I’m a decent gamer, and I have an Acer Aspire laptop that totters along nicely, except it feigns ignorance of games released after 2005, and the number after the word “Aspire” is nothing to aspire to – a little more than half of the Aspire monster I’m about to present.

Meet the Acer Aspire 8942. Intended by the company to replace their Aspire 8935 (another fine specimen), this portable packs more than a punch. More like a Hulk smash, when it comes to cutting-edge games and high-definition media (read “Blu Ray and more Blu Ray” ).

It’s one of the first to include the latest AMD “Radeon Mobility HD 5850″ graphics card. In effect, the Aspire 8942 is a laptop that does what desktops dream of. It has DirectX 11 graphics capabilities, a four-core 1.6GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and two 640GB hard drives.

Of course it has a Blu Ray drive, an 18.4 inch screen, HDMI video out, and native 1080p resolution. As for sound, there’s no news yet, but looks like it’ll at least be Acer’s usual – 5.1 channel speakers.

The Radeon card will be unveiled early next year, so the laptop will probably start shipping soon after, like January 2010. Acer never disappoints in pricing, and the older Aspire 8935G was last seen sporting a price tag of around $2500 at the highest end. So this should cost just … a lot more.

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