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Windows 8 touch-screen Acer laptop, desktop up for sale

Windows 8 systems have appeared on the Home Shopping Network including a touch-screen Acer laptop.

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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The $999 Acer Windows 8 laptop comes with a touchscreen. That's a feature Apple can't match on a MacBook.
The $999 Acer Windows 8 laptop comes with a touch screen. That's a feature Apple can't match on a MacBook. Home Shopping Network

An Acer touch-screen Windows 8 laptop has popped up on the Home Shopping Network, along with other systems.

Brace yourself: touch-screen laptops will not be cheap.

Most of the specs are pretty underwhelming: a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U "Ivy Bridge" processor, 750GB hard disk drive, DVD drive, a thickness of over an inch (that's considered plump in the age of the ultrabook), and a weight of 5.4 pounds.

But one hardware feature sets it apart from the Windows 7 rabble: a 15.6-inch touch screen to go with Windows 8's touch-centric interface.

And that distinguishes it from Apple, too: no MacBooks today boast touch screens.

In fact the touch screen is so integral to Windows 8 that it will become standard fare on both high-end clamshell laptops and hybrid "convertible" designs -- not to mention Windows 8 tablets.

And the price? It goes for $999.95 on HSN, which lists its "retail value" at about $1,334.

Expect plenty of touch-screen systems in the coming weeks and months. But let's hope more of them are like Hewlett-Packard's Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook, which will sport a high-resolution 1,920x1,080 pixel 15.6-inch display.

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The Acer system above has only a grainy 1,366x768 15.6-inch screen.

Other Windows 8 systems appearing on HSN include a $699.95 Gateway laptop (no touch screen) and a $1,199.95 Gateway 23-inch All-in-One touch-screen desktop PC.

HSM does not state availability on its site. Windows 8 is slated to go on sale officially on October 26.

[Via ZDNet]