Well, here we are, the beginning of a new era in computing. No, we are not getting intra-skin implant ala the Borg. No we are not getting computers the size of a matchstick box (although we are getting closer). No, we are in the world where Ultrabook is going to rule the road warrior. What is an Ultrabook you say? Well, think about the best  mid-range notebook money can buy, shave two thirds of the thickness and weight, and slash about some amount from the price. You get the best mobile machine that money can buy for the road warriors. Acer was the first to have their machines on the market, and we have it here today – the new Aspire S3.

How does it look?

First of all, what a design. This being the first of the Ultrabooks, the machine is thin, thin ,thin! While this is one of the more thicker machines for the Ultrabook line, it is still thinner than anything you can get out in the market, save for a certain Air that you can get from a fruit company. If you want to measure, the machine is thinner than the magazine that you are reading right now! Yes, it is that thin.

The screen itself is thinner than your old primary school exercise book. The whole body meanwhile is made out of aluminium and is very strudy in construction. Not supper rugged, but you still feel comfortable using the machine. You will not get any feeling of underpriced or undervalued – even though it is very cheap for what it is.

Using it

For daily use – the Ultrabook series is purported to last about 7 hours on a standard battery, and up to 30 days of standby time. The S3 delivers and even went beyond the norm. While we cant really test how long it can last on the standby time – Acer numbers suggest that it should reach 50 days on the hibernate standby mode. Fifty days – that is a long time. We can confirm that the battery is long lasting – a full run of the battery from start to finish on normal usage mode – 50% screen brightness, wifi on will net you around 6:20 hours. While it is not the full 7 hours of the promised time, it is close enough that we say it is very good. Plus, the Ultrabook has a nifty feature that puts it apart from the others.

Intel and their OEM partners has built-in a function that allows PC to come from sleep-mode do full running in one second. Yes, you read it right – one second resume time. Its incredible, and the S3 again delivers the moolah. From sleep to running takes about one second – and this is including being connected to the internet. No more scenarios where you have to reconnect after enduring a long sleep mode cycle. Open it up, and you are ready to go.

Build

The S3 is a very sturdy machine to have around. The aluminium construction – while not unibody – is very strong and sturdy. It is not really created to withstand extreme conditions, but for every day tumble and rumble – its perfect. It comes with two USB ports, HDMI port (all at the back) a combination headphone/microphone jack and a SD card reader. We did ask why didn’t it come with USB 3.0, and Acer replied that it is because of power and cost concerns. Future SKUs may come with USB 3 however.

Performance

As the Ultrabook is not designed to be seriously used for gaming, it doesn’t come with a discrete graphic solution. Nor it comes with upgradable memory.  As the unit that we have in hand is a preproduction unit, all scores are not reflective of final units. Even so, it is 95% close to the consumer units, and when we ran our PerformanceTest program, we managed to get 684.9 points. Not bad for something that can fit nicely into an A4 envelope.

Not so nice stuff

With all the pros, there are always cons. The big one is that the keyboard is atrocious. Because of the thickness, Acer had to be happy with a keyboard that has key travel as good as typing on a piece of paper. Plus, the same keyboard has arrow keys literally the size breath mints. Not god when you need to scroll down a document, and you have big fat fingers.