Acer will hit the gas on its Ferrari notebook line by the end of this month, pushing the pedal to the metal by adding dual-core processors to the prancing pony portable PCs, it has been claimed.

Acer announced the dual-core Ferrari 1000 and 5000 series machines in May this year, stating the two would be based on AMD Turion 64 X2 processors. According to a DigiTimes report, the two models are at least nearing shipment. Certainly, neither model is listed on Acer's website yet.

The 5000 is a black and red carbon-fibre clad machine with a 15.4in widescreen display equipped with a 1.3 megapixel webcam. It will eventually ship with an HD DVD drive, though Acer hasn't yet said when this might take place. The spec's rounded out with a five-in-one memory card reader, 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 - Acer's bundling its wireless VoIP phone - Gigabit Ethernet and up to 160GB of hard drive storage.

Buyers looking for a smaller machine may care to take a look at the Ferrari 1000, a 12.1in model equipped with ATI's integrated Radeon Xpress 1150 chipset. ®