New products: Acer laptop focuses on entertainment

Thin, long-lasting and fun: That's the goal of the Acer Aspire TimelineX notebook series. Sporting a thin design that's about an inch thick, the AS5830T-6862 model delivers vivid colors on a high-def 15.6-inch widescreen display and sharp sound via Dolby Home Theater v4 Audio. Powered by a 2.1GHz 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2310M Processor, the notebook can handle multi-tasking while you play games, download videos and surf the Web. Plus, its six-cell battery can run up to nine hours without a recharge. If you'd rather enjoy high-def entertainment on a big screen, the laptop has an HDMI 1080 output. Priced at $599.99, it includes 4,096 megabytes of memory, a 640-gigabyte hard drive, a multi-media card reader and a DVD writer. Other models and configurations are available. If you and your gadgets live on the edge, you'll appreciate the thinking behind G-Form's protective sleeves. Relying on something called Reactive Protection Technology, the lightweight sleeves are soft and flexible until they hit the sidewalk. Upon impact, they stiffen and absorb most of the energy that results from the drop. How tough are they? According to G-Form, the iPad Extreme Sleeve is tough enough to protect an iPad dropped 500 feet from an airplane, while its Extreme Sleeve for laptops can withstand a drop from a 20-foot balcony. A case for either version of an iPad costs $59.95, a case for an 11-inch laptop is $69.95 and a case for a 13-inch or 15-inch laptop is $79.95.