Some of our editors recently had the opportunity to take part in NVIDIA's Editor's Day in California's "sunny" San Francisco to be briefed on new products. While we can't go into any great detail on NVIDIA's new Kepler architecture (as that information is still under embargo), what we can provide you with is a review of Acer's new Aspire TimelineU M3 notebook, complete with a shiny new GeForce GT 640M based on the Kepler architecture.

Of course, that's not all that's interesting about the TimelineU M3. Taking advantage of Intel's expanded ultrabook definition, Acer has produced a 15.6" notebook with a dedicated GPU that's only 20mm thick. At the risk of spoiling the conclusion of the review, we'll say this is one of the most compelling notebooks we've seen yet, even if we're hesitant to call it a true ultrabook.

Intel first launched the ultrabook concept back in May of this year, and the initial reaction ranged from cynicism to excitement. On the one end of the spectrum were those who just saw the ultrabook as a way for Intel to try and sell more high-margin ULV parts, along with others calling the whole thing a MacBook Air knockoff. Those who showed more enthusiasm for the platform had a different take on things: who cares if it’s just a rebranding or a knockoff? If it’s a way to get less expensive laptops with a great aesthetic and SSDs for everyone, sign me up! Naturally, there are plenty of others who fall more in the middle. For this group, it doesn’t matter what marketing might say; “show us what you’ve got” is their motto, and if you build a good product at an appropriate price, they’ll be happy to recommend and/or buy it.

Today, we have two more ultraportables to put under the microscope. The first is the big brother to the UX21E that we already reviewed, the ASUS UX31E. The second comes from Acer and targets a lower price point by trimming a few extras. We’ll also have some discussion of the broader ultrabook market and who might benefit from a look at the various offerings. If you’re thinking an ultrabook (or an ultraportable) might be the right choice for your next laptop, or if you just want to see what they have to offer, read on, as we'll also provide a detailed "ultrabook state of the industry" along with the other benchmarks.

We say it every year, but the trends continue so we’ll keep repeating it: laptops and mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular, often at the cost of desktop sales. This year we saw a lot of people looking at smartphones and tablets along with laptops, and sales of those devices have skyrocketed. Still, if you need to do some serious work—writing a large document or email, working on a spreadsheet or presentation, etc.—you still need a real computer while you travel. Whether you want something for work, school, or play, we’ve got recommendations in our annual…

So pull up a chair, wrap up in a nice blanket, and get yourself a steaming cup of hot chocolate while we cover the laptop market from top to bottom. Netbooks, Chromebooks, ultrabooks, laptops and notebooks—we’ve got it all right here. Even better, you can do some of your Christmas shopping without even leaving the comforts of your own home. What better way to enjoy the season than by staying indoors?

AMD has had switchable graphics technology with their mobile GPUs for a while now, with solutions like the original HP Envy 13 from two years back and Lenovo’s T400 in late 2008. NVIDIA’s switchable graphics was first seen in Sony’s VAIO SZ around August 2008, requiring a reboot when switching modes. Since then, we’ve gone from hardware-based switching with a required reboot, to software-based switching on-the-fly, and now we’ve got dynamic switching based on application needs in the form of NVIDIA’s Optimus Technology (first launched in early 2010 and now seen in over 100 different laptops from every major OEM). AMD also has a dynamic graphics switching technology, called AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics (and apparently doing away with the PowerXpress brand), debuting with the HD 6000M series and supporting CPUs with integrated graphics in the form of AMD’s own Llano laptops as well as Intel Sandy Bridge offerings. The question is: are these two technologies equal, or does one of them work better than the other?

Prior to now we haven’t had a chance to test AMD’s Dynamic Switchable Graphics with Intel IGPs, and we only briefly toyed with the technology in our original Llano notebook review. The drivers in the Llano notebook felt a bit raw, so we didn’t want to dwell on the technology too much, but now we have a Sony VAIO CA laptop with an i5-2410M CPU and HD 6630M GPU to add to the mix. We have looked at dozens of laptops with NVIDIA’s Optimus Technology since it first launched, but we also have a newcomer in the form of Acer’s TimelineX 3830TG, which uses the same i5-2410M CPU with a GT 540M GPU. Our focus today will be on the switchable graphics technology, however, with detailed benchmarks for the two laptops coming in a future article.

Curious about how the two technologies stack up to each other? Read on for our head-to-head comparison.

Next in our series of Honeycomb tablet reviews is the Acer Iconia Tab A500. The A500 was the second Honeycomb tablet to go on sale, and is one of four on the market at present, all of which are very similar. They share basic specs—10.1” 1280x800 displays, NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 underhood, 1GB LPDDR2 RAM, 16-64GB onboard NAND, front and rear facing cameras with HD video capture, basic wireless connectivity options, and stock versions of Android 3.0/3.1 Honeycomb (albeit with different preloaded software packages). The hardware similarities makes things like design and price that much more important, and the latter is where Acer seemed to have an edge.

Long a sales leader in the budget notebook market, Acer jumped into the tablet game with a price advantage—the Iconia A500 came in at $449, in comparison to $499 for the iPad and $599 for the WiFi-edition Motorola Xoom (though it is worth mentioning that the Xoom comes with twice as much onboard storage as the Iconia and iPad). ASUS released the $399 Eee Slate Transformer soon afterwards, but supply issues meant that the Acer was the cheapest readily available Honeycomb tablet for some time. More recently, some retailers have dropped the prices of the Iconia, with MacMall selling it on their eBay store at one point for just $379. On paper, that’s a screaming deal, but it's decent even at MSRP. How does the Acer hold up in real life? Read on to find out.