Acer Brings Blu-ray to Affordable Desktop

By Geoff Duncan Published October 13, 2008

Acer Brings Blu-ray to Affordable Desktop

Acer—now the parent company of Gateway—is hoping to find a sweet spot in consumers end-of-year holiday buying plans with its new Aspire X3200 desktop—especially if they’re looking for a compact PC that can handle high-definition video. And the company is pairing it with the new Acer P244W LCd display that handles 1080p content with a native 1,920 by 1,080 resolution.

“The Aspire X3200 packs plenty of power for tackling the demands of multitasking and the latest digital entertainment,” said Acer America’s senior manager for retail desktop product planning Stephanie Eggert, in a statement. “Users choosing to combine the 24-inch display with the compact desktop will have an excellent system for enjoying productivity, movies, music, and games without taking up a lot of space.”

Recommended Videos

The Aspire X3200 is just 10.4 inches tall, 4 inches wide, and 14.4 inches deep, making it easy to store on (or near) desks and home theater systems. The audio jacks, card reader, and ports are front-mounted, making for easy access. The X3200 sports an AMD Phenom X3 triple core processor, 4 GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8200 graphics, a 640 GB hard drive, a digital media card reader, HDMI output, and a huge helping or peripheral connectivity: an IEEE 1394 port, an eSATA port and a whopping nine USB 2.0 ports (five in front, four in back). The system also ships with stereo speakers, although true home theater folks will (of course) want to hook it up to a more robust audio system. The Acer Aspire X3200 whips with Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium, and is available now for $679.99.

Of course, folks who are going to get into high-definition video need a suitable display: enter the Acer P244W, a 24-inch LCD monitor with a native 1,920 by 1,080 pixel resolution, a 75Hz refresh rate a 2 ms response time, a claimed 20,000:1 contrast ration, and 300 cd/m² of brightness. The P244W comes with two HDMI inputs, one VGA input, and is VESA-compatible. The P224W should be available now for $339.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

This affordable gaming laptop from HP just got $500 cheaper

HP Victus 16 gaming laptop on white background.

For one of the best gaming laptop deals of the week, head over to Best Buy. Today, you can buy an HP Victus 16 gaming laptop for $900 instead of $1,400. Being able to buy a laptop with such a huge screen for this price is pretty great. In the past, we’ve described the Victus range as a “new gaming brand [making] its mark” and this is a good example of what HP has accomplished in recent years. If you’re looking for a new gaming laptop, we think you’ll like this one. Read on while we take you through what it has to offer.

Why you should buy the HP Victus 16 gaming laptop
We reviewed a slightly different HP Victus 16 in 2022, but since then HP has gone from strength to strength. Crucially, the two models share a similar design. This HP Victus 16 also has a backlit keyboard with white lighting and it feels “great ... with deep travel and very snappy switches that provide excellent responsiveness for both gamers and productivity users.” It also has a larger touchpad, and the minimalist design looks eye catching with its V logo on the back.

Computing

The Meta Quest 3S is official, making mixed-reality even more affordable

Meta announced the Quest 3s at Connect 2024.

At Meta Connect 2024, the company officially announced the anticipated Quest 3S, a $300 VR headset with many of the best features of the more expensive Quest 3 that launched last year. While the Quest 3 is a better headset overall, the budget model can run the same mixed-reality games, apps, and immersive VR titles.
Meta gave the Quest 3S a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, the best available in any Meta VR headset. That’s why it can handle big titles like Batman: Arkham Shadow and Asgard’s Wrath 2. If you buy a Quest 3S during the promotional period, Arkham Shadow is free.

It also has Touch Plus controllers without the bulky rings of the Quest 2’s controllers. If you’re upgrading from an older VR headset, you’ll enjoy more freedom of movement without worrying about clashing rings when drawing a virtual bow or putting your guard up in virtual boxing.

Computing

Intel’s desktop CPU road map may have changed

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger presents Intel's roadmap including Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and Panther Lake.

Intel's list of best processors is about to expand with the upcoming launch of Arrow Lake-S, also referred to as Intel Core Ultra 200-series for desktops. But what comes next is less certain, and even more so now. According to a post on the Chiphell forums, Intel may have decided to cancel the Arrow Lake-S refresh (Intel Core Ultra 300-series, presumably) that was reportedly slated for sometime next year as a follow-up to this year's initial launch. On the upside, the code name for an upcoming desktop CPU generation was also leaked.

The rumored Arrow Lake-S refresh was never confirmed, but there have been many whispers about it from various leakers. Much like the Raptor Lake refresh, it was never meant to be a groundbreaking update; the neural processing unit (NPU) was the main thing that was going to be updated.