Acer, one of the leading suppliers of IT solutions, today released its latest notebook series - the Aspire 5100 platform - which targets home users, students and SOHO professionals, informs Mobile Whack.

Acer has developed Acer QuicCharge, a technology that improves battery endurance and shortens re-charge time by charging the battery to 80 percent of capacity in just one hour.

The Aspire 5100 has a large Serial-ATA Hard Disk Drive of up to 160GB, a DVD super-multi double layer drive (or, an innovative HD-DVD drive), and a handy 5-in-1 card-reader, the system being also able to playback digital content from MP3 players, digital cameras, digital video recorders, or personal video recorders (PVRs).

Aspire 5100 15.4" widescreen benefits from an advanced Acer CrystalBrite technology, a glossy coating that is said to improve 3D graphics. Moreover, the display's speed of reaction, of just 16 milliseconds, makes the Aspire 5100 a viable alternative for gamers or heavy-graphic applications.

But what is more important for gamers is the graphics card which is, in this case, an ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 with up to 512MB video memory (128MB of dedicated GDDR2 VRAM and up to 384MB of shared system memory), supporting ATI PowerPlay 5.0, Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and PCI Express.

The Acer Aspire 5100 comes with a full set of I/O ports, including DVI-D to enhance the quality of flat panel LCD monitors and high-end video graphics cards, four USB 2.0 ports, an ExpressCard slot, a PC card slot, a Firewire IEEE 1394 port, Ethernet and Modem port and an S-Video/TV-out port (for both NTSC/PAL standards).

From the point of view of connectivity, Acer's notebook's uses an integrated wireless module for WLAN, an optional built-in Bluetooth 2.0 module for WPAN, Gigabit Ethernet cards dedicated to LAN, and a 56K ITU V.92 modem for a common connectivity.

The Acer Aspire 5100 series comes with Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition preinstalled. But the user can choose to purchase other software which will also come installed such as Adobe Reader, Norton AntiVirus and CyberLink PowerDVD or CyberLink Power Producer, Acer GridVista and Acer Arcade Software Suite.

The Acer Aspire 5100 family of notebooks come with a standard one-year parts and labor warranty, which includes concurrent International Traveler's Coverage that can be extended to three years with the Acer Advantage service that also covers accidental damage to the notebook. Additionally, all Acer notebooks are backed by toll-free service and support. The Aspire 5100 notebooks are available through Acer authorized resellers and retailers based in the U.S. with prices starting at $899.