14 DAY TRIAL // We've seen the ultrabooks that Gigabyte has prepared and, now, we get to learn about what Acer has in the pipeline, although the pricing and availability information is just as sparse.
Since this year's edition of the CeBIT trade show has kicked off, we expect the next few days to be flooded with new product announcements.
Ultrabooks will get most of the attention, at least during the first couple of days.
We've already seen it begin, with Gigabyte having revealed two models, the U2442N and U2442V, even if it left everyone in the dark when it comes to pricing and availability, and even battery life.
Acer was not much more forthcoming, although it gave at least an estimate of how long a battery charge would last: 8 hours.
That said, the Aspire Timeline M3 and M5 ultrabooks are more or less identical, save for their screen size: the former measures 15 inches, while the latter has a 14-inch display.
An Intel Core series central processing unit handles everything, but it is paired with a discrete graphics card as well.
This is strange, as Ultrabooks aren't known for such things. Usually, their owners have to live with the CPU's integrated graphics forever.
The GPU here is the NVIDIA GeForce GT640M. Not the strongest out there but definitely a step up from Intel's GMA.
On that note, the native resolution of the displays was not specified, but 1,600 x 900 pixels is probably it, though we wouldn't be surprised by Full HD either, considering the discrete graphics (1,920 x 1,080 pixels).
Acer did not mention the RAM amount (random access memory), but there should be several gigabytes (2 GB / 4GB).
The spec sheet goes on with an optical drive (for the 15-inch version), an HDD (hard disk drive) and the option to skip on the latter and use an SSD instead (solid state drive). Finally, the Green Instant-On technology lets the ultrabooks wake up in 1.5 seconds.