Acer has announced its third-generation Timeline notebooks featuring Intel's Sandy Bridge processor and ultra-thin industrial design in Taiwan and the company is aiming to sell six million units within one year, surpassing the sales performance of its second-generation products.

Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin pointed out that the company's first-generation Timeline notebook only sold about two million units worldwide due to unsatisfactory CPU performance, but the company's second-generation Timeline X series in 2010 featuring mainstream CPUs saw sales of four million units; therefore, the company expects the sales of its latest third-generation model to surpass six million units.

Acer announced three notebooks under its third generation Timeline X family, 13.3-inch Aspire 3830, 14-inch Aspire 4830 and 15.6-inch Aspire 5830. All these notebooks are manufactured by Compal Electronics and are expected to benefit Compal's performance if Acer achieves its sales goal, according to sources from upstream component makers.

The new notebooks feature Intel's latest Sandy Bridge processors including Core i3, i5 and i7 as well as discrete graphics that support memory up to 2GB. With improvements over cooling as well as an embedded battery, the notebook is able to run 11 hours without needing to recharge.

The new Timeline products also feature the fourth generation Dolby audio system to improve sound quality.

Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin
Photo: Terry Ku, Digitimes, April 2011