has a sleek unibody construction and will be made available in silver and black color schemes. It is equipped with an 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel front camera for VoIP and video calling applications.

While not the slimmest device, the S300's profile is slim enough for a 5-inch device to make it an easy fit in your pocket.

A 5-inch wonder, the S300 is a Gingerbread-powered device that perfectly fits inside the palm of your hand. It sports a 4.8-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 480. It supports Flash 10.1, allowing for a browsing experience similar to your PC. The device is powered by a next-generation 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 8255 processor that empowers the smartphone to fluidly handle 720p video playback.

Wireless Home Streaming

With a plethora of wireless devices to choose from, Acer also took the opportunity to introduce its new solution for integrating network-ready devices into the home network.

With just a few clicks, you can stream content from a wireless source anywhere in the house and view it on a widescreen HDTV or projector.

Clear.fi is Acer's solution for integrating consumer devices such as notebooks, tablets, and mobile phones that would allow users to stream content from anywhere within their home or from the Internet into an HDTV in the living room or a smaller display in the kitchen. To get started, just set up the Acer Clear.fi software, then add the desired device into the home network and Clear.fi will be able to automatically detect it and other readily-accessible devices.

As For The Rest Of The Goodies

Many of the products on display at the launch will not yet be available save for the much familiar Acer Aspire One Happy netbook, which will be made available soon with an SRP of PhP 19,900. On the more high-end scale, the Acer Aspire Ethos 8915G is an 18-inch full-featured notebook that is being priced at PhP 99,999, coming packed with high-end goodies such as a Core i7 CPU, discrete graphics, Blu-ray drive, and a removable touchpad that also functions as a remote control.