Today we launched the AMD Center, a portal on AnandTech that aggregates all of our AMD content in one place. Thanks to AMD's sponsorship you'll get a cleaner interface on all AMD articles, as well as reduced advertising on those pages. The portal will also serve as a way for AMD to reach out to you all directly as we're pulling in AMD tweets and have a feed of AMD's own blogs on the right hand side. AMD also wants to hear from you, and we've got some opporuntities to help with that going forward. Finally, the AMD Center serves as a destination for a bunch of pretty awesome AMD giveaways we've got planned. With AMD's support we've got better prizes and more of them to give away. We're kicking off the giveaways with three ultra thin 11.6-inch notebooks: Acer's V5.

The V5 features a touch enabled 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 IPS display, 4GB of DDR3L memory (2GB on board, 2GB in a single SO-DIMM slot, expandable to 6GB total) and normally ships with a standard SATA hard drive. I asked AMD if they would be willing to swap out the hard drives for SSDs and they agreed - so if you win, your V5 will ship with a 128GB Samsung SSD 840 drive (you can thank me later ;)). 

The 2.65 pound Acer V5 features AMD's quad-core A6-1450 APU. That's four Jaguar cores running at 1GHz (1.4GHz max turbo) with a Radeon HD 8250 GPU. It's a nice little system with a very power efficient APU.

Here's the deal. To enter, simply post a comment below (US residents only, please only make a single post, contest requirements below) explaining your current PC setup and why you want, or need to win a V5. What I'm looking for here is an understanding of what you currently own in terms of computing devices (PCs, notebooks, tablets, etc...), how you use them and how winning a V5 would change/improve your current setup. Make your entries good as they may come in handy for some other stuff we've got planned in the future.

If you win, AMD wants your feedback on the machine after you get it. You'll be asked to provide a short review (a paragraph or two) talking about your experience with the system. Do a good job and your feedback may even be featured on AnandTech.

Good luck!

Entries will be accepted from 6:30 PM ET on 9/5/2013 through 6:30 PM ET on 9/9/2013. We will draw 3 winner(s) who will be selected by 9/10/2013.

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NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN.  PURCHASE DOES NOT INCREASE CHANCES OF WINNING.

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  5. Prizes.  Winning a gift, prize, or other promotional item (a “Prize”) in a Promotion is contingent upon fulfilling all requirements in these Rules.  Winners will be selected in a random drawing of eligible entries received during the Promotion Period.  AnandTech will notify Prize winners using the contact information provided in the winning entry.  Failure to claim a Prize by the time or in the manner specified in the particular Promotion will invalidate any claim to the Prize.  Prizes are not transferable.  The odds of winning a Prize or the Grand Prize depend on the number of entries received by AnandTech.  TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ALL PRIZES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND ARE NOT EXCHANGEABLE FOR FAIR MARKET VALUE.  TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ANANDTECH DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE PRIZES, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. For this Promotion, 3 winner(s) will be selected by 9/10/2013 and will each receive a Acer V5 Notebooks described above (“Grand Prize”).  The Total U.S. Retail Value of the Grand Prize is $450.  The Grand Prize may not be substituted for cash.  The Grand Prize winner will be solely responsible for all applicable taxes, fees, and surcharges associated with receipt and/or use of the Grand Prize.  After the Grand Prize winner has been notified and has complied with all applicable Rules, AnandTech will post the Grand Prize winner’s name on this website.
     
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  • beomagi - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    I currently have several devices, which knowing that I understand probably makes me a poor choice to give a laptop.

    <blabber>

    I have 2 desktops at my "PC desk" - An intel i5 2400 and AMD 6300. The i5 is used for my photo editing, file storage, and gaming. It's also shared with the

    family. The 6300 is for me to work,learn and backup the files of the first.

    After moving to SSDs, I honestly don't see a difference between them. However having 2 desktops linked with shared drives in a "send to" shortcut greatly

    enhances my usability. I use a single keyboard and mouse on a KVM (double tap scroll lock) to pass what I want back and forth as needed. Synctoy easily

    handles sync duties.I don't like raid for this. Too much hassle, and the sync lets me undo a mistake if needed.

    I started using a virtual machine for mint for linux duties. Cygwin is a nice extention to the shell, but not enough. One of the primary functions of the

    linux VM ended up being sharing files of it's host - yes that sounds bizzare, but I've found several devices didn't play well with windows file sharing no

    matter the time wasted researching it.

    I skipped out on getting cable. I figure I'd spend less for netflix and setup a cheap i3 HTPC for TV duties. Wireless N streams HD video from my file server,

    and the local machine handles netflix, gaming, and other apps fit for a tv.

    We have a couple laptops. I tend to cheap out here really, being of the mind that a desktop is where my heavy processing normally takes place. My baby girl

    smashed the screen of one laptop, so we're down to an IBM x120e the wife uses (that screen also broke, but I was able to replace it - yay fleabay). My laptop

    is a used Fujitsu 1630p - a 9 inch convertible core 2 duo 1.2GHz. I paid $200 at the time. Very long in the tooth, but the main deterant to portability is

    battery life. The old cpu also does not do well with hardware acceleration for movies, and utterly destroys the battery while struggling to play an old game.

    Normally, I'd work on my laptop, writing scripts and test them remotely on the 6-core work machine at my "PC-desk". I spend 2 hours a day commuting and

    that's where most of my personal computing time goes now. On the bus I'd play through a variety of GOG.com and humble bundle games. Nothing fancy, just

    charming - however my laptop isn't keeping up anymre really. Battery dies too quickly, and even aged games like Neverwinter Nights are a struggle. Sticking

    to DVD resolutin video for smooth playback, and a relativily dim screen also ruin the experience a bit on the bus. I've got a Nexus 7, but it just feels sluggish browsing the web, and android gaming is annoying. Either games are too casual, or there's IAP/ads and it gets annoying. It's great for playing video though, and comics are OK too (though I far prever Sumatra PDF even on a weak laptop).

    It's here on my commute where I can put a new laptop to use. The V5-122p is on my list of possibilites atm. A6-Temash seems fine by me - I don't need a lot

    of single core power, and battery life is fair. I'd upgrade the drive to an SSD in an instant though. Other possibilities are the asus s200e, but the

    difficulty upgrading the HD, and wide bezels are a bit of a turn off. Backlit keyboard is nice too. I can continue my python doodles in the dark. The quad

    core multitasks well, and should handle a light Virtual Box VM for working on some monitoring apps i wrote.

    Essentially, I'd be getting a couple hours a day of use in just the commute on the laptop. Don't get me wrong, I love my 9" convertible. It's the perfect

    size to me - I'd slay a dragon with fiddlesticks and soap to get an up to date version with haswell over core, capacitive or resistive touch, IPS over TN,

    >HD4000 or just a better GPU core - but that's not happening anytime soon - noone else seems to like this size for a laptop. The acer is as large as I'd go,

    and perfect in many ways.

    </blabber>
  • scott4952 - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    I have a 17" Dell E1705 laptop. Its old, slow, and to large to be very portable. I mostly use it for web browsing, creating documents and spreadsheets, and casual gaming. This small laptop would be perfect upgrade to my outdated system.
  • jmnewton - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    i have a Win8 IVB desktop, an iPad 4, and a beast of a work laptop. We just got my wife an Ultrabook and she loves it. It's a sweet touch-enabled machine and I love the portability of it. I would love to have my own to be a beefier iPad replacement. I'm getting a little tired of the single-app-running limitation of the iPad. Even w/ iOS7 and multi-tasking, I'd really love a nice Win8 touch-enabled laptop.
  • icyslayer - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    Nice. Hopefully I get it so I can replace this again Toshiba (that stuggles to even do simple tasks, Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Duo).
  • alm45 - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    My mobile device is currently a Sony Vaio 11.6 inch netbook with an E-350 cpu. Not a bad little machine; when it first came out. However, HD netflix is a no go ( this is apparently not the laptops fault but silverlight doesn't play well with it for some reason), The hard drive is painfully slow and the screen quality is that of a typical bad TN panel. I just starting nursing school and while I would love a gaming notebook, all I <i>need</i> is a laptop that can access the internet, play video smoothly (for training videos), be portable, last a long while and honestly the screen is mostly for when I use lightroom because I shoot photo recreationally. Thanks for the opportunity!
  • stratoknight - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    I have a HTPC setup and a work notebook (2010 MBP), first gen Kindle Fire, and a Lumia 900. It would be fantastic to have a lightweight notebook that I can utilize to control my home theater experience without having to leverage my work PC.
  • Kibbles - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    I have 2 desktops, 2 laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone. One main desktop is where I do most of my true computing: Email, surfing, word processing, and gaming. I use the other desktop to play games and watch videos on my living room TV. A laptop is for videos on other TV. The tablet I rarely use now, most of the use it used to get is now cannibalized by my smartphone. The second laptop is a Chromebook. I wanted to use for mostly surfing, however it's really slow, and makes the experience terrible.
    I need a second laptop that I can carry around and surf on and occasionally watch a video. It needs to be light, quiet, and doesn't need to be fast, just fast enough.
  • britjh22 - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    Currently running a gaming desktop (3570k + 6870), simple HTPC (unlocked AMD Rana and onboard HD4250), 32Gb touchpad (which will get some android at some point), Galaxy Nexus, and an old Asus netbook running Ubuntu which is fairly neglected. I really could use a light windows machine for using as a road machine and for some VAGCOM tuning on me and my GF's cars.
  • Cerolobo - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    As a software engineer, I tend to explore random topics that peek my interest. For the past two years, I've been working on a variety of multi-threaded systems to increase the potential utility of my code. As a test bed, I build a desktop with:
    - AMD FX-8150
    - ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard
    - 16 GB of DDR3 1866 RAM
    - AMD Radeon HD 6800
    - 2x 120GB Kingston HyperX SSDs
    - 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K300 HDD
    - 2x 21 inch monitor panels @ 1080p

    While I do most of my coding on my desktop, I have a tendency to frequent a coffee shop. Unfortunately, my mobile solution isn't nearly as nice as my desktop. I currently have an ASUS Eee PC 1215N netbook. While the battery life is acceptable, the processor isn't nearly as powerful as I'd like.

    While the spec boost to the V5 would be a massive upgrade, I'm more interested in exploring OpenCL. To date, I still haven't touched framework, but I intend to change that in the near future. As such, the main selling point for the V5 is the actual CPU. As time has passed, CPUs are slowly becoming more and more integrated with other systems, such as the math co-processors, memory controllers, and more recently GPUs. APUs are becoming more and more common, which makes the A-Series a great testbed for exploration of GPU based processing.

    Additionally, I have a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 4. My Nexus 4 used strictly as a phone and a audio player, while I occasionally use the Nexus 7 as a testbed for running my code against a ARM device. And yes, I do have GCC running on it, along with my own build system.
  • amd4life - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link

    I'd love a more mobile pc for work

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