Acer prepares MacBook Air rival, $769 Aspire 3951

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104

According to some leaked information, Acer plans to launch a new MacBook Air rival that follows Intel's Ultrabook guidelines. Due in October, the Aspire 3951 will feature 13.3-inch (presumably 1366x768) display, a second-generation Intel Core series processor (no specific chips are mentioned), and your choice of a 160GB flash storage or 250GB to 500GB of mechanical storage. There's also word of Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, and a card reader, but no Thunderbolt.

The Aspire 3951 will last for about six hours per charge, have a 30-day standby, and will recover from sleep in as little as 1.7 seconds. We believe the speedy resume time will be limited to SSD-equipped models, but that isn't confirmed. Based on the latest information from Vietnamese tech site Sohoa, the aluminum-clad machine weighs 3.09lbs (1.4kg) and measures 0.51in (13mm) thick. Acer is expected to undercut Apple with pricing spanning from $769 to $961.

acer macbook air

By comparison, the 13.3-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,299 with a 1440x900 display, a 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 with HD Graphics 3000 (no discrete graphics), 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, a 128GB SSD, two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card slot, a Thunderbolt port, Bluetooth 4.0, and a "FaceTime" camera. The system fetches up to seven hours of runtime alongside a 30-day standby, weighs 2.96lbs (1.35kg) and measures 0.68in (1.7cm) at its thickest point.

Ultrabooks have earned their share of headlines lately. Last month DigiTimes reported that Intel is paying first-tier notebook vendors to develop Ultrabooks. Two weeks ago, we heard that some partners are struggling to meet the sub-$1,000 target price, including Asus with its upcoming UX21, forcing them to downgrade components. Meanwhile, Acer founder Stan Shih denounced tablets and Ultrabooks as short-term fads -- albeit fads that Acer hopes to make bank on.

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Do these kind of things work anyway ? Really , people buy mac's no matter how expensive or crappy they are . They buy macs for the fact , that they are macs .
 
freedomthinker said:
Do these kind of things work anyway ? Really , people buy mac's no matter how expensive or crappy they are . They buy macs for the fact , that they are macs .

Exactly. You will never dissuade these people from buying anything Mac. Just make devices geared toward the non-Mac user better, instead of trying to create something to persuade Mac people to buy something else. Waste of R&D time and money.
 
If that mockup is real, then that is a blatant ripoff of a MacBook Air. I don't think any PC manufacturer will be able to undercut Apple in pricing by that much, will have to wait for official information to know it is true.

The main reason I buy a Mac is because of OS X and the excellent software there's for it. As a bonus I get stellar quality products made with state-of-the-art technology. Apple has been getting very close to perfection on the manufacturing of those aluminum enclosures.
 
mario said:
If that mockup is real, then that is a blatant ripoff of a MacBook Air. I don't think any PC manufacturer will be able to undercut Apple in pricing by that much, will have to wait for official information to know it is true.

The main reason I buy a Mac is because of OS X and the excellent software there's for it. As a bonus I get stellar quality products made with state-of-the-art technology. Apple has been getting very close to perfection on the manufacturing of those aluminum enclosures.
ehhhhh.... you can get the same high quality for a much cheaper price.
 
yawn. believe it when you see it. 6 hours as long as you turn the screen to 1/10 brightness and only run notepad in "safe mode".

If it does ever see the light of day it will be running Windows Unprofessional Homey 7 with a crapload of crapware. Look forward to paying 4x what it's worth for the next version of Windows if it will even run on it and enjoy being treated like a criminal by Microsoft anyway.

Time for some fresh Air.
 
Mario, OS X Lion is sweet and miles ahead of you know who but it is time that Apple retire HFS+ for a modern file system. They've squeezed all anyone should out of it.
 
mario said:
If that mockup is real, then that is a blatant ripoff of a MacBook Air. I don't think any PC manufacturer will be able to undercut Apple in pricing by that much, will have to wait for official information to know it is true.

The main reason I buy a Mac is because of OS X and the excellent software there's for it. As a bonus I get stellar quality products made with state-of-the-art technology. Apple has been getting very close to perfection on the manufacturing of those aluminum enclosures.
Love affair much?
 
@zecias for something like a MacBook Air no one has beaten Apple in price as of now. Even the Samsung S Series when launched was way more expensive than the Air. Apple has been getting very aggressive in pricing that's one of the reasons most tablets vendors are having trouble competing with the iPad in price and quality.

You really can't compare a cheap PC with a MacBook based only on tech specs, the built of an Apple laptop is really impressive in quality and engineering.
 
@zecias for something like a MacBook Air no one has beaten Apple in price as of now. Even the Samsung S Series when launched was way more expensive than the Air. Apple has been getting very aggressive in pricing that's one of the reasons most tablets vendors are having trouble competing with the iPad in price and quality.

You really can't compare a cheap PC with a MacBook based only on tech specs, the built of an Apple laptop is really impressive in quality and engineering.

thats true for the macbook air, but you can't say that much for the rest of the lineup. If you were only referring to the mac book air when you said mac, please disregard my comment >.>.
 
call me angel :D

stellar product? seriously? state of the art technology?
you mean the same kind of technology i can put in my custom built PC right? for a lower price as well!
stellar product? as in build quality? ill admit the unibodies of the macs are nice and sturdy but sadly for you there is nothing special about it.

when it comes down to it you get more bang for buck with a PC then a mac, talk all the crap you want about windows but it means nothing since windows 7 is an amazing OS that hasnt given much of any problems and doesnt have limitations like OS X.

Im not being bias BTW, ill admit that apple does make very good quality stuff all around. but in most cases the price tags with them are not appealing to the rest of us who know about our tech and how much its worth.

personally the only money Mac will get from me is their Ipod touch's. As for computers Id much rather get a tablet from elswher and build my own computer for 3/4 the price and 1.5 - 2 times the performance.
 
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