When is a notebook a new release or just an update? If you take the news of Acer’s Aspire Ethos 8943G announced in Australia today, then it’s the later.
This 18.4-inch model is aimed at the luxury notebook market with lots of everything, including 1080p (1920×1080-pixel) resolution and 1500GB of hard drive space.
However, the basic model was announced overseas in late-March 2010 and reviews were up on the web by July. So we asked Acer PR why Australian consumers had to wait so long for the high-end notebook to reach Australia.
The response was that the Aspire Ethos 8943G isn’t a model number, but a “series” and that this model released today is an uprated version of the original 8943G released in Australia earlier this year.
Here are the specs for the new Australian version:
| Aspire 8943G Ethos |
| AS8943G-748G1.5Wn |
| LX.R6S02.016 |
| 4718235025199 |
| AS8943G |
| Intel® Core™ i7 740M |
| Quad Core (1.73G/6MB/1066FSB/64-bit) up to 2.93Ghz with Turbo Boost |
| 18.4″ WUXGAG CrystalBrite Widescreen |
| 8GB DDR3-1066 Memory (4 x 2GB) |
| 1.5TB Hard Drive (2 x 750) |
| BluRay Writer + DVD Super Multi |
| 5-in-1 Card Reader (x-D, SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro) |
| Acer Wireless 802.11b/g/Draft-N |
| Integrated Bluetooth |
| 8 cell 3.0 |
| ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5850 with 2048 MB of dedicated DDR3 VRAM, supporting Unified Video Decoder (UVD), OpenEXR High Dynamic-Range (HDR) technology, Shader Model 5.0, Microsoft® DirectX® 11, OpenGL® 3.1, OpenCL™ 1.1 |
| Bio-Metric Finger Print Reader |
| Built in Digital DVB-T TV Tuner with antenna and remote |
| Acer CrystalEye webcam |
| Yes/Yes/Yes |
| No/Gigabit |
| Five |
| Windows 7 Home Premium |
However, compared with the version reviewed by NotebookCheck.com in Mid-May, which featured the 1.6GHz Core i7 720QM processor and two 640GB hard drives, there’s not much different. That original unit came with the same amount of memory, same screen and other features, including the same ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 graphics chip.
This latest release comes with a slightly faster 1.73GHz Core i7 740QM processor and two 750GB hard drives for an impressive 1500GB of hard drive space. This easily exceeds any other notebook we’ve seen so far by a good 500GB.
So in the end, the Aspire Ethos 8943G is a modest refresh of the previous unit available in Australia from June 2010. At $2999, it definitely fits the luxury market but we wouldn’t call it the “technological breakthrough” Acer splashed on its press release earlier today…