Acer Gets Slim With Aspire S7 Ultrabooks

The slim and light are getting slimmer and lighter. This morning, Acer announced the Aspire S7 Series of ultrabooks, the smallest of which has an 11.6-inch IPS touch screen at the full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

The 11.6-inch Acer Aspire S7-191.

The Aspire S7-191, which has the 11.6-inch display, is 0.47 inches thick and weighs 2.29 pounds. The Aspire S7-391 has the larger 13.3-inch screen and a Gorilla Glass 2 cover. According to Acer, the screen is built to withstand minor falls. Given Windows 8’s tablet-friendly interface, Acer built the 13.3-inch display to fold all the way back so you can use the ultrabook as a tablet. Both ultrabooks have a special hinge that keeps the screen upright (when in ultrabook mode) so you can touch your finger to the screen without knocking it back.
 

The 13.3-inch Acer Aspire S7-391.

Both models have electroluminescent backlit keyboards and adjust automatically based on the ambient light. They also have two 10,000rpm fans (one intake, one exhaust) to move air through the system. The S7 series ultrabooks have Core i5-3317UB or i7-3517U CPUs, depending on the model, as well as SSDs in RAID-0. Acer claims six-hour constant-use battery life and says that time doubles when you add the optional second battery.
 

The S7-391 with its ultra-white shell.

Acer ships the ultrabooks with its anti-theft software, Acer Green Instant On technology, AcerCloud, and other extras. It expects the 11.6-inch S7 to start at $1,199 and the 13.3-inch model to be $1,399. The systems run Windows 8 and will be available on October 26.