Acer India conducted a press briefing on August 6, 2015 and iLLGaming was invited. Acer held the event to announce the readiness of its entire product lineup for Windows 10, Microsoft’s latest operating system that launched on July 29. Acer claims to already have products in the market that are preloaded with Windows 10 and its existing customers can avail of the free upgrade offer as long as they have a genuine Windows licence.
Speaking at the event, Mr S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India, gave an insight into Acer’s approach to adhere to its motto of ‘Breaking barriers between People and Technology’. Acer have come up with some interesting innovations such as a 3D printed laptop cover that has the feel of textile material. Acer is also including a Blue light filter in all its screens so that one does not need third party Yellow tinted glasses for protecting the eyes.
Speaking on behalf of Microsoft was Mr Ram Narayan Iyer, Group Director, Retail, Sales and Marketing, who gave us an insight into how Windows 10 was built, not just by an isolated team in Microsoft, but based on feedback for about 5.5 million Windows Indsiders. Windows 10 was built with the end user experience in mind to converge all possible computer uses under one umbrella such as work, entertainment, gaming, web browsing, social media and mobile among others. He detailed many new features that were coming soon to Windows 10 devices in India such as Cortana and Windows Hello, a biometric recognition system.
Acer products on display included their entire range of laptops including the innovative R13, though most of these had little in terms of GPU power for gaming. Acer’s only Gaming laptop was the Aspire V Nitro that starts at ₹ 1,10,000, though we learnt that Acer is planning to expand its gaming range later this year. Sadly, the demo machine that had a GTX 960M didn’t have many games to test its performance, save for a few Windows Store games. Acer also displayed a couple of 4k ready monitors including the curved ultrawide XR341CK Monitor that was quite gorgeous to look at.
We learnt from Mr Iyer that with Windows 10 and Xbox, Microsoft was trying to consolidate its gaming portfolio as well as attempt to add cross platform play. Xbox One games that have a PC counterpart can be controlled using a keyboard and mouse when streamed to a Windows 10 PC from the console. Exclusive games will require the Xbox controller however. Thanks to this new integration between Windows and Xbox, we might see a growth in Xbox One sales in the country. The future certainly looks interesting for this PC and Console partnership.
