Acer's Iconia Touchbook takes on iPad, MacBook Air using Windows 7

Posted:
in iPad edited January 2014
The world's second largest PC maker Acer aimed at tapping into enthusiasm surrounding the iPad and MacBook Air with Iconia, its keyboard free, mobile touchscreen Windows PC notebook. The downside is that the product costs more than twice as much as the iPad and eats up a battery in less than three hours.



As profiled by Bloomberg, Acer's Iconia 6120 Touchbook runs Windows 7 using an Intel Core i5 CPU, packing the full power of a notebook.



Unlike a conventional notebook, it drops not just its optical drive but also its keyboard, resulting in a 14 inch tablet that users type on directly, similar to the iPad's glass surfaced virtual keyboard. The design won a top ten design award at its debut at the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.



The hybrid device is priced at $1199.99, weighs 6.2 pounds and has a conventional hard drive (640 GB) and packs 4GB of RAM. That makes it an expensive, albeit limited duty and highly specialized Windows PC notebook and a very expensive but ostensibly more powerful iPad alternative.



Also like the iPad (and Air), Acer's Touchbook uses a non-removable battery. However, Bloomberg notes that the machine's "biggest drawback is the battery. The two touch screens suck power like a vacuum cleaner, and even Acer?s claim of three hours on a full charge may be on the high side if you?ve got the screens set to bright and are connected to a Wi-Fi network."









Acer's hybrid Touchbook sits in stark contrast to Apple's offerings, which are clearly delineated between the very simple, multitouch iPad and its mobile MacBook Air, which shares iPad technologies and features but maintains a conventional keyboard, trackpad and non-touch display. The 13 inch MacBook Air also aims at light portability, weighing just 2.9 lbs (1.32kg), less than half the weight of the Acer Touchbook. Apple's Air notebook line now standardizes on SSD for storage, trading speed for overall capacity.



Acer unveiled a series of mobile devices running Android and Windows 7 last fall, after predicting that Apple's iPad would rapidly lose its overwhelmingly dominant position in the tablet market and shrink to just 20 percent share as it was forced to complete with platforms that are not "closed."



Acer's initially successful netbook initiative was crushed by the appearance of Apple's iPad last year, suddenly stalling the company's rapid growth in 2010. After announcing intentions to "overhaul operations" in response to Apple's impact on the PC market, the firm's chief executive Gianfranco Lanci resigned late last month.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 83
    adonissmuadonissmu Posts: 1,776member
    Train Wreck.
  • Reply 2 of 83
    herbapouherbapou Posts: 2,228member
    I find my 15" MBP to be too heavy at 5.6 pounds, so that thing is not in the MB air category at all.
  • Reply 3 of 83
    mobiusmobius Posts: 380member
    Quote:

    The world's second largest PC maker Acer aimed at taping into enthusiasm surrounding the iPad and MacBook Air with Iconia, its keyboard free, mobile touchscreen Windows PC notebook.



    I think you meant tapping.
  • Reply 4 of 83
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    Honestly... Do the Apple-competitors remotely have a distant clue? The only person that comes to mind buying this monstrosity and loving it is DaHarder.



    What a waste of resources.
  • Reply 5 of 83
    adonissmuadonissmu Posts: 1,776member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sflocal View Post


    Honestly... Do the Apple-competitors remotely have a distant clue? The only person that comes to mind buying this monstrosity and loving it is DaHarder.



    What a waste of resources.



    *snicker* on so many levels.....
  • Reply 6 of 83
    quinneyquinney Posts: 2,528member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mobius View Post


    I think you meant tapping.



    No, they meant taping. Taping up all the groin pulls from lifting that thing.
  • Reply 7 of 83
    psych_guypsych_guy Posts: 486member
    I don't get it. Is it an iPad competitor? a MBA competitor? A MBP wannabe?



    Acer should just call this the "Kitchen Sink" model. Your battery power even goes down the drain!
  • Reply 8 of 83
    msecheamsechea Posts: 6member
    Consider this product DOA. They just do not get it.
  • Reply 9 of 83
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    How can a product be so much fail in one little box?



    Quote:

    weighs 6.2 pounds



    Oh dear lord.



    Quote:

    3 hours battery life



    Double fail.



    Quote:

    $$$$$$$$$$$$



    Can I have some of what they're smoking?



    Maybe a Core i5 isn't the most suitable tablet/netbook/THINGbook processor, eh?
  • Reply 10 of 83
    Hum... So, it's a regular sub $500 laptop with another screen instead of a keyboard for more than twice the price?

    Like a big Nintendo DS?

  • Reply 11 of 83
    cycomikocycomiko Posts: 716member
    This doesnt compete with the ipad, their honeycomb tablet is the one that competes with the ipad. Why doesnt DED make a worthwhile comparison, rather than this retarded comparison?
  • Reply 11 of 83
    kibitzerkibitzer Posts: 1,114member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by quinney View Post


    No, they meant taping. Taping up all the groin pulls from lifting that thing.



    Not to mention the hazard to airport security people. The TSA screeners might die laughing when this engineering hermaphrodite shows up on their monitors.
  • Reply 13 of 83
    tjwaltjwal Posts: 404member
    What a technological marvel. play a video on each screen and have 3D.



    Seriously though, it might have a place on the Stargate set.
  • Reply 14 of 83
    mactelmactel Posts: 1,275member
    Only Apple haters with some serious dough burning in their pockets will buy this.



    Not sure how they thought this would be a winner.
  • Reply 15 of 83
    dimmokdimmok Posts: 359member
    Horrible....
  • Reply 16 of 83
    gotwakegotwake Posts: 115member




    The range of emotions I had reading the review of that POS. Funny stuff!
  • Reply 17 of 83
    bfuldabfulda Posts: 37member
    honestly, the idea is pretty neat. If it was a MBA or MBP with the dual screens with the same battery life and such then I feel it would be in line of things to come. But with the dismal battery life and price and such, it's just not gonna fly. However, for awhile it will give those diehard windoze lovers something they think they can brag about being cutting edge and or different. They will just have to do it while it's plugged in and they have a harness on.

  • Reply 18 of 83
    ltmpltmp Posts: 204member
    It looks to me like they heard all the interest in the MS Courier and thought they could pull it off.



    IF MS decides to scrap an idea, it probably isn't worth going after.



    At least Courier looked like it would have a custom OS.
  • Reply 19 of 83
    Actually what I find most puzzling is the reference to the iPad and the Air? I don't know if it's Acer itself that is making these comparisons or just AI. It seems to me that it's a complete stretch, this is a unique product (albeit one that probably has a pretty strong identity crisis). Unlike others, I don't blame Acer for trying something different, the biggest problem appears to be a lack of communication as to what the actual benefits of such a beast are. Folks who need to do multi-lingual inputting so having a purely dynamic keyboard can be a boon? I do a lot of video editing and the keyboard is infrequently used, something like this could be handy as I've often wished I had a lightweight LCD that I could physically attach to my MBP so I can run dual screens. And who knows what else.
  • Reply 20 of 83
    paulmjohnsonpaulmjohnson Posts: 1,380member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bfulda View Post


    honestly, the idea is pretty neat. If it was a MBA or MBP with the dual screens with the same battery life and such then I feel it would be in line of things to come. But with the dismal battery life and price and such, it's just not gonna fly. However, for awhile it will give those diehard windoze lovers something they think they can brag about being cutting edge and or different. They will just have to do it while it's plugged in and they have a harness on.





    I'm with you on this, I think as a concept, it looks pretty cool.



    When it becomes possible to do the same thing a lot lighter and with better battery life (and, lets face it, without Windows), it strikes me as a pretty neat form factor.
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