Acer has just announced two new Aspire Ethos laptops that introduce a whole new level of versatility in today’s laptops. On the surface they look like regular multimedia laptops, but they carry a hidden surprise: detachable touchpads. If you’re frequently on the move and you use your laptops for presentations, you might understand the hassle of having to pack your remote control with you all the time, making sure it’s charged etc.
Nowadays, the role of the remote control has been relegated to the benches as smartphones have been doing a good job of replacing them but in the event you don’t have a smartphone (or one that is compatible with your laptop), these detachable touchpads do come in handy. The touchpads have orientation sensors that allow them to be used either horizontally or vertically.
Other than the fancy touchpads, we have pretty decent specs for a laptop:
Sandy Bridge Intel processors (Core i3 – Core i7), 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M or a 2GB GeForce GT 555M graphics, 5.1 channel surround sound (on the 18.6″ Ethos 8915G) while it only has stereo speakers and Acer’s Tuba Cinebass booster on the 15.6″ Ethos 5951G. The laptops feature an Instant on Arcade key for fast booting, and have a battery life of 5.5 hours.
No prices have been announced, but they should be available sometime this year.