Acer President Defends Windows 8… Then Bashes It…. WTF?

Windows 8 isn’t really having a good run at the moment. After being trashed by Fujitsu, it seems that Acer had to ride to the rescue. Here’s what Acer President Jim Wong had to say just before the new year:

Windows 8 is a major milestone for 2012, but it is also a new system that consumers must learn and the learning process will prevent the operating system from taking off quickly,

Sounds good right? Hold on for a moment. Here’s what the same dude said today:

The promotion of the product is really focused on the keyboard, and the users really don’t know how to maximize the touch experience

Strange isn’t it? It doesn’t end there. Here’s what their top marketing guy had to say:

Acer’s chief marketing officer, Michael Birkin, echoed this. “There was just a lot of messaging coming out at the same time: Windows 8, Surface, RT,” he said.

Sounds like neither one of them like what Microsoft is doing to promote Windows 8.

You can pretty much expect that these comments will result in Steve Ballmer having chairs at the ready with their names on them. Meanwhile, Tim Cook is laughing his head off.

Review: Acer Liquid MT Smartphone – The Wrap Up

So I’ve spent the last week with the Acer Liquid MT smartphone (click here to read my previous reports) and here are my final thoughts. This is a nice phone that has a nice feel to it, not to mention that it has a decent suite of software installed on it. The web browser has Flash support which gives you a great web browsing experience. The camera is pretty decent for still and video as well. The screen is visually impressive, but the audio quality of the phone is only average at best.

So would I buy it? I think it would make my list of phones to consider. But whether I would buy it or not really depends on what it has to compete against. Some of the Sony Xperia phones for example may come out ahead of this phone. That doesn’t mean that this is a bad phone. It’s not.

Bottom line. Those in the market for an Android phone should put this phone on their shopping list.

Review: Acer Liquid MT Smartphone – Part 3

So how well does the camera on this smartphone work? Below is a sample picture that I took from the balcony of my condo (click the picture to see it in full resolution):

The results aren’t bad considering it’s 5 megapixels.

Now for the video capabilities of the camera. I took two 720P videos. One in low light and one in daylight. First the low light video (go to full screen and choose 720P):

Now the daylight video (go to full screen and choose 720P):

The quality seems decent and while this won’t replace your camcorder, it will do in a pinch for any video you might want to shoot.

One other thing that I should touch on is the actual phone capabilities. The audio was kind of average and at times lacked some volume and clarity. My BlackBerry is much better in this department. I also tried to have a speakerphone conversation in my car and found it difficult to hear what was being said. I would lay the blame at the feet of the speaker that’s on the back of the phone. Again, my BlackBerry wins in this department.

One thing that I didn’t test is the built in FM radio. It’s a nice touch to have on a phone just in case you want to listen to some news or some tunes that you don’t have in MP3 format.

I’ll wrap this review up tomorrow with my closing thoughts.

Review: Acer Liquid MT Smartphone – Part 2

I’ve used this smartphone for the last couple of days and the apps that it comes with are pretty interesting. The web browser for one gives you a complete web browsing experience. That includes pages with Flash. Nothing that I threw at it seemed to cause the web browser any problems. I tried the music player and it has an interesting feature called Shake Control which allows you to shuffle sounds by shaking the device. Personally I don’t know if I want to shake a smart phone worth a few hundred dollars to mix up my tunes. But the feature is there if you want to use it. One thing to note is that this phone has a Dolby Mobile equalizer, but I couldn’t really hear a difference. Oh yeah, there’s a app called Spinlets which provides media streaming content and the Media Server app allows you to share your media with family and friends. Cool.

Other apps include the Social Jogger app allows for instant toggling between Facebook and Twitter feeds, posts, photos, and updates. The email app has IMAP, POP3, and Exchange support along with support for Gmail and Talk. It also comes preloaded with a Rogers supplied backup app called MobileBack, Facebook, Twitter, Documents,  Navigation, Latitude, Places, and a Barcode Scanner among other things. Oh yeah, you’ve got a YouTube app too. I tried playing some videos and they play just fine. Just don’t try any HQ ones as they tend to bog the phone down. The sound is decent from the built in speaker. But if you’re an audiophile, you’ll want to use headphones.

So it really seems that this smartphone is loaded with apps. If you feel something is missing, there’s always the Android market as they likely have what you’re looking for.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the phone capabilities as well as try out the camera and I’ll be posting some examples of the latter.

Review: Acer Liquid MT Smartphone – Part 1

I’ve been supplied an Acer Liquid MT smartphone running Android Froyo which includes Flash support for me to review this week.  The first thing that you notice about it is that it has a 3.61” capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels WVGA which is visually impressive. You get proximity, and light sensors as well as a multi-touch interface. The next thing that you notice is that the case which is a black plastic with chrome trim attracts fingerprints like politicians are attracted to bribes. Be prepared to wipe the phone clean frequently. The right side of the phone has volume and camera controls. The top has a power/lock button and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The bottom of the device houses a small opening for the microphone, and a microUSB port for charging/PC connectivity. In terms of wireless access, you get HSPA 14.4Mbps, Bluetooth and WiFi (802.11n). There’s a camera that does video (720P) and still photos (5 MP). You’ll need storage for videos and pictures, so you get a microSD port underneath the back panel that will take up to a 32GB card.

I’ve been playing with it for the last day or so and it seems to be an interesting phone so far. I’ll post my impressions of it in the days to come.

Stay tuned.

 

 

Couple Sues Acer….. Says 1GB For Vista Isn’t Enough

A couple in Ohio has sued Acer America claiming that it deceived buyers by offering laptops with 1GB of RAM with Windows Vista on it:

“Acer’s defective notebooks are inherently defective in that they do not contain enough RAM to properly run Vista Premium despite being promoted and sold as a bundled product of both a notebook computer and a premium operating system,” the Wolphs’ lawsuit alleged. “As a result, the defective notebooks experience serious problems, including, but not limited to, freezing during use, crashing, requiring frequent restarts and experiencing slow load times.”

The Wolphs said they had to upgrade the Aspire to 2GB of RAM at an out-of-pocket cost of $157 to make the notebook usable.

Though this might sound weird, they do have a point…. Sort of. Vista only really starts to run decently if you throw 1.5GB of RAM or more at it from my experience. I will give them that. But even I wouldn’t call the machine defective because it only came with a gig of RAM. I think that to be a bit over the top considering that most computer companies that play at the $1000 or less end of the price spectrum put a barely passable amount of RAM in the computer to keep the price low. Besides, even when I purchased my MacBook Pro two years ago (which is hardly a low end computer), I bumped the RAM up to 4GB from the 2GB it came with in rather short order. In my experience, the stock amount of RAM is never enough.

I would expect this lawsuit to be dismissed rather quickly…. Although these days you never know.