Acer adds dual-core CPUs to Ferrari notebooks

Acer has quietly rolled out a pair of Ferrari-branded notebooks, adding the 1000 and 5000 series to the 4000 line the company already offers. The new models are based on AMD's Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile processors.

The 5000 is a black and red carbon-fibre clad machine with a 15.4in widescreen display equipped with a 1.3-megapixel webcam. Acer also touted the 5000's HD DVD drive, before admitting it will only ship with one when the drives become available - the company didn't indicate 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 bundlig its wireless VoIP phone - Gigabit Ethernet and up to 160GB of hard drive storage.

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

Both Ferrari machines come with a software bundle including Norton AntiVirus, CyberLink PowerDVD or CyberLink Power Producer, Acer GridVista, and Acer Arcade Software Suite. ®