Acer’s latest Chromebook offers 10 hours of battery for $250

Acer has been releasing Chromebooks balancing speed with affordability. The company introduced its latest Chromebook 11 at CES as a fanless, small-form laptop with touch and non-touch screens that boasts up 10 hours of battery life.

While Acer didn’t release exact specs for the models — we only know they’ll sport the ‘latest Intel Celeron processors,’ for example — but did note they’ll come with 4GB of memory and either 16GB or 32GB of eMMC storage. The laptops will have a pair of USB 3.1 Type-C and two USB 3.0 ports as well as a MicroSD card reader. Its 11.6-inch IPS 1366 x 768 pixel display comes in either touch or non-touch variants, though it’s unclear how much the difference will affect the price (previous Acer Chromebooks saw a $50 bump for a touchscreen). It will also have support for the Google Play store and get access to Android apps.

We do know that those lower-performance options have dropped the Chromebook 11’s starting price to $250, which is slightly cheaper than the rugged Chromebook C771 that Acer introduced for students last August. But it does have double the RAM of the most recent Chromebook 15 that the company released in October, making it much more capable of multitasking through Google’s Chrome app suite. If you’re looking for an affordable solution with a decent battery life, Acer’s Chromebook 11 will hit Europe, the Middle East and Africa in March and reach North America in April.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Acer’s new gaming PCs include an 18-core liquid-cooled desktop

It wouldn’t be an Acer CES event without some gaming PCs, and this year the focus is on the desktop crowd. The PC maker is unveiling two systems headlined by the US release of the Predator Orion 9000, a spare-no-expense tower for dedicated gamers. If you can get past the over-the-top “look ma, I’m a gamer” styling, you’ll find a lot of power under the hood. The system uses a combination of liquid cooling and a partitioned airflow system to drive some seriously high-end components with little noise and some room for overclocking, including up to an 18-core Intel Core i9, twin GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards and as much as 128GB of RAM.

The case is also tailor-made for LAN parties with handles and wheels, while the tool-free window can help with quicker part upgrades. There’s also no shortage of ports, although the array is slightly confusing: there are two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports (one each of Type-C and Type-A), eight USB 3.1 ports (one Type-C and seven Type-A), and (for some reason) two USB 2.0 ports. The Orion 9000 will start at $1,999 when it ships in February, although Acer hasn’t said what that configuration includes. You can safely assume an 18-core dream machine will cost considerably more.

Acer’s laptop introduction, meanwhile, sits on the other end of the spectrum. The 15-inch Nitro 5 is aimed at “casual gamers” (or really, gamers on a budget) who want enough power to run modestly demanding titles when they’re away from home. It won’t blow anyone away with its Ryzen mobile processor and Radeon RX560 video, but you do get a solid-state drive (up to 512GB), as much as 32GB of RAM and a “plethora” of connections that include USB Type-C, gigabit Ethernet and HDMI 2.0. Really, the price is the hook — the Nitro 5 will start at $799 when it ships in April, which sounds about right for a system with just enough oomph for your Overwatch sessions.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Source: Acer

Acer adds three thin, powerful laptops to its lineup

Like most PC makers, Acer is no stranger to new hardware, with pretty regular reveals happening all year long. At CES this year, then, the hardware manufacturer is showing off the latest additions to its lineup with the Acer Swift 7, Swift 7 Black Edition and Acer Spin 3 laptops. Each is super thin and light with newer Intel chips to power your computing life.

The company claims that its Acer Swift 7 is the thinnest computer in the world at 8.98mm. It’s got an Intel Core i7 chip and integrated LTE connectivity, all-black unibody construction and a 14-inch Gorilla Glass touchscreen. Acer says it will give you 10 hours of battery life and will be available in March of this year starting at $1699.

The previously announced Acer Switch 7 Black Edition will be available starting this month for the same starting price point. It’s got an 8th-generation Intel Core processor and a discrete Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics card, along with a fingerprint reader and a stylus made by Wacom.

The updated Acer Spin 3, then, has an 8th-generation Intel Core, as well, and will give you up to 12 hours of battery power. The new model still has the 360-degree hinge on it that allows for four different use modes, including a full tablet position. It will be available for purchase next month starting at $599.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Original Space Shuttle commander John Young dies

Spaceflight just lost one of its better-known icons: NASA astronaut John Young has died at the age of 87. He was best known as the commander of the first Space Shuttle mission, taking Columbia into orbit in 1981. However, that was just one of a series of achievements. He flew on the first manned flight of the Gemini spacecraft in 1965 (and led a flight in 1966), traveled to the Moon twice (including a moonwalk during Apollo 16) and played a key role in the rescue of Apollo 13 by helping to stretch out its resources. On his record-setting sixth and last spaceflight, when he flew the first Spacelab module into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle, he both avoided a mid-flight disaster and landed while an auxiliary power unit was on fire.

Young was also one of NASA’s longer serving astronauts. He spent 42 years at the agency, retiring in 2004. In other words, he saw dramatic changes to spaceflight throughout his career — he’d started during the Space Race and finished when the International Space Station had become a mainstay. His passing is both a tremendous loss and a reflection of how rapidly space travel progressed in a single lifetime.

We mourn the passing of astronaut John Young, who began his career with us in 1962, when he was selected from hundreds of young pilots for our second astronaut class. Spanning three generations of spaceflight, he went on to fly in space six times. More: https://t.co/R5eY8MIaG9 pic.twitter.com/pkOFt6zzpL

— NASA (@NASA) January 6, 2018

Source: NASA