ACER BETS ON ULTRABOOKS TO TACKLE APPLE

Acer will cut its product line by 66% in 2012 and focus on simplifying its portfolio, company chairman JT Wang recently said according to reports. Wang expects the narrowed focus to be fine-tuned over the next two to three years, DigiTimes reports, but the sharper vision will have an immediate impact on sales — Acer thinks revenue will climb 10% in 2012 as Acer attacks the ultrabook market while shifting away from low-margin netbooks. The Acer boss also sees another upside to the advent of ultrabooks: the rise of slim Windows and Intel-powered notebook computers will weaken Apple’s growth over the next two years. As ultrabook prices begin to fall to the $699-range in 2012, their rapid adoption will slow sales of more expensive Mac laptops.

NEW YORK STARBUCKS COVERS UP OUTLETS TO DISCOURAGE LAPTOP LOUNGERS

In New York it appears some Starbucks baristas have had enough of the laptop brigade and have taken to covering up electrical outlets forcing laptop users to rely on their batteries. According to poster Mike Pollock over at the Starbucks Gossip site at least two Starbucks locations are covering their outlets, one at 14 West 23 Street and the other at West 39 Street and 8th Avenue.

Another poster, Can't please everyone, stated ""Covering outlets is not a company wide or even regionally accepted practice. In certain extreme circumstances, where management have exhausted other avenues of resolution, stores have covered their outlets because people do abuse the 'welcoming' nature of Starbucks."

Starbucks Corporate offices have not responded to repeated requests for a statement.

APPLE LAPTOPS CAN BE HACKED TO EXPLODE

Apple’s newer MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks have a security flaw that can allow hackers to remotely prevent the batteries from charging. Better yet, hackers can exploit the same flaw and remotely cause batteries to explode. Apple laptops’ new “smart” battery technology is intended to provide added control over power management, and it does just that. Unfortunately, it also gives hackers added control because the microcontroller chip that ships in recent Apple laptops can be accessed remotely using a default password shared by each and every notebook.

Charlie Miller, the security expert who discovered the vulnerability, plans to showcase the flaw next month at the Black Hat security conference. There, Miller will show that he is able to access the battery controller remotely and cause it to refuse a charge, or even heat up until it catches fire and explodes. “These batteries just aren’t designed with the idea that people will mess with them,” Miller told Forbes last week. “What I’m showing is that it’s possible to use them to do something really bad.” Thankfully, the security expert also intends to showcase a fix for the flaw, which Apple will hopefully implement as soon as possible.

HUGE RARE EARTH MINERAL DEPOSITS FOUND IN PACIFIC OCEAN

Every time someone goes out and buys a new TV, laptop, iPad, Android smartphone, or any such device they are using up some of our rare earth minerals which these gadgets require to work. They are called rare not because there is only a small amount on earth, but because the deposists are small and therefore require a lot of mining to recover very little.

Another problem exists in the fact China holds about 97% of the rare earth mineral market, and it decides how much exits the country. This pushes up prices and makes it more difficult for companies outside of China to not only manufacture enough devices, but also to keep the costs of those gadgets competitive.

It will come with great relief then, to hear that Japanese researchers have found very rich deposits of rare earth minerals as well as the metal yttrium. In total around 26 sites located in the international waters of the Pacific Ocean have been found to have high concentrations buried between 3,500 and 6,000 meters beneath the sea bed.

The deposits are so rich they are thought to increase our reserves by 1000x. Current reserves are estimated at 110 million tonnes, but this new discovery adds another 100 billion tons.

Not only does this take the pressure off in terms of finding alternatives in the near future, the locations of the deposits near Hawaii and Tahiti means the reliance on Chinese exports will be removed. Prices should fall and competition will not be influenced by a lack of supply.

AT&T TO ALTER DATA PLANS FOR LAPTOPCONNECT

According to a well placed source of ours, AT&T will be altering its data plan offerings for LaptopConnect devices this Sunday. Devices that utilize LaptopConnect data plans include data sticks, MiFis, and connected netbooks. Currently, AT&T offers a 200MB monthly plan for $35 or a 5GB monthly plan for $60… not all that savory. After this weekend, however, the company will bring its offerings more inline with those its cnemesis, Verizon Wireless. Ma’ Bell will begin offering a 3GB monthly data plan for $30 and a 5GB monthly plan for $50. Much more savory. We should see an announcement either Sunday or Monday.

ARM CHIPS CUT XO LAPTOP POWER NEEDS TO 2 WATTS

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) has been making XO Laptops since 2006. The original goal was to create a laptop for kids in developing countries that only cost $100 to manufacture. Although the laptop was made, it ended up costing $199.

While the focus now may be on OLPC’s forthcoming XO-3 Tablet, the XO Laptop continues to be updated. The original device was v1.0, but the current model shipping has had a number of updates and now carries the version number 1.5. At CES last week v1.75 was shown off, and it brings with it some significant improvements thanks mainly to ARM.

One of the major problems of using any electronics hardware in a developing country is gaining access to a reliable power source. The OLPC solved this for the XO Laptop by offering a manual crank charger. The only problem being it took a couple of hours to fully charge the battery.

While the availability of power in certain regions of the world cannot be solved by the OLPC, it can improve upon the power use of the XO Laptop. And with v1.75 they have managed to half that power use. The reason this has been made possible is the move to use an ARM rather than an x86 processor. So now rather than drawing 4 watts of power, the XO-1.75 draws 2 watts. The new chip being used is a 1GHz Armada 610 from Marvell. [Geek]

ACER UNVEILS 3D LAPTOP

Wondering when computer makers would follow the lead of television manufacturers and get around to making an affordable 3D computer? Acer has just announced just such a laptop, the Acer AS5745DG-A54E/L (great name Acer, everyone will remember that one....NOT!)

The 3D notebook will feature a 15.6-inch screen, an NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M GPU with NVIDIA’s 3D VISION at 120Hz, a 2.53GHz Intel Core i5-460M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 640GB hard drive, HDMI, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi b/g/n and a 1.3-megapixel webcam. It also ships with 3D VISION glasses, of course. Pricing hasn’t yet been announced, though Acer did say the AS5745DG-A54E/L will be available in Japan on December 3rd for “less than” 100,000 yen, which is roughly $1,200 US. Acer has not yet addressed availability outside of Japan. [BGR]