Acer announces Aspire 5100

Acer updated its Aspire 5000 series to include dual-core processors today and gave the 15.4-inch wide-screen, midsize notebook a new name: the Aspire 5100 series.

As the nomenclature implies, there are improvements to the 5000, but it's not radically different. Enhancements include the AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core processor (from the AMD Turion 64 single-core processor); support for up to 4GB of 533MHz or 667MHz RAM (from 2GB of 333MHz); a discrete ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 with 128MB of dedicated VRAM (from an integrated SiSM760GX graphics subsystem); Serial ATA (from IDE); and an ExpressCard slot (from a CardBus slot).

The New Aspire 5100 series adds a few new features as well, including S/PDIF out, S-Video out and a 5-in-1 memory card reader. A Webcam and a Bluetooth telephone for VoIP are both optional.

For more information, see our review of the Acer Aspire 5000.