A few minutes after the Acer Aspire S3 demo devices were brought to the stand I managed to get some hands on. Check out the number of people crowded round the devices! This is important for Acer as they bellieve its the next generation of PC device growth and it was clear from the press conference that they are betting a lot of this category.

The Acer S3 will launch this month in key countries. US was mentioned as one of those countries. Core i3, i5 and i7 variants will be available and prices range €799 to €1999

As we move forward with Ultrabooks, its obviously going to be harder for manufacturers to be different. It might mean that the price becomes the most important factor, at least at the low-end of the price scale.

Just to give you an early feel for the Acer Aspire Series 3 Ultrabook, here’s a quick `n dirty video from the launch event today.

I’m also uploading a Hands-On video that will be up soon on Ultrabooknews.
The Hands-On video is now available.
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A ‘no compromise’ Ultrabook that will ship this month, Sept 2011.

13″ screen. 1.3Kg Weight.

Price between €799 and €1199
13mm – 17mm thickness
Launching first in some ‘focus’ countries. Should ship in US by end of Sept.
Available with Core i3, i5 and i7
Entry level will offer Windows 7 Home Premium

We’re in the press conference right now and will.gather the detailed specs very soon but here are some slides from the event.

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

You might be wondering why Ultrabooks are going to cost $1000 or more when similar, slightly heavier designs are coming in at 75% of the cost.

The Samsung Series 3 that’s just gone on sale gives us a good chance to do some comparisons and there’s two things we need  to consider.

1) Market acceptance

2) Design, hardware, production costs

If you take a look at the Samsung Series 3 [at Liliputing], you’ll see it’s running the Intel Core i5 2nd-gen CPu just like the Series 9. In the Series 3 that’s selling for $735 now  you’ve got a 2.3Ghz version rather than a 1.3-1.5Ghz version. The reason is, size.

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