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).The screen is a little disappointing, at least on the 15-incher, since they all rock 1366x768 resolutions. However, they do have WiMax.
The main thing really though is the pricepoint for the solid feature and design set, $699 to $899.