In its Wednesday-announced newest laptop offerings, Acer has introduced its Aspire AS5738PG - the company's first notebook with a 15.6-inch HD CineCrystal multitouch display. With this laptop, Acer joins the league of Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenevo, which already have multitouch screens.

The new Acer laptop, which will come preloaded with Microsoft's next-generation Windows 7 operating system having native touchscreen support, will hit the US markets on October 22. The laptop's screen comes in the aspect ratio of 16:9, and a 1,366-by-768 resolution.

In a statement pertaining to the new release, Acer said multitouch input adds a new aspect to laptop functionality by offering a natural way for users to interact with PCs, whereby fingers are used on the screen to manipulate images, write notes or zoom into maps.

Among the other notable features of the Aspire AS5738PG-6306 - the first configuration of the new series - are: a 2.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor; a 320-GB hard drive; 4-GB DD2 memory; ATI Radeon HD4570 discrete graphics card; a DVD burner; a built-in Web cam; and a memory card reader.

To be priced at $799.99, the Aspire AS5738PG-6306 notebook also boasts wireless capability from 802.11a/b/g/draft n Wi-Fi; four USB 2.0 ports; an HDMI port; and a standard 6-cell battery.

Meanwhile, the other new laptop offering announced Wednesday was the Acer Aspire Timeline series' 11.6-inch ultraportable model - AS1810T-8679.