Acer on January 8 unveiled the world's thinnest laptop computer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "That S5 is quite significant," analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies said after the Acer press event. "It looks like the thinnest and lightest, and it sets the bar for the rest of the ultrabook vendors," he continued.
The Aspire S5 has a 34-cm (13.3-inch) screen and is 15 mm at its thickest point. The ultrabook weighs slightly less than 1.35 kg (three pounds). Ultrabooks powered by Windows 8 will be released by Acer after Microsoft releases the new version of its computer operating system later this year, according to Wang. Acer also announced plans to launch a free service that will let users of its computers store video, photos, music, and documents in the Internet "cloud" and access files from any Windows 8 or Android software powered gadgets.
Bajarin described Aspire S5 as the first viable Windows equivalent of popular MacBook Air laptops built by California-based Apple.
Acer Cloud appeared to be a Windows version of the Apple's freshly-launched iCloud service that lets people access their content from iPads, iPhones, iPods, and Macintosh computers, according to the analyst.