When Acer announced the Aspire 5920 last month, the company did more than just debut a new multimedia notebook featuring Intel's Next Generation Centrino technology; it marked a new beginning in the company's notebook design. Acer partnered with car-manufacturing giant BMW to create the new Gemstone design, which took more than a year and a half to develop.

 

Acer, which has recently climbed into third place in global PC sales, looks to broaden its audience even further by incorporating the new design. The curvy black exterior and beige interior, highlighted by illuminated blue areas, harkens back to the subdued style and color schemes of notebooks from yesteryear, but with a touch of modern flair.

 

"Acer is looking to fine-tune sales in the consumer channel," said Sumit Agnihotry, director of mobile product marketing for Acer America. "Instead of concentrating our efforts with a traditional IT company, we decided to go with BMW Design Works, who has very good design and engineering."

 

While other notebooks that have featured car branding (such as Asus' Lamborghini and Acer's own Ferrari-themed machines) went for the race-car motif, the Acer Aspire 5920 surprisingly eschewed it for a more low-key flavor. In fact, there's not even a BMW logo on the notebook.

 

"Our Ferrari notebook is much more aggressive, with the red and black racing theme; the 5920 has a much softer look and feel. BMW Design Works does more than just car designs," said Agnihotry. "As long as you can keep costs affordable and produce a solid build, customers appreciate it."

 

Acer is banking that costumers will indeed appreciate the new design, as the entire Aspire line will be refreshed with the Gemstone look beginning in the fourth quarter of this year. There will be two families existing within the Acer Aspire line: value models designed to deliver the most bang for the buck, and Performance models that will include, among other features, multimedia keys and one-touch access to multimedia content.

 

Take a look at the Acer Aspire 5920 and the BMW Works Gemstone design in our photo gallery.