Acer has teamed up with Ferrari to manufacture the Liquid E Ferrari special edition smartphone. The device comes loaded with Ferrari-themed content, like videos, photos and ringtones of Ferrari engines, in addition to the obvious external themed Ferrari red color and emblem.
Acer has opted for Android 2.1 OS on the Ferrari phone, but not so surprising since they are dealing with Ferrari; speed is key. Running a 768MHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel camera, MicroSD slot with support for 32GB chips, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, all connected to your 3G HSDPA network. Added bonus is a bright red Ferrari Bluetooth headset.
Acer's new, Ferrari One netbook will be among the first wave of low-cost portables to be based on AMD's new Vision platform. The new system downplays technical specifications, instead dividing AMD-based machines into three simple performance tiers, dubbed “Vision”, “Vision Premium” or “Vision Ultimate”.
Accordingly, the three tiers are characterised as “See”, “Share” and “Create”. Basic Vision laptops offer basic capabilities for playing music and videos, while the more powerful Vision Premium adds ATI Stream support for transcoding video (plus DirectX 10.1 support for gaming) and Vision Ultimate adds extra power for video editing.
The Acer Ferrari One netbook will feature the new low-power, mobile processor from AMD – the Athlon Neo X2 Dual-Core L310 – which boasts twin cores, a clock speed of 1.2GHz, 1MB of L2 cache and support for 800MHz DDR2 RAM, plus ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics.
The Ferrari One will launch on 22 October, to coincide with the official launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. It will ship with either a 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium or 64-bit Windows Starter Edition.
There's still no optical drive, but the Ferrari One is well-appointed, at least in netbook terms. It comes equipped with a luxurious 11.6in screen with bright LED backlighting and a crisp resolution of 1,366 x 768. Other specifications include draft-n wireless, Gigabit Ethernet, optional 3G and Bluetooth, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard disk, with more expensive models offering up to 4GB and more capacious hard drives.
The new netbook also sees the re-emergence of the ATI XGP interface. This odd-looking socket sits alongside the One's standard D-SUB video output, and allows the connection of an optional docking station, equippined with HDMI port, and six more USB sockets to supplement the three that are arranged around the One's standard three.
Where Acer's new netbook could struggle, however, is longevity away from the mains. Although it ships with a seemingly impressive 5,600mAh, six-cell unit as standard, Acer's press material stated a rather conservative battery life of around five hours.
Kimi Raikkonen won the Brazilian Grand Prix and the Formula One world title, beating Britain's Lewis Hamilton to the biggest prize in motorsport as the McLaren driver suffered a race of extraordinary bad luck and finished in seventh.
Raikkonen, who headed home a Ferrari one-two ahead of Felipe Massa and the 'other' title rival Fernando Alonso, beat the Spaniard and Hamilton by just one point to claim the closest championship for 13 years.
