 This is Joanna for The Verge and this is the Acer Aspire S3 which isn't only one of the first Ultrabooks on the market but is actually one of the most affordable. And one of the first things you'll notice about this laptop is actually how thin and light it is. But unfortunately this system does not feel as solid as the MacBook Air or some other PC laptops on the market. It actually feels pretty cheap. The top is actually made out of aluminum which gives it somewhat of a solid build when it's closed. When you open it up you realize that the palm rest and the bezel and also the bottom of the system are made out of plastic. So they've colored the plastic to sort of match the aluminum color but it is definitely plastic you can sort of hear how hollow it is when you tap it. And unfortunately that sort of cheap feel carries over to the keyboard and the keyboard itself is made out of sort of a matte plastic and you can hear the clicking of the keys which can be a little bit frustrating. On top of that they're a little bit mushy and they also have these small little arrow keys in the corner, I'm not really sure why they did that. The same sort of goes for the touchpad, it's also made out of plastic and you hear sort of that clicking sound to it. But for a Windows 7 touchpad it actually works pretty well, it is pretty responsive in terms of two fingers scrolling and pinch to zoom. So Acer and Intel worked pretty hard here on performance and getting rid of some of those sacrifices you once had to deal with for a thin and light system. They've packed the system with a Core i5 processor, 4 gigs of RAM and a 20 gigabyte SSD along with 320 gigabytes of a hard drive space. The SSD allows the system to boot pretty quickly and resume from sleep in two seconds but unfortunately the rest of the OS sort of launching programs and launching applications is a little bit slower. The most disappointing thing about the performance is definitely the battery life. Acer claimed that this would last about 7 to 8 hours but in my tests I've only gotten it to run from about 3 to 4 hours which just is not enough for a system this mobile. So for $899 the S3 is definitely the most affordable Ultrabook out there but the sacrifices just seem too many for the price. For those that are in the market for a thin and light laptop I would definitely suggest Apple's MacBook Air, even if it is $400 more you definitely get a better build quality and longer battery life for the price. Or you can wait for one of the new Ultrabooks coming from Asus, Toshiba and Lenovo.
 This is Joanna for The Verge and this is the Acer Aspire S3 which isn't only one of the
 first Ultrabooks on the market but is actually one of the most affordable.
 And one of the first things you'll notice about this laptop is actually how thin and
 light it is.
 But unfortunately this system does not feel as solid as the MacBook Air or some other
 PC laptops on the market.
 It actually feels pretty cheap.
 The top is actually made out of aluminum which gives it somewhat of a solid build when it's
 closed.
 When you open it up you realize that the palm rest and the bezel and also the bottom of
 the system are made out of plastic.
 So they've colored the plastic to sort of match the aluminum color but it is definitely
 plastic you can sort of hear how hollow it is when you tap it.
 And unfortunately that sort of cheap feel carries over to the keyboard and the keyboard
 itself is made out of sort of a matte plastic and you can hear the clicking of the keys
 which can be a little bit frustrating.
 On top of that they're a little bit mushy and they also have these small little arrow
 keys in the corner, I'm not really sure why they did that.
 The same sort of goes for the touchpad, it's also made out of plastic and you hear sort
 of that clicking sound to it.
 But for a Windows 7 touchpad it actually works pretty well, it is pretty responsive in terms
 of two fingers scrolling and pinch to zoom.
 So Acer and Intel worked pretty hard here on performance and getting rid of some of
 those sacrifices you once had to deal with for a thin and light system.
 They've packed the system with a Core i5 processor, 4 gigs of RAM and a 20 gigabyte SSD along
 with 320 gigabytes of a hard drive space.
 The SSD allows the system to boot pretty quickly and resume from sleep in two seconds but unfortunately
 the rest of the OS sort of launching programs and launching applications is a little bit
 slower.
 The most disappointing thing about the performance is definitely the battery life.
 Acer claimed that this would last about 7 to 8 hours but in my tests I've only gotten
 it to run from about 3 to 4 hours which just is not enough for a system this mobile.
 So for $899 the S3 is definitely the most affordable Ultrabook out there but the sacrifices
 just seem too many for the price.
 For those that are in the market for a thin and light laptop I would definitely suggest
 Apple's MacBook Air, even if it is $400 more you definitely get a better build quality
 and longer battery life for the price.
 Or you can wait for one of the new Ultrabooks coming from Asus, Toshiba and Lenovo.