The Acer Guy

You can’t say I’m biased.

Got a link (no names) to the first “review” of the new Gemstone Aspire notebooks.

It wasn’t all that favourable, but there again the review wasn’t all that good. Particularly as it was from CNet. I was expecting a little more but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

So far it seems the Gemstone has only negative points against it:

The lid is glossy black, which is there for many a laptops in the market. No points for that.

Emm. no, it’s a unique holographic 3D LCD cover, shaped with graduated curves and a dark sub-layer that sparkles like a finely cut opal gemstone. Hence the name… That’s like saying a Bentley has the same paint job as my two-year old son’s bicycle.

The keyboard is not milky white as the initial pictures depicted. It is greyish to say the least.

Again, did you actually read the press release? It’s called CeramiFinish and those subtle grey tones were chosen by international focus groups because grey is softer on the eyes over time and Aspire users are known for their media-intensive activities.

The design of the notebook chassis with respect to USB ports is not great either. There are some serious flaws here. There are three USB ports on the left side, while a lone USB port on the right side. The silly thing regarding this lone USB port on the right is that it is just 1mm away from the optical drive. If you use any USB device on this port, it will pretty much hinder the opening of the optical drive tray. Bad, Seriously. The USB logo is even printed in the wrong place - above the DVD drive.

You can see for yourselves below.

At the end of the day, we’ve got (maybe) one valid point (USB position) against a host of groundless niggles. So far so good. I guess.

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UPDATE 3: I have closed comments on this thread as the argument has moved on. The solution can be found by reading through the (long) thread below.

UPDATE 2: I have had an explanation of this problem from the tech support guys at Acer and the solution below is only OK for the Aspire 9300 and Aspire 5570 models for which the correct drivers and applications are available from the relative support page. Please have a look at this page for a correct fix BEFORE YOU POST HERE as the conversation has moved on.

UPDATE: This solution doesn’t work for everyone. Please read the comments to see why and what others are doing about it.

I have received an answer from Acer to the Orbicam problem.

There are two software entities involved – the camera Drivers and the OrbiCam application itself – and BOTH need replacing/updating to fix this problem.

The new driver and a new version of webcam application (below) seem to fix the issue.

The correct files to download are:

Acer Orbicam driver (Bison)
Acer Orbicam Bison utility 1.0.0.13

These can be found here under the MS Windows Vista drop down menu:

http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_9300.html

In order to fix the problem, you must download and install them both to make the Orbicam work correctly.

FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW IN THE SAME ORDER:

1. remove the installed OrbiCam application and reboot if required;
2. install the new driver (preferably with the “driver update” wizard from Device Manager)
3. update the Orbicam application 1.0.0.13

After this, the webcam should function properly, even if the original Orbicam icon disappears.

To check everything is working OK run LiveCa07.exe or BisonM07.exe that are located in the c:\windows\bisonxxx\ folder or simply run Messenger.

And please, let me know if this works.

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While writing some new marketing material for the Gemstone concept today, I came across the Acer News Special Edition and thought it would be interesting for The Acer Guy readers.

It contains some background on the Gemstone and ProFile concepts and goes on to explain some of the reasons behind Acer’s bizzare PR campaign…

Enjoy.

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Acer continues to push ahead in the most unexpected places.

The latest piece of news to arrive in my inbox comes all the way from Ethiopia, where Acer has just won a 3.5 million dollar agreement to supply the Ethiopian Ministry of Education with High-End Desktop PCs.

Under the deal, Acer, already the leading supplier of notebooks and desktop computers in the MEA (Middle East and Africa) regions, will supply 5,500 units of Intel-based desktops which, with an estimated value of AED 12.6 million (USD 3.5 million) makes it the biggest similar deal in East Africa.

Africa is definitely a market to watch, and the education sector in particular, is very highly-contested. With this deal, Acer has clearly positioned itself as a long-term vendor of choice for the region’s education sector.

In addition to this good news, Acer Computer (M.E) has been awarded “Superbrands” status for 2007 by the Superbrands organisation, an independent arbiter on branding.

No longer an also ran, eh?

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This is something you rarely see outside of the main offices and sales channels but I personally think it’s a wonderful representation of the character and spirit behind this fast-growing IT company.

It’s also really well-written!

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Yesterday I was in a meeting and the Aspire Idea came up.

All the usual arguments were discussed: positioning, competition, product development, marketing material, that sort of thing.

It’s a great product because it’s a giant step towards realizing the digital convergency dream. And that makes it an easy product to write about.

But I bet none of you know where the name came from.

Allow me to illuminate you…

When I received the brief to create a name for this new Media Centre way back in February 2006, I first took a look at the existing Acer product lines to see how the new product fitted in.

The new media center was clearly a considerable step forward for Acer in the Audio/Video market, and was more an integrated Audio/Video device than a PC with Audio/Video functions.

The product name therefore had to help the device distinguish itself from traditional Acer products while at the same show that Acer was on the convergency ball.

With that in mind, I wrote down a (very long) list of the intrinsic characteristics/properties of the new product which, after a lot of crossing out, ended up looking like this:

Integrated
Technology
Digital
Entertainment
Access
Vision
Power
Energy
Media
Home

If you take the initials of some of these key characteristics, you can transform them into useable words.

If you take the first, third, fourth and fifth characteristics (“Integrated”, “Digital”, “Entertainment” and “Access”) and combine their initials, you get the word “IDEA”.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, if you’re ever wondering what the Aspire iDea actually is… well, it’s name should help you out:

Integrated Digital Entertainment Access

Clever eh?

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This is much more like it.

This is the official Acer Gemstone video, used at the launch event.

Obviously this is a low-resolution version so the dolby effects don’t quite come through, but you kind of get the idea…

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I’m a little bit upset.

I had no idea the ShinyShiny crew were at the Gemstone/ProFile launch.

It would have been fun to meet up and try to find out why they can’t stop slamming Acer’s products. We could have talked about the importance of industrial design and how it was applied to both product lines, or about the international focus groups brought in to make them better all round than they are already.

Remember the headline “Performance is in the details”…? I’m beginning to be irreversibly convinced ShinyShiny doesn’t look that deeply.

Or maybe, for one night only, we could have put our differences aside and just chilled in the bar afterwards and talked blogs/gadgets/martinis/whatever…

Still, they were good enough to bring their video cameras along and this is the result.

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This is going to be a long post, and an unexpected one for “regular” readers, but a lot of The Acer Guy went into part of what happened yesterday. What better place than this to celebrate it?

After more than three weeks of intense preparations and countless speculation, last night saw the launch of the Acer Gemstone and TravelMate ProFile series.

I’m really excited to see how these two new notebook designs will be received as there really was a lot of work put into the products. Over the past few weeks, I helped bridged the gap between product and the customers.

If I’ve done my job correctly, it should at least get off to a warm start

A little background on the subject

The Gemstone Concept and ProFile design is a joint effort between BMW Group DesignworksUSA and Acer. These are the guys behind industrial design icons such as the new Mini, BMW (obviously) and countless high-technology devices from world-class brands such as Nokia, Motorola and Magellan. Go and check out their site.

Without wishing to dilute the considerable efforts of this amazing team, the name Gemstone was the result of some serious market research and intense focus groups.

In short, an in-depth analysis of consumer market trends, user needs and preferences gave BMW Group DesignworksUSA a clear picture of how the end product should look, feel and perform. Take a step back, and the end result looks like a finely cut opal. Hence “Gemstone”.

The business world reacts to change a lot differently to the consumer world. Fashion takes a back seat in this unforgiving environment so it’s not surprise the new TravelMate ProFile design is low-key in comparison. Actually that’s just the point.

In the speech last night, the differences between the two product areas were laid out very clearly indeed:

• Whereas the professional market looks for “productivity”, the consumer looks for “expression”.

• Where the professional seeks “reliability”, the consumer seeks “friendliness”.

• “Well-built” for one is as important as “comfortable” is for the other

• And where “efficiency” means everything to a professional, “versatility” is what home users prize the most.

Given that as a starting block, and the TravelMate’s reputation, would you have changed the professional line?

What they did do was take a very close look at the smallest detail – that is, after all, what industrial design is all about.

Once the “names and purposes” of the products had been signed off, the briefs hit the marketing guys (us) and we were given literally three weeks to come up with ideas on launch strategies, events and marketing collateral.

The guys handling this at CircleLine really do deserve a mention and my personal thanks. What they managed to pull off such a limited time-frame is nothing short of miraculous.

Anyway. Back to the products:

First of all, I’d like to explain some of the messages you might have seen associated with these products.

I came up with this headline to express how nature has the ultimate control over the shapes and forms we value in life, gemstones being the most precious. Technology, on the other hand, empowers users to create. The headline links the design concept with the final product. Violà!

This one’s a lot easier to explain, but there is a hidden message. Performance is the currency used to judge business efficiency. It’s all that counts. No-brainer to use that here. The clever part of the headline is the closing part.

The guys at BMW Group DesignworksUSA took a long hard look at the TravelMate Folio design and used Industrial Design to improve on it. Now go back to the Wikipedia definition of Industrial Design and look for the part that says:

“Product characteristics specified by the industrial designer may include the overall shape of the object, the location of details with respect to one another, colors, texture, sounds, and aspects concerning the use of the product ergonomics.”

They are small details. But combined, these details build a better product, and a better product improves performance.

The event

Last night, the event was held in East End Studios in Milan, one of the largest privately-owned exhibition centres in Italy. It’s the kind of place large car manufacturers use to present their latest models to selected journalists. Trust me it was massive.

Acer took residence in one of the halls and put on a show like they’ve never done before. First off, there were no chairs. This was a product presentation that was more an exhibition than a product announcement.

Five massive structures dominated the hall, each one made up of three, 5-metre panels and three black columns with nature images projected onto the four side areas and industrial images on the rear-centre.

Then, at 7pm, the lights went down and Gianpiero Morbello, marcoms manager for the EMEA region, took the microphone, taking the audience through the evolution of design, the importance of industrial design and ending on how technology has been the single-biggest industrial design innovator of all time.

At that point he handed the microphone over to Kevin O’Donoghue, Product Business Director PC Commercial– Acer EMEA, who had “the envious task of describing what design means to Acer.”

There was palpable tension in the air as Kevin walked the audience through the different applications of design in the consumer and professional worlds. This was certainly no ordinary presentation.

And then he said…

We have created two different product families that are so different they could almost be from two separate companies.

• One is a revolution in consumer desire. The other, an evolution of business efficiency.

• One is the natural shape of technology; the other shows its power in the details

• One introduces a new life style, the other a new style of business.

Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present to you, the Aspire Gemstone and TravelMate ProFile designs.

At that point the music cut in, and the spotlights pointed to the black tubes which slowly started to rise. The audience didn’t know what hit them.

Inside each of the tubes was an Aspire Gemstone notebook, and to the rear, three TravelMate Profile notebooks.

When you see them in the flesh, they really are stunning.

The TravelMate ProFile

The TravelMate ProFile is the more “ordinary” of the two but, if you’ve read the explanation of the headline above, you’ll already know why. The magnesium alloy outer casing is an extremely smart touch. Dark, professional-looking with no excesses, it looks like it really is: powerful, reliable, efficient, secure and surprisingly lightweight.

Did I mention that some TravelMate ProFile models feature a biometric fingerprint recognition suite that provides 100% biometric secure access? Or that they all now feature the latest edition of Acer’s DASP+ technology? Data security was obviously top of the design brief.

The Aspire Gemstone

But the star of the show was the Gemstone design.

If you look at it for a minute, the unique shapes and forms really do mark this as a carefully-studied object of rare quality.

It features something called a holographic 3D LCD cover that is shaped with graduated curves and a shimmering dark sub-layer and really does look good in the flesh.

“Surface treatment” is the buzzword for industrial designers at the moment and the Gemstone has its fair share. Apart from the shimmering outside, the inside deserves a mention.

Because it’s light grey.

It’s an effect called CeramiFinish and was chosen because grey is softer on the eyes over time, and Aspire users are known for their media-intensive activities. Think about that for a while, and then tell me if they were wrong to choose it.

The other thing about the Aspire Gemstone series is the choice to use Dolby. Or to give it its full name, Dolby Home Theatre Virtual Surround Sound technology.

There’s a patented speaker grill running the full width of the notebook and, if the effects from the Dolby screensaver are anything to go by, the result is startling.

Another feature that captures your attention when you turn on a Gemstone notebook is something Acer calls the media flow line.

This apparently strange feature has a very specific purpose. It runs from the power input jack around the keyboard to the touch pad and is a sort of “visual guide” that draws the user’s attention along the energy flow line of the PC across the media keys and Empowering key which, as anyone who’s actually used them will confirm, completely transform the PC experience.

Clever these BMW designers!

In concluding the evening, Kevin said:

These two new design concepts symbolize Acer’s long-term commitment to the brand-name PC business, and represent a new era of industrial design for the company.

We hope you enjoy using them as much as we did creating them.

That last sentence is significant. Acer’s on a roll at the moment.

It’s gaining ground on the competition by gaining a bigger and better audience. But more importantly, it’s convincing more and more people to take its ideas, its objectives, and its products very seriously indeed.

And if last night is anything to go by, it’s having fun too.

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