The more portable laptops become, the more they rely on cloud services to keep the footprint down without compromising on experience. Acer’s new wallet-friendly laptops, the Aspire One Cloudbook 11 and 14, include one year of Office 365, up to one terabyte of Dropbox storage, and Acer’s Build Your Own Cloud (BYOC) software suite.
The only real difference between the two systems is their screen size, with the smaller display running 11.6 inches, and the larger running 14 inches, both with a 1,366 x 768 panel. Other than that, both systems are powered by the same Intel Celeron N3050, a dual-core chip with a base clock of 1.6GHz, that can run without the support of a fan. Both Cloudbooks have 2GB of RAM, and 32GB hard drives, although Acer says there are other storage configurations available in 64GB.
The main focus of the Cloudbooks is, unsurprisingly, cloud service integration. In addition to the included Office 365 and Dropbox offers, Acer’s BYOC service lets you store files on your home computer, and then access them from any other Internet connected device. You don’t want the light and thin footprint of the Cloudbooks weighed down by extra storage and hard drives.
If you do need to connect something besides the 802.11ac Wi-Fi, you’ll find the Cloudbooks are well equipped with USB 3.0, a full-sized SDcard reader, and HDMI, plus a webcam for video chatting home from wherever you might take them.
Both the Acer Aspire One Cloudbooks will be offered in a number of different configurations, with the 11-inch version hitting shelves in August at the ultra-low price of $169. The 14-inch will start at just $199 in September for the most basic models. That puts both of them at a very competitive, and appealing, price point, especially when you consider that both systems come with Windows 10 already installed, and include Office 365, a $60 value.
