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Acer's new 15-inch, under-$500 AMD laptop, the Aspire 5253

The 15.6-inch Acer Aspire 5253 starts at under $500, thanks to AMD's new low-cost E-350 processor.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
Acer

LAS VEGAS--No matter what new features and performance enhancements get added to new laptops, the primary issue for most buyers is still price. That's why any laptop line announcement needs to include a few budget-minded systems, such as the Acer Aspire 5253.

This 15.6-inch laptop starts at under $500, thanks to AMD's new low-cost E-350 processor, which is a dual-core chip meant to cover the ground between Netbook chips and full-power CPUs. AMD's Vision platform also includes integrated Radeon HD 6310 graphics.

The Aspire 5253 is a pretty standard midprice laptop otherwise, with a 320GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium, a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, and HDMI video output. Look for it January 9, starting at $449.