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Acer Aspire V5 and M5 laptops will be available with touchscreens this month
Make no mistake, one of the biggest trends you'll see this fall is PC makers slapping touchscreens on their current machines so as to make them a little more Windows 8-appropriate. And Acer is no exception: the company is introducing touch-enabled versions of its existing Aspire V5 and M5 laptops, both of which will go on sale this month. Starting with the M5, it's the touch-enabled version of the M5 Ultrabook we reviewed earlier this year. Though the standard version is available in 14- and 15-inch screen sizes, the touchscreen model (aka the 481PT, pictured above) will only be offered with a 14-inch (1,366 x 768) panel. This, too, has a Core i5 CPU and 6GB of RAM, though its 500GB hard drive is paired with a 20GB SSD for faster boot-ups. Like the non-touch version, it's rated for eight hours of runtime. Surprisingly, even though it's classified as an Ultrabook, it manages to make room for an optical drive -- impressive, given its 0.81-inch-thick chassis is still relatively slender. Both machines will be sold exclusively at Best Buy in the US, with the regular M5 starting at $700 and that touch-enabled version going for $800. As for the budget-minded V5 series, the touchscreen will only be offered on the 14-inch version (the V5-471P). Max specs include up to 8GB of RAM and up to 750GB of HDD storage. (Either way, you get a 1,366 x 768 display, a Core i5-3317UB processor and your requisite Intel HD 4000 graphics.) That model starts at $750, though the non-touch models are priced at $500 and up.
