World's Thinnest Ultrabook, Acer's Aspire S5, Not Perfect

This morning I was lugging my trusty but heavy Toshiba Satellite laptop to a coffee shop to enjoy the ambiance and the free wi-fi. After my half-mile walk, my shoulder was a bit sore from the weight of the thing hanging from it. I've been considering a laptop with less bulk for a while, so when I saw this story about Acer's new ultrabook, I was very intrigued.

"The Aspire S5 measures just 15 millimeters, or 0.59 inches, at its thickest point," says Mashable's review. "By comparison, the MacBook Air, the laptop that inspired the Ultrabook movement, is 0.68 inches at its thickest point. Weight is a mere 3 pounds. That definitely beats Intel’s guidelines of being thinner than 0.71 inches and lighter than 3.1 pounds to be worthy of its Ultrabook moniker."

The S5 goes on sale "in the Spring" for a still-unknown price.

Three pounds? That's only 12 McDonald's Quarter Pounder burger patties (before cooking, of course). I'm think that would feel much better hanging from my shoulder than what I've got now, which seems to weight more like a Thanksgiving turkey.

But what about performance? I'm not about to trade speed, storage, and other important features just for weight. Curiously, Mashable's review said nothing about this. For that matter, none of the other two dozen or so reviews I read addressed performance, either. For that, let's go to the source: Acer's website.

Nothing is perfect, of course, and that includes the Aspire S5. Reviewer Jon Worrel noted some problems in his post at Fudzilla. He says the Aspire S5's keys "are purported to have the same 'scratchy' feel as the Aspire S3, they are very shallow in depth, and a handful of them remain somewhat undersized for most users."

Perhaps I'll hold off on getting an Aspire S5, but that's must my preference. Small, shallow keys are not comfortable for me. I need a full-sized keyboard.

The Aspire S5 joins other laptops in Acer's "S" series, which they descibe as a "techno-wonder"  with "an ultra-aerodynamic" design that "delivers everything you expect from a standard-size notebook."  Oh?

Does a laptop really need to be aerodynamic? Are there that many laptop users who use their machines in high winds? Why is wind resistance an important feature? As for what I expect in a notebook, of any size, is durability, a comfortable keyboard, screaming computing speed, and a hard drive with a minimum of half a terrabyte. From the sound of it, the Aspire S5 falls short of my expectations. I think I can put up with the higher wind resistance of my current laptop for a while longer.