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Acer launches Aspire Ethos line with swanky 5943G and 8943G models
Acer's aspirational laptops have a new Ethos to them now, and it clearly has something to do with entertainment. The newly revealed 18.4-inch 8943G sports a 1920 x 1080 resolution and a true 5.1 surround sound setup, meaning that somewhere within its shell reside five miniature speakers and a sub. Processor options range all the way up to the quad-core Core i7-820QM, which offers 8MB of built-in cache and a 1.73GHz clock speed that cranks all the way to 3.06GHz when required. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 graphics and up to 1.28TB of storage (2x 640GB) complete the overkill recipe. The 5943G is basically a scaled down version, offering as it does 1366 x 768 resolution across a 15.6-inch display, a 2.1 internal speaker arrangement, and a merely adequate 640GB storage maximum. The rest of the specs are shared, including a 4,800mAh battery, which should perish quicker than you can say "desktop replacement." Pricing and availability have not yet been announced.%Gallery-88995%
MSI announces GE700 gaming laptop for those who like to be entertained
You can't go more than a few days without MSI dropping another new laptop, and today's is the GE700. It's not only 100 more than the GE600 from a few weeks ago, but a little bit bigger, sporting a 17.3-inch LCD with an unspecified resolution, up to a nine cell battery, and room for dual hard disks of up to 500GB apiece. Graphics are again handled by an ATI Radeon HD5730, processing again done by an Intel Core i5 chip, and there's a 720p webcam for live-streaming your every blemish. No word on price for this 3.2kg (7lb) machine, but MSI doesn't tend to waste much time in getting these things to retail.
ASUS N82 and N61 join the USB 3.0 laptop party
We're kind of starting to figure out ASUS' naming scheme -- E is for Easy, and N is for eNtertainment, jolly good. In other self-evident news, Engadget Chinese is the place to go if you want the lowdown on happenings in China and its nearby states. Joining HP's Envy 15 in the USB 3.0-sporting ranks will soon be the familiar 16-inch ASUS N61 and the seemingly brand spanking new N82 14-incher. See the galleries below for the eye candy, but keep it here for specs. Core i5 and i7 CPUs will populate the role of orchestrator inside, while ATI and NVIDIA discrete graphics options will also be made available when these make their imminent Taiwan debut. In live demonstrations, the one USB 3.0 port (yes, you only get one) was shown to be three times as fast as USB 2.0, so not quite reaching its theoretical superiority, but hardly an unwelcome improvement. Let's hope for quick global distribution following the Taiwanese launch, which is slated for the middle of this month.%Gallery-84581%%Gallery-84582%
Samsung's M55 HD DVD laptop, yes HD DVD
Like Acer,and fellow "strong" Blu-ray supporter LG, Samsung is showing the hi-def crowd how to mix it up by opening their Blu-ray love affair to the HD DVD camp. Here we have their M55 -- formerly billed as the "world's thinnest and lightest 17-inch widescreen" at 30.5 ~ 34.4-mm thick and 2.99-kg -- only now packing some swank HD DVD action along with an apparent pixel increase to 1920x1200. Just to run down the rest of the specs on this: you get a glossy 17-inch display, 256MB GeForce 7600 Go graphics, up to 120GB of SATA disk, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, a wide range of in and outs including HDMI and S/PDIF, and suite of SRS audio features all powered by an Intel T2500 Core Duo proc. No drop date but they should pull about €3,000/$3,810 -- yeah, we know. And yes, gentle readers, there is a woman in that photo, now please try to comment on the laptop, mkay? We don't want to get rough, see.
