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Acer developing new flagship notebook with DirectX 11 graphics

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On December 3, 2009, 3:00 PM EST

Acer is reportedly developing a new flagship notebook that will incorporate various high-end technologies, and might very well be the first portable PC to market with a DirectX 11-capable graphics chip. The Aspire 8942 will boast an 18.4" 1080p LED display, a 1.6GHz Core i7-720QM, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, an AMD Mobility Radeon HD5850 with 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM, dual 640GB HDDs, and a Blu-ray drive.

As one would expect of a beastly media PC, connectivity options are aplenty. The Aspire 8942 will house four USB 2.0 ports, 802.11a-n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ExpressCard, HDMI, a five-in-one card reader and more. An eight-cell battery will power the system, which weighs about 4.6kg (over 10lbs) -- or about as much as two average 15" notebooks, as noted by Fudzilla.

There are no details on a price or availability, but it seems likely that the Aspire 8942 will start shipping in January or shortly after.

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User Comments (35)

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compdata
on December 4, 2009
7:14 AM

Sounds beastly but would need to know about price and noise/heat at least.

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AbsolutGaloot
on December 4, 2009
8:16 AM

I wonder if they'll also market a special carrying harness for the thing so you can tote it around without ruining your back :-p

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Docnoq
on December 4, 2009
9:07 AM

PNagy said:

What about heat? I've tried a much more powerless gaming laptop but the heat and the noise were disturbing.

I'm sure it will heat up a bit, but that's why it is also an 18.4" laptop. Bigger laptop means more space to dissipate heat. That doesn't mean I wouldn't buy the best laptop cooling pad on the market for this though. I would never be able to forgive myself if I pissed away $2,000+ because of carelessness.

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buttus
on December 4, 2009
11:19 AM

This would smoke...let alone be a true desktop replacement. Battery life would be appauling though based on the display and the video chipset. Still, as long as you could plug it in this would be a beast of a machine.

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Vicenarian
on December 4, 2009
1:26 PM

What a complete, utterly ridiculous, waste of money. Who needs that kind of power? What are you going to do, surf the web and listen to music with 8 GB or RAM?

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Vicenarian
on December 4, 2009
1:27 PM

And when it becomes obsolete, it will make a really heavy doorstop.

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levar
on December 4, 2009
2:08 PM

wholy snap wish the processors was a bit faster but damnnn. This is why acer is 2nd and just pass Dell in selling of notebooks. Awesome setup! I estimate prices to be around $2500 to $3000 can't be above or below that.

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TechDisciple
on December 4, 2009
10:28 PM

ftw is like carrying a full bucket of water around with u... How lame is that?

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Guest
on January 26, 2010
9:36 PM

I had an Acer 8920g, 18" laptop, bought it about a year and a half ago for $1000 Canadian, sold it a couple of months ago and bought a brand new Acer 8735. Both great machines with 320 gb hd, blueray,18.4" screen, wireless N, 4 GB memory, Nvidia GeForce graphics cards 512 and 1GB respectively. Am looking forward to buying the new Acer 8924G when released here in Canada in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Got a heads up from a friend that works @ Staples that it is going to retail for around $1050 but was unable to get the full specs on the unit. So I am assuming that the memory will probably only 4GB and maybe not have 2 hard drives like the 8920G or 8735G. As for Acer as a company, they have come a long way compared to a few years ago when it comes to the quality of the machines they put out. Myself, I am on my 3rd Acer laptop in 4 years but that is due to my needs changing in regaurds to my machines and not any performance or quality issues. In my opinion Acer is one of the better Manufacturers to deal with when it comes to customer support as well.

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Guest
on January 26, 2010
9:55 PM

from previous post, just wanted to talk about battery life. Both my previous machines, 8920G and 8735G came with 8 cell batteries and from 100% would give on average of 3- 3 1/2 hours of continuous power. As for heating issues, I had none and had never used a chill mat either. I found the noise from the unit no louder than any other laptop whether it be a normal 17" or smaller 14", in factwith the 8735G, I found it quieter than most any other laptop I've come accross, and yes, just in case you may have thoiught weren't, the fans were running on the machine.

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