14 DAY TRIAL // It is definitely not new for the IT market to learn that a certain product supposedly in development has met its end even before actually making its official debut. Depending on what turn the industry takes, certain devices may no longer fit in with current trends or end up replaced by other prototypes. Sometimes, projects get canceled because they simply prove too hard to turn into competitive products. Other times, they are abandoned in favor of a more advanced incarnation of the same idea.
A certain netbook that Acer intended to eventually sell has died before actually coming into existence. It goes by the name of Acer Aspire One 532G and caused waves when it was first shown off because, at the time, it was the very first entry-level laptop, netbook in other words, that had an NVIDIA ION 2 graphics solution inside of it. Needles to say, its maker was quite proud of being the first to make public such a machine. Unfortunately, for Acer at least, that joy was short lived.
The Aspire One 521 was scrapped, according to reports that have started circulating on the web. The reason invoked for this alleged decision was supposedly the Optimus driver problems. As consumers know, NVIDIA Optimus is a technology that, depending on application requirements, can automatically switch between the integrated graphics and the discrete GPU. Acer was supposedly having trouble with the driver required by this feature.
Of course, canceling this one laptop in no way implies that the Taiwanese PC maker has given up on ION 2 completely. In fact, it is quite likely that successors to the 532G are already in the works. Until they manage to hit stores, however, Acer will have to live with watching companies like ASUS get a head start with products like the Eee PC 1201PN.