regarding the weight issue - on the Acer website FAQ page, it does say that the HDD version will be a bit heavier than the SDD. if it's still sub 2.5 lbs, I'd say that's not going to bother me much, though.
I've seen the 120gb version currently on two vendors:
http://www.cdw.com http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1502352, and buy.com
http://www.buy.com/prod/aoa150-1006...gb-8-9-wsvga-wl-wxph/q/loc/101/208344721.html
buy.com says it's 'on order' and cdw said to call for availability. Well, I called, and cdw said they expect it on
August 15 (but they also noted that this date could change). this is in the good old US of A, now, I can't say anything about the UK or other markets.
I figured that buy.com and cdw will be getting these babies around the same time, so I went ahead and ordered it on buy.com with a 5% discount.
http://www.buy.com/retail/coupon.asp?prid=84773074 the discount brought it down to $385. not too shabby for a gig of RAM and, oh, 112 gigs more storage than the base model. not to mention windows xp. dunno how they made that price point with licensing and whatnot. it'd be a bitch to receive it and find out it's some trial xp that i'd hafta crack.
-Raskol
PS - these specs (120 gig hdd/1 gig RAM/WinXP) are pretty much what
killed the msi wind [$550]in my decision making. the aspire [$385!] is smaller, too.
wow.