Acer's Aspire Timeline Ultra Rocks the Mobile Nightlife for 8 Hours Straight
One of them is the new Aspire S5, purportedly the world's thinnest Ultrabook to date and the first to feature a Thunderbolt port. The other is the Aspire Timeline Ultra series. The Timeline Ultra ships in 14-inch and 15-inch models, both of which boast a combination of up to eight hours of battery life, high performance, and a "2-spindle" design. It also features an optical drive.
The Timeline Ultra isn't the thinnest on the planet at 20mm, but it is skinnier than earlier generation Ultrabooks, Acer says. Specs are fairly sparse at the moment, but include:
- Intel Core i Series processors
- SSD/HDD storage option
- Dolby Home Theater v4 surround sound
- HDMI; USB 3.0
- DVD burner
Acer also baked in a couple of proprietary technologies, including Acer Green Instant On for fast boot and resume, and Acer Always Connect technology, which lets users manage their multimedia and data on all their devices at anytime, anywhere, even from sleep mode.
There's no word on price, though Acer did say the Timeline Ultra will start shipping in the second quarter of this year.
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As far as it goes was Acer not the one to really start this category anyway? |
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Looks decent, hopefully they'll release more info on the specs. Acer must be credited for bringing the price down, but I'm wondering at what cost? It's probably a core i3 and a lower-end SSD that won't be much better than a HDD. However, it's good to see they could squeeze in an optical drive despite it's thinness. |
All SSD's blow HDD's out of the water for (speed) performance. |
dejasoul100:|
Not all, actually. One of my complaints with the Toshiba's Portégé R835-P330 is its comparatively anemic SSD, which is rated at up to 180MB/s read and 50MB/s write speeds. It felt and benched like a fast hard drive and is in stark contrast to the Zenbook UX21 by Asus, which uses a performance oriented SSD that blazes along at over 500MB/s for both reads and writes. We'll have to wait and see what Acer's Timeline Ultra is rocking. |
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I know it's a "Intel" form factor, but could you ask about getting an AMD A series in something like this? |
Ok, I'll admit that my experiences with SSD's are far less than yours, (you routinely see a lot more tech gear than I ever will) and that one that you're describing is anemic at best. But most modern SSD's are a hell of a lot faster than it is. They make a remarkable change in a system's performance compared to a HDD. Mine really made a huge difference for me, and they are ~not top of the line~ SSD's either. The slower SATA-II Agility-2 does 285 read and 275 write, and the faster SATA-III drives almost double that. Decent SSD's speed boot times and make a system feel much more responsive to me. They blow an ~excellent~ HDD's performance right out of the water. |
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No argument there, I'm just saying he has a valid concern, considering that's exactly what Toshiba just did (cut corners with a lower performing SSD and processor to arrive at a lower price point). |
OK I can agree with that too.
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Could anyone enlighten me what "2-spindle design" should actually mean? Thanks! |
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