By Shane McGlaun

I hate paying full price for stuff, but I am not a big fan of contracts either. When it comes to buying new phones we are all used to paying a subsidized price and being shackled to a 2-year contract or having to pay back some of the supposed cost of your phone.

Subsidized phones are common, but subsidized notebooks and netbooks are still not particularly common in the US. RadioShack was the first to offer a subsidized netbook in America that was dependent on signing a 2-year contract with AT&T for mobile broadband costing at least $60 per month.

When first announced last Christmas the netbook cost $99. RadioShack has reduced the price of the subsidized 8.9-inch Acer Aspire One to $79.99 now with the same 2-year agreement stipulation. The netbook runs Windows XP and features 1GB of RAM and a 160GB HDD. The machine is available in blue or pink colors.

[ RadioShack ]

By Shane McGlaun

I can understand why some users would be interested in multimedia notebooks. The machines tend to be feature packed, have good graphics, and be able to play movies while you are on the go. The downside to the class of machines is that they are usually expensive and can be very large.

Acer has announced a new multimedia computer called the Acer Aspire 8935G. Some specifications of the machine are not announced at this time. What we do know is that the machine will use Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, run Windows Vista Home Premium, and sports a massive 18.4-inch LCD.

The LCD has 1920 x 1080p resolution and a Blu-ray burner is built-in to take advantage of that resolution. Other features include an 8-cell battery, backlit keyboard, graphics via ATI Radeon HD 4670 and more. The downside is that the machine is massive weighing in at 10.1 pounds. The 8935G is set to launch in June at unspecified pricing.

[ Acer ]

By Shane McGlaun

When I was at CES this year one of the cool things that I saw was the NVIDIA Ion platform demo at the NVIDIA booth. The little machine looked to be the perfect HTPC with a tiny form factor that would fit inside my cramped entertainment center.

I wondered why we didn’t see machines at CES actually using the Ion platform and I was starting to think we might not see any. Acer has now unveiled the first Ion machine called the AspireRevo. Acer says the computer is no larger than your typical hardcover book and is a fully capable computer with advanced graphics and multimedia features.

The Ion engine has an Atom CPU with an NVIDIA GPU and is capable of HD video conversion. Processing of HD video is handled by the integrated GPU. The machine supports Vista Home Premium, outputs full 1080p video and 7.1 surround sound. Acer says that it will play games like Spore, Call of Duty 4, and Sim City 4 and is DirectX 10 compatible. Blu-ray playback is supported with an external Blu-ray player. Pricing and availability are unknown.

[ NVIDIA ]