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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Aspire M from Acer this is part of a

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refresh of Ultrabooks that are coming in at lower price points than the original

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slew of Windows 8 touchscreen devices

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that came out when Windows 8 launched so that means you're going to see a couple

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of compromises that you didn't see on some of the launch products but again

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it's well the benefit is that it comes in at a lower price point making a

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Windows 8 touchscreen notebook more affordable to the general consumer so

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Inside the Box we find a few different things so number one is we get a summary

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of all the things that are great about the M5 our particular configuration has

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4 gigs of RAM um a 500 gig hard drive

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with a 20 gig SSD cach so there you go

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we've got that in a number of different languages there we've also got a power

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brick as with well pretty much all Ultrabooks although this one is

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particularly slim uh as with all Ultrabooks the power brick is quite slim

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so we'll do my trademark cell phone comparison so you guys can see the

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overall thickness of the included power brick this is actually a very important

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thing for notebooks for me anyway because the notebook itself can be as

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portable and slim as it wants but at the end of the day if it's not if the

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accessories that you have to carry around with it are bulky and heavy then

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you're not really getting any benefit out of that light weight slim device

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that you've just purchased so comes with a power brick next up inside we've got not a

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whole lot there and aha some discs

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permanent storage oh look at that that's cool so

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it comes with an M disk if you guys aren't familiar with M disk it's well it

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says what it is it's permanent storage so it's a recordable media that lasts

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for over a thousand years or up to a thousand years or whatever long long uh

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by the time you burn media to it and you'll be long dead by the time it

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actually degrades in any meaningful way so uh that means that the drive included

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with the Aspire m is also M disk compatible meaning it's manufactured by

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LG So speaking of the optical disc I'd

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like to show you guys yes this is an Ultra Book with an optical drive so if

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you do need a DVD rewriter in your

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portable notebook say for example you watch movies on DVD or whatever else

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carried around with you this guy's good for about 5 hours of battery life with a

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disc spinning in the drive or about 8 hours of General usage according to Acer

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so that means you can actually take it with you on a flight and watch a couple

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movies on DVD if you want to do that all of this while maintaining that Ultra

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Book level of slimness in order to get that branding from

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Intel also included inside is your traveler's warranty so this right here

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actually has a couple things so it's got some quick sort of start guide how do I

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access the charms menu how do I get to start for example it also has their

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International Travelers warranty so it's a one-year international warranty I

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personally think every notebook should have an international warranty but not

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all of them necessarily do so if you take your notebook and travel to another

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territory another country your warranty claim may actually get rejected by the

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regional office because they're not the ones who sold you the notebook so Acer

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make sure that that gets taken care of we've actually booted up the notebook

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already and we are you know B basically

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going to show you that yes it is indeed touch screen it's actually a 10o

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multitouch so we're going to just oh yeah start menu doesn't do that anymore

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see I always I always forget these things now so we'll go here and search

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for paint which is my favorite

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application to show off a 10-point multi-touch screen so just go ahead and

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oh what' I do Acer photo okay apparently

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comes with a photo management app let's go back here and go like that oo very

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responsive actually nice you see how there's absolutely no delay following

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around my finger that makes a very very very big difference to the touchcreen

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experience so that's not necessarily true of every touchs screen that you

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encounter so let's have a look at the device physically the hinge opens up

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almost 180° looks like about 170° so I

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mean this is just one of those usage scenarios that not everyone will encounter but I used to walk around on

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campus and University and just hold my notebook like this and say type things

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and browse the web and read things so I mean I know people have tablets now so

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that's like not something people might do that much anymore but I do like it

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when notebooks open up nice and wide like this um I had I had one notebook

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that I found out that some of them are artificially limited I had a notebook

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where it opened up about this about this far and then my baby came along and

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pushed on it from the back put his full weight on it and it kind of went crack

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and then it opened up 180° and it didn't break in any other sort of meaningful

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way so I'm not recommending that you try that with your notebook but I do

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appreciate that Acer provides this one stock with uh with a yeah with with a

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hinge that opens up wide like that so the keyboard itself has a nice brushed

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aluminum finish over the entire top piece here so this looks like one solid

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piece of aluminum nice large touchpad it drives me crazy when manufacturers

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include small touchpads with their notebooks uh it is a multi-touch

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touchpad so you can zoom in you can zoom out you can do gestures in Windows 8

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using it um keyboard itself has a little

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bit of flex to it not not actually not bad so you're going to be able to type

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fairly solidly on it they also haven't committed any cardinal sins on the

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keyboard layout itself so you've got long shift Keys a long Enter key and a

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very long backspace this I mean this is something that I can't emphasize enough

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a notebook can be as solidly built and as beautiful as it wants but if it has a

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keyboard that's not usable then thing's basically not usable in terms of IO

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we've got a webcam on the front here on the left side we've just got that

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optical drive so they probably had to clear a lot of room internally this is a

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14-in chassis so uh it's got a 1366 X

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768 screen if I didn't mention that already uh so it's a 14-in chassis which

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means that about this much of the internals is taken up by that notebook

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alone meaning that they had to sort of Reiger things a little bit so on the

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front you find just a power button an indicator LED and then a Battery

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Notifier you've also got an SD card reader on the right with a head phone

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microphone combo Jack on the right as well wouldn't mind seeing those as

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discret Jacks cuz not everyone necessarily has a headset that uses a

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single Jack on the back you find exhaust power in two USB 3.0 ports as well as

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HDMI out gigabit Ethernet and a Kensington lock one of those is a

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charging capable usb3 Port which just means it outputs more current so you can

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charge your tablet or whatever else you would want fairly quickly the back of

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the device has again a kind of a a very

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professional looking brushed aluminum finish to it with a simple Acer logo so

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while this notebook may not sort of look any that different from what anyone else

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is using it won't stand out as being an isore or anything like that so it's

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compared to 799 machines that we've seen in the past it's a huge step up in terms

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of not only the look but also just the overall build quality there's not a

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whole lot of flex to the chassis itself and you can see that the way they've

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designed the hinge is very robust here as well so they've actually got rather

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than having the screen go all the way down to the hinge Point they've

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separated a little bit here to make it in my estimation what they're probably

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trying to do here is make it more resistant to Accidental drops if it were

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to land on a corner it's going to be less likely to damage the actual screen

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area so there's a bit of a plastic buffer around here that uh that should

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actually help with that so on the bottom you don't find a whole lot you've just

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got screws so you can remove the entire bottom plate if you need to get at

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anything inside and then you've got a couple of ventilation holes here as well

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as two stereo speakers and rubber points

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here for making sure that it doesn't slip around while you are using

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it so we're going to wrap up with a couple straightforward points all your

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usual sort of hot Keys exist on the function keys themselves so you can

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adjust your brightness you can adjust your volume uh Wireless all of that good

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stuff you can also access most of these things through the charms menu these

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days though so you can see brightness is just like that um here this is

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something that should have come around on notebooks a long time ago but I'm

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happy that it finally has and that is

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backlit keyboard so the backlit keyboard on this notebook actually adjusts itself

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for the ambient light that's around you and it uses an electroluminescent

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backlight so that is just it's slightly different from an LED backlight it's

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very bright and shines not only around the outside of the keys but also through

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the letters themselves making it very very easy to see what you're doing in

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the dark whether you're working you know on a plane where they've Turned the Lights Off or whatever else the case may

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be uh spec wise it has a core i5 I don't believe I actually mentioned that before

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and I think I made some notes for myself on the yep so the only other thing is

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just clarifying what it means to have a 500 gig hard drive with a 20 gig SSD

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cache um some people like I guess the

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purists will say that that's not good enough but remember guys Intel's

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Ultrabook spec requires fast wakeups so

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I'm going to close the lid so I'm can put it in sleep and you're going to see

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that what an SSD cach does is it gives you a lot of the responsiveness of an

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SSD without the additional cost and it

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allows you to have the capacity of a hard drive so it still wakes up nearly

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instantly even though it doesn't have a full SSD thanks for checking out this

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unboxing and first look at the Aspire M touch from Acer don't forget to

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