Acer, with its Aspire line of laptops, has become one of the top hardware makers. Now, as CES 2015 fast approaches, the company is descending on Las Vegas with a stellar lineup of new products, some of them quite intriguing. That's the case with its new notebook announcement.

The latest model, an Aspire V 17 Nitro notebook, packs in a 3D camera -- the Intel RealSense, which senses motion. This allows it to understand and respond to movements. Acer claims this will enable more interaction with games, applications and even web pages. All of this without the need to touch the keyboard.

When Google released the $35 Chromecast, it became wildly popular. While it was initially a very limited device, the low price made it attractive anyway. Many early adopters saw the potential of the dongle; if developers embraced it, it could be an insane value. Well, that is exactly what happened, as it now has a plethora of uses in the home.

While home-use is all well and good, why can't the technology also work in the enterprise? If you have ever worked in a corporate setting, connecting a projector to a computer or device is a challenging affair for many. People get confused by the cables, which port to use and ultimately, how to make Windows transmit to the projector. Acer has announced the H7550ST Projector, with the worlds-first internal Chromecast compatibility!

Chromebooks are limited machines, but they have their place. Quite frankly, I use one almost daily for writing in my car. They are lightweight, and for the most part, inexpensive, so I do not worry too much if it gets dinged up or lost. My biggest complaint about these computers, however, is that many manufacturers seem to think Chromebooks are only about being low cost, and that is simply not the case. You see, some people like laptops with Chrome OS not for their price, but for their simplicity and ease of use. Those people may want a mid-range Chromebook and not some chintzy turd.

Acer has been a big proponent of the Chromebook movement and their offerings have been a good mix of quality and value. Today, the manufacturer announces the worlds-first 15.6 inch Chromebook. While that is exciting on its own, there is even more news -- it can have an optional Broadwell processor!

Late last year, my desktop PC died. It was tragic for me, as I loved it very much. I was pretty much its father, as I built it piece by piece. Somehow most of the components fried, including the motherboard, graphics card, etc., so I salvaged some working parts and trashed the rest. Luckily, my Surface Pro 3 saved the day. What was my mobile PC, became a great desktop when connected to the official docking station. It is a great solution.

With that said, I still like having a more traditional PC on hand for tinkering purposes, such as adding SATA hard drives and such. I've had my eye on the Intel NUC PCs for a while, but they are in desperate need for a refresh (I expect that to happen soon, though). Today however, Acer announces a computer that makes my heart aflutter -- the Revo One. Not only is it compact like a NUC, but the design is futuristic and cute as hell. The second I saw it, I knew I had to have one, and I bet you will feel the same. Sadly, you and I probably can't have it. Sigh...

It had a bit of a rocky start, but Microsoft's Surface devices have ended up more popular than more people would have imagined. But if there's one complaint that crops up time and time again, it's that the tablet cum laptop is a little on the expensive side -- a Surface Pro 3 could set you back up to $1,949.00 (512GB / Intel Core i7 model).

If you feel priced out of the market, E FUN (nope, us neither) has a trio of cheap alternatives that might suit your pocket. Ranging from $229 to $279, the Nextbook devices include a removable magnetic keyboard and boast touchscreens, and details have been announced ahead of CES 2015.

Barack Obama today signed an Executive Order imposing sanctions against North Korea following the well-publicized hack of Sony Pictures. The move comes after the "recent cyber-attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment and the threats against movie theaters and moviegoers" which the US has pinned on North Korea following FBI investigations.

Although not directly named, the announcement of the sanctions makes clear reference to the movie The Interview which was pulled from theaters following a series of threats. The Executive Order is described as a reaction to attempt to "undermine U.S. cyber-security and intimidate U.S. businesses and artists exercising their right of freedom of speech".

When you are the top anything in this world it not only brings fame or notoriety, but it also provides a target. In the case of Microsoft's Windows, it has become the bullseye that bad guys aim for. Sometimes it's the bad guys who get there first, sometimes it's the security researchers who report the issues. In the latest case, it was thankfully the good guys.

The problem with this flaw is that it would allow a bad guy to bypass authentication on a system by using a generated token. Worse, while the flaw isn't part of User Account Control, the proof of concept released does use this part of Windows.

I don't drink alcohol now, but I did many years ago in high school and college. For whatever reason, both young and older adults like to enhance their drinking with games. Quite frankly, drinking can be dangerous, and lead to foolish decisions, so making it into a competitive sport is probably not a great idea, regardless of how fun it is.

Beer pong is probably the most popular drinking-based game, and I can understand the allure. Your goal is to throw ping pong balls into cups of beer, in an attempt to get drunk. Believe it or not, there are even professional players that earn real money at tournaments. Today, the entire beer pong community has been rocked; this year at CES a robot called VERSABALL will be challenging humans in the game. Are human competitors in danger?

Oh the irony! I got up yesterday morning planning to write a version of the post you read now, choosing instead to look back at readers' life-changing tech. The trigger: Motorola starting the New Year with a 64GB Moto X model and my previous day's personal tech devices wrap-up, which got me to thinking abut smartphone differentiation. Processing power, graphics chips, and the like are passé. Who really cares but a minority of gadget geeks? But storage matters to everyone, and Apple gets it—as iPhone 6 and 6 Plus capacities demonstrate.

My feeds are full of reports this morning about a lawsuit filed against Apple alleging that iOS 8 consumes too much storage and, as such, the company misrepresents the amount available. I would have looked so smart writing yesterday about how much Apple gives that competitors don't. That's okay, now my analysis has a news hook. The point, for people reading no more than two paragraphs of any story: iPhone 6 capacities outclass competitors, and the problem of operating systems consuming much of available storage isn't new or exclusive to the fruit-logo company. Just look to Google and Microsoft, for example.

It’s been a fascinating 2014 for the cloud. Some very niche technologies are hitting the mainstream, while the debate over data protection and governance clearly isn’t going away any time soon.

So, we predict the cloud will rise high in 2015 -- but how (and where) it is tethered to the ground will matter more than ever:

You don’t have to be a gamer to be aware that Microsoft and Sony's gaming networks were hit by DDoS attacks over Christmas. Hacking group Lizard Squad found itself on the receiving end of threats from Anonymous after disrupting gamers' holiday fun, and PlayStation owners found themselves unable to enjoy online games.

To thank its users for putting up with the outage, Sony is offering compensation to PlayStation Network users. As well as extending PlayStation Plus memberships by five days to make up for holiday disruption, the company is also offering all PlayStation Network users a discount code for the PlayStation Store.

If you're starting a web research project then Chrome is an ideal companion: fast, easy to use, and with a capable bookmarking system to record your favorite sites.

There's still plenty of room for improvement, though, and Better Search extends the browser with a host of new search-related features and functionality.

One-hundred and twelve in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8 in the past seven days. The number of new apps and games in Windows Store slowed down due to Christmas and New Year festivities throughout the world.

If you are interested in games, you may have noticed an increase in fake game releases this week. These look like popular games but are sold for a fraction of the price of the real ones. It is clear that Microsoft needs to step up its verification process in this regard as this is not the first time it has happened.

It's at this time of year that many people start a diet -- and it's something that Apple might want to think about as well. Two US men are suing Apple because they believe iOS 8 is too big. Or, as the lawsuit puts it, uses an "unexpectedly large percentage of the storage capacity on 8 GB and 16 GB iPhones, iPads and iPods".

Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara complain that Apple failed to warn users that upgrading to the latest version of iOS could mean filling up to 23.1 percent of the available storage space. The lawsuit goes on to suggest that Apple is using the fact that users are likely to run out of space to push its iCloud storage service.

You might have missed it over the holidays, but just before Christmas the excellent screenshot tool Greenshot was updated to version 1.2 with some major improvements and additions.

The program now supports selecting a capture region with the keyboard: just use the cursor keys to move the cursor (hold down Ctrl to accelerate), and press Enter to define the start and end points.