In case you’ve been trapped under a bus for the last 30 hours, Apple announced their “latest creation” in San Francisco yesterday, a “magical and revolutionary device.” It’s the tablet computer that the world has been expecting from Apple for nearly 10 years now, the product of Steve Jobs’ dreams.
It’s called the iPad, and we think it’s pretty rad for what it is. It’s too underpowered to be a real laptop like the MacBook (and lacks the keyboard to even be a netbook), and it’s just too big to be a handheld, on-the-go device like an iPod Touch. But we tend to agree with Steve Jobs and the rest of the Cupertino Crew that it fills a significant gap between those two devices because it can handle any kind of media (pretty much) and make that media accessible anywhere. We break it down after the jump:
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Acer is giving Intel’s powerful i3 and i5 Core processors a home in a pair of new budget-minded laptops. The 15.6-inch Acer Aspire AS5740 and 17.3-inch Acer Aspire AS7740 will both start at $750 when they ship on Sunday, January 17th. The larger AS7740 comes standard with a 2.14 GhZ Core i3-330M processor, 4GB of RAM, a Blu-ray drive (to make use of that large screen), and Windows 7 Home Premium. The smaller AS5740 lacks the Blu-ray drive but packs a wallop with the 2.26 GhZ Core i5-430M processor.
Both feature other niceties like multi-gesture touchpads, built-in webcams, six-cell lithium ion batteries, a slew of ports, and 500GB hard drives. The designs could be sleeker and the battery life won’t be great, but that’s a lot of computer for under $800. Of course, better configurations are available for a bigger price tag as well.
Why does such a solid computer suddenly go for a reasonable price, you ask? Well, the International Consumer Electronics Show just wrapped up. A bunch of hot new configurations were unveiled in Vegas last week, so keep your eyes peeled for deals on powerful new models and cheap old models.
Update 2/24: These are even cheaper than announced already, as little as $599. Check the listings below.