Expected to be available later this month, the Acer Aspire S3 is likely to be one of the lower cost Ultrabooks and if the news from Hong Kong and Finland is anything to go by, one of the first to hit the market.

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Acer have launched the S3 Ultrabook in Hong Kong along with detailed specifications and recommended pricing. 3 models have been announced with the two lower-cost options using hybrid SSD/HDD options to offer storage space along with the speed required for quick resume times.

The S3-951-2464G34 comes with a Core i5-2467UM at 1.6Ghz with Turbo to 2.2Ghz, Windows 7 Home Premium and 4GB DDR3 RAM. The disk offers 320GB of storage to the user and 20GB used internally for fast-boot and resume.

The mid-range S3-951-2634G34 offers the same specification as above but improves on the CPU to offer the Core i7-2637UM which boosts up to 2.8Ghz

At the top-end, you’ll be sacrificing some CPU to get a 240GB SSD. The S3-951-2464G24 comes with the Core i5 seen in the base model.

Coming in at exactly the expected price-point, Asus’ Ultrabooks, that’s the UX21 and UX31, will launch in October at a US-based event.

This news comes from Digitimes who say that the entry level price will be $899 but the prices will be rising to a lofty $1999. At that price expect the Core i7 and 256GB of SSD storage!

$899 is $100 below the target price given by Intel in previous statements.

The bad news about the price is that $899 is only likely to get you a non-Turbo-Boost Core i3 (given that it has been listed as an option.)  11″ devices based on this platform are already available at 50-60% of the price.

Based on this news, it’s unlikely that we’ll see more than just production samples at IFA this week. We’ll do our best to get some hands-on though so stay tuned.

[Chippy is reporting from IFA this week. You can follow near-live and behind the scenes via Twitter here. Watch out for the Twitter-only mini podcast announcements too.]

Via
http://www.netbooknews.com/33988/asus-ultrabooks-to-launch-in-october/

[ Posted via the Galaxy Tab. Ultra-Mobile at IFA 2011. For more IFA coverage, follow me on Twitter. @Chippy ]

Intel recently put out a blog update about the upcoming Ultrabooks and on first-pass I wasn’t able to see anything new to report. A second look this evening has me wondering why there’s some important information missing. But first, the update.

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No. I’m not talking about carrier ‘discounts’ I’m talking about retail discounts. Real, no-strings attached, cash on the (internet) counter deals. My favorite pricing search engine is coming up with some interesting prices across the EU.

Galaxy Tab Information page here.

In Germany we’re obviously starting at 799 Euros. Amazon set the bar and everyone else has followed suit so far. (Geizhals link)  My guess is that no-one has actually negotiated a price with Samsung Germany yet (Samsung won’t fix a price until after meeting all of their potential customers at IFA obviously) but have put the RRP up to catch out some early fans. Tip: I saw MediaMarkt (THE big electronic chain store in Germany) in the Samsung customer lounge at IFA. They were huddled with Samsung suits and a lot of spreadsheets. Wait until the MediaMarkt price is announced before making a move in Germany.

Update: Just a few hours after we posted this, a German mobile phone retailer is offering the Galaxy Tab for 649 Euros.  A 579 price was posted earlier but the sales page appears to have been removed.

In the UK things are different. They have already hit 599 pounds which is 726 Euros. That’s still expensive and above the early street price of 600 Euro we were talking about a few days ago but how does 630 Euros grab you? One retailer in Austria is offering it for that price today. The pre-tax price is just 525.03 Euro. (Link to latest pricing at Geizhals.at) Other Austrian retailers are also discounting heavily.

I’ll raise a little flag at this point and say ‘warning’ because retailers tend to play a lot of games on these price comparison engines but clearly the competition is already big on the Galaxy Tab and our predictions are looking spot on. We’ll re-visit this in a weeks time.

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It’s more than just a little annoying that the only thing known about an iPad in Europe is that it is due to launch in ‘late April’ for an ‘unbelievable price.’ That’s the stable Euro/$ for you!

One can assume that a 1:1 dollar to Euro conversion is going to be in the right ball-park though and I’ve even found one retailer already taking pre-orders. 3GStore.de (info via Blogeee) appears to be a big site with a solid history and it’s offering the base iPad for 549 Euro. The high-end model clocks in at 879 Euro. I’m guessing that they’ve thrown 50 Euros onto the estimated retail price and are simply taking a risk by being first. SEO value + increased margin = Smart move!

At 499 Euro inclusive 19% local taxes (543 dollars before tax) it’s not cheap -the same cost as an unlocked HTC Desire. How will this fit with the easy-going EU public?

As we mentioned on the Meet:Mobility podcast this week, we don’t see the penetration being anything like what it is in the U.S. Based on my experience with resellers and affiliate schemes, EU conversions run way way below that what you’ll see in the U.S. I’m estimating about 20% of the penetration seen in the U.S. Assuming Apple sold 500,000 in one week among a population of 300 million in the U.S., I wouldn’t expect anything more than 100,000 sales in the first week across the Euro-zone which has a similar population.

If you’re in the EU, how are you feeling about a 500 Euro price tag?

My country-mates, the Germans, are quite the netbook nuts. They love a quality, good-value product (don’t we all!) and they’re also pretty damn good at doing their research. Sascha, the top man at EeePCNews.de is getting huge numbers at his German language site as a result of all this. When he goes live with a netbook unboxing he can count on about 300-500 concurrent viewers. I tried joining the live video and chat once and it was impossible to answer questions as the chat session was a constantly moving stream of messages. Its mad!

So how much would Germans pay for their dream netbook? Sascha is asking his users right now and after 1000+ responses, it’s clear that the sweet spot lies somewhere between 300 and 400 Euros. Thats $400-$530 at todays Dollar rate. (Max $430 if you take the local taxes off.) I’m not certain but it feels a little higher than the prices U.S. customers would pay. Any comments from the U.S. crowd on that?

I’m guessing the Black Samsuing NC10 for Euro 349 would be the absolute killer price and product here in Germany right now. Am I right German readers?

Umfrage: Der ideale Netbook Preis | Eee PC News.