Acer announced the availability of its first Ultrabook, The Acer Aspire S3-951. The new laptop weighs just 3 pounds and is 0.51-inch at its thinnest (0.68-inch at thickest). It is made using magnesium aluminum alloy for a rigid frame while keeping the system light.

"The combination of extreme mobility and affordability found in the Acer Aspire S3-951 Ultrabook will undoubtedly change the way people think about mobile computing," said Sumit Agnihotry, vice president of product marketing, Acer America. "Consumers are going to love the value they find in the freedom and capabilities it offers."

Specifications of the new laptop are 13.3-inch 1366 x 768 resolution screen, 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M processor, 4GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM, Intel HD Graphics, 1.3-megapixel webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth, 2 USB ports, 1 HDMI port and Media Card Reader. The 3-cell lithium polymer battery on the laptop offers up to 6 hours of battery life in regular use.

Acer is combining a smaller 20GB SSD with a bigger 320GB hard drive to keep the cost down rather than use one big SSD like MacBook Air. This allows S3 Ultrabook to have faster resume time from sleep mode (2 seconds from Sleep mode and 6 seconds from Deep Sleep Mode), but the restart times are similar to regular laptops.

The Acer Aspire S3-951 Ultrabook will ship this week in US and Canada priced $899. It is already available for pre-order on Amazon. Acer says future models of Acer’s Ultrabook lineup will include Intel Core i7 and Core i3 processors and larger capacity solid state drives.