Acer casts the first Gemstone, the Aspire 5920

by Nilay Patel, posted May 9th 2007 at 10:07PM

Well, that must have been all the buzz Acer could take -- just a week after cryptically teasing the "Gemstone" concept and five days after "officially" unveiling the new design, it's announced the Core 2 Duo-powered Aspire 5920, the first machine to feature the new look. Acer's bizzare PR campaign notwithstanding, there's a lot here to distinguish the top-of-the-line 5920 from the rest of the thundering Santa Rosa herd: a 15.4-inch screen powered by 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M-GT graphics, Intel's Robson cache-to-flash technology, an HDMI port, an HD DVD drive, a DVB-T tuner, and Acer's Bluetooth VoIP phone, which charges when it's stored in the 5920's ExpressCard slot. No word on pricing or availability, but at the rate Acer's going, we wouldn't be surprised if they unveiled a new design concept to replace this one tomorrow.

Filed under: Laptops

Tags: 5920, acer, aspire, aspire 5920, Aspire5920, santa rosa, SantaRosa

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

blah @ May 9th 2007 10:54PM

Oh My F***

2500+ at least. But man, maybe Acer is re-inventing itself like Saturn. That thing is really nice, and ive never said that about an Acer.

Neutral

Chris Simmons @ May 9th 2007 10:54PM

Wow. Engadget is so biased it's not even funny. I suppose Acer didn't pay up enough payola to get the same lovely writeup as Sony does, just a few posts below:
"The AR (pictured above) is the real bruiser here, with a 17.8-inch XBRITE screen powered by an NVIDIA GeForce 8400M, a built-in webcam, HDMI out, a recordable Blu-ray drive, and a digital TV tuner beakout box with a CableCARD slot."

Hmm, the specs seem similar (inferior to the Acer in some ways, in fact), yet they get the nice writeup, and Acer gets bashed and ridiculed. Best consider shoring up your blatantly biased writings before you lose all semblance of street cred. You guys are pathetic sellouts.

Neutral

Zadillo @ May 9th 2007 11:09PM

Umm, huh? What bashing? Engadget says there's a lot that distinguishes this Acer from most of the rest of the Santa Rosa notebooks announced so far. How are they getting bashed and ridiculed?

Neutral

CT A @ May 9th 2007 11:05PM

I really like the look of the laptop. If they could only redo their company logo =/..

Neutral

DT @ May 9th 2007 11:32PM

Acer has been very daring with designs before... back in 1995, if anyone remembers, they shocked the world with the original Aspire desktop PCs.. I had one of them, still remember them vividly..

http://www.global.acer.com/about/affairs_library/events/20001_computex/html/history-phase3-story1.htm

Neutral

Matthew Yang @ May 9th 2007 11:43PM

I partly agree with Chris. I've noticed that due to the variety of writers, Engadget posts have become very inconsistent recently. Also, certain writers likes to add bits of their opinions to the news. Some of opinions just went too far... News should just be presented in a way that readers can judge it themselves. Of course, i like read the opinions of different people, but a separate column or special label should be provided. An earlier news ridiculing Dell's XPS design, for example,just went too far. I feel it's not just up to individual editor to decide whether the design looks like a joke and clearly states in the headline.

Neutral

kev @ May 9th 2007 11:45PM

Engadget has no obligation to that. Why do you think the articles are of such low quality anyway?

Neutral

Jonathan Keim @ May 10th 2007 12:41AM

Yeah, your post sums it up. It's ok to have different writers, but the opinions can't contridict each other.

Neutral

zoara @ May 10th 2007 5:52AM

The writers add bits of their opinions? On a blog? The horrors.

It's the opinions that I read engadget for. If I just want to be pointed at the sites without comment, I use Google News.

Neutral

daliminator2000 @ May 10th 2007 12:02AM

Is it just me or does this look like a shiny low-end Compaq?

Neutral

idk @ May 10th 2007 1:03AM

I hate it! I've seen several hundreds of laptops that are ugly, and this is easily one of the most FUGLY. Aside from Pentium 3 notebooks of course!

I do however love the technology in it, but I won't be buying from acer, since I know ASUS will have the same technology, but will look better! I happen to be a mac hater, and I think even a MBP looks better than this! ( Click the read link to see the FuGLy front of it! )

Neutral

nikster @ May 10th 2007 9:25AM

the whole point here is to exchange opinions - the bloggers and the comments. i read them all, and love engadget for it.

it's just a laptop. which is like any other laptop except in the design and there you can check out the pix. from this pic, I like it and I say about goddamn time Acer updated its designs.

Neutral

Dave @ May 10th 2007 9:53AM

I dont like this one, especially because it forces me to use HD DVD which i dont want to.

Neutral

Nick @ May 10th 2007 10:36AM

It looks really sleak and smooth and nice.. I wonder if the designer was working on a Mac Book when he designed this because the outside looks just like one. I will admit that the keyboard layout is interesting and fresh. let the Mac haters start yellin at me.. but its true

Neutral

Zadillo @ May 10th 2007 11:49AM

I'm not sure I see what this design has in common with the MacBook, especially on the outside. The MacBook is not nearly as curvy..... the only thing I can see that it really has in common is that there happens to be a black MacBook (but that one has a matte finish, not glossy exterior). I honestly don't see the connection. It seems to have in more in common with the glossy curvy exteriors of HP's consumer dv laptops, and to a lesser extent some of Toshiba's laptops.

Neutral