Acer Notebook With Detachable Trackpad

Acer's new Aspire Ethos laptops sinks into the faceless morass of PC notebooks, with one notable exception: a detachable trackpad. The humble mouse-replacement pops out of its place below the keyboard and becomes a media remote.

And that's not all. The pads have LEDs embedded beneath the shiny surface so you can read track numbers or can see where to touch to skip tunes, and an accelerometer knows how you are holding it so it can be used in both landscape and portrait orientations.

Otherwise, the only distinction is that the expensive ($1,640+) Ethos line squeezes in the top end of everything, from Blu-ray through a 1920 x 1080 display (with Gorilla Glass) and USB 3 to a NVIDIA GeForce GT500 graphics card. To say these are boring isn't to say they aren't well specced. There's even a monster with an 18.4-inch screen, which is larger than my first TV.

But the making — and possibly the undoing — of the new Ethos line is that remote. You can sit back from that giant screen with a martini and watch your movies in comfort. But if you lose this remote anywhere other than down the back of the sofa, you're pretty much screwed.

Acer Aspire Ethos product page [Acer]

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