Acer’s Aspire S3 and MacBook Air:
When Acer made its Aspire S3, the computer company probably had in its mind that the smaller things get, the higher the possibility that they’d tend to bear similarities with other small things as well.
Let’s look at the features of the two and see whether there is basis in the arguments between Acer and Apple.
Air is 17mm at its thickest point, and S3, although claimed to be 13mm only, is actually 17 mm and even more if you take account its rubber stoppers. In terms of weight, both models are at 13″ but S3 weighs 1.35 kg and the air 1.3 kg in weight.
S3 is made of magnesium -aluminium alloy and has a lightly brushed texture finished while Air has been finished in smooth, matte aluminium.
S3 however has air vents similar to Apple but which Apple has successfully hidden under the screen hinge of MacBooks.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that S3 can run on batteries for 7 hours, as Air would not like that of course. The batteries of both netbooks are lithium polymer and are sealed into the devices.
A plus for Apple’s products would be their capacity for storage.
The S3 however, claims too to have a storage capacity o 240GB, and sells much cheaper than the Air with 256GB.
All Aspire S3 models have 4GB RAM but Apple in its Intel HD Graphics 3000 includes more memory than the S3.
S3 has a noticeably thicker screen and its 1377 x 768 pixels may not be actually able to compete with the MacBook Air which has superior display with an edge resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels.
S3 has few ports and connectors. On the right side, it has the SD card reader and on the left is the headphone jack and two more ports are the back, and the power socket and Full-size HMDI port.
It comes with an OSx10.7 “Lion” including the better than other competitors apps, the iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband. The S3 only comes with Windows 7.
Macs always have near-instant system resume with a 15 seconds reboot from a cold start. But Aspire 3 works beautifully as well with its resume, taking about 1.5 seconds to wake up from the sleep mode and about 2.5 seconds to fully reconnect to a usable state on Wi-Fi networks.
Given the detailed comparisons above, should Apple be really alarmed regarding the supposed similarities of the Air and S3?
Or can Apple still regain its’ position as the lead in the computer market? What do you think?
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