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Acer's Ultrabook to rattle market at $899, says report

Acer's Ultrabook will start at $899 in the U.S.--a price that will undoubtedly trigger fierce competition at retail.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers

Acer is expected to shake up the nascent Ultrabook market when a model lands in the U.S. in the coming weeks at prices well below $1,000, according to a report.

New Age Electronics is now listing the Aspire S series at prices starting at $899.99, according to a report in CRN.

The Acer Aspire S series Ultrabook is expected to start at $899 in the U.S. a report says.
The Acer Aspire S series Ultrabook is expected to start at $899 in the U.S. a report says. Acer

Ultrabooks, like Apple's MacBook Air, are thin, minimalist laptops but offer high performance due to the use of Intel's latest Sandy Bridge processor.

Intel has been promoting the Ultrabook as inexpensive--or at least less expensive than past ultrathin laptops, whose prices would often climb above $2,000.

Acer announced the Aspire S series earlier this month with features like instant-on and instant-connect from sleep mode, seven hours of rated battery life, a lightweight aluminum/magnesium alloy chassis that is about 0.5 inches thick, and a 13.3-inch ultra-thin HD LED display. All weighing only 3 pounds.

The S series will be powered by Core i3, i5, and i7 processors and sport either solid-state drives (240GB) or hard disk drives (320GB or 500G).

The Acer Aspire S series landed in Japan this week and duly received quite a bit of attention from the media.

Acer declined to comment on pricing in the U.S.