Aspire Timeline notebooks

The Aspire Timeline notebooks looks sorta familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Hmm. Anyway, they squeeze out 8-10 hours of battery life and start at just $699.

It pulls out the battery life by relying on standard tricks of the trade: Intel ultra-low voltage processors, LED-backlit screens and dual graphics cards (integrated for low-power, discrete for when you're plugged in). Supposedly you get 8 with a regular hard drive, 10 with an SSD (only up to 64GB, bleh). The charger itself detects when the battery is full to cut the power consumption down. Still kinda thick, a little over an inch for all sizes—13.3, 14 and 15.6 inches—but not bad on weight (3.5-5.3 pounds). Unfortunately, the screen will be subpar with a maximum resolution of 1366x768. However, the laptops will feature inbuilt WiMax. They're hitting hard on the pricepoint, $699 to $899.