I was watching recent IFA keynote and love the innovations from Acer, but one thing is missing for me.
Still using R7-571G and I think it's still the best laptop ever for me. Everything in it's design (except antenna compromise) is great and well thought. I can understand that in recent Acer's pursue for thinnest form-factors this kind of hinge design is adding too much thickness, but then R 13 is still not phased out and it's hinge design is worse (the only advantage is ability to fold it flat like tablet, which can be unnecessary) or to put it bluntly it's worse at everything in general. Let me tell what I love about R7:
1. Hinge design of course, ability to manipulate the display angle and position on unprecedent level and it hold position well even after years of usage and falling on edge. Unfortunately my model doesn't support pen, but I can tell that this kind of hinge is most helpful for working with Photoshop and other similar applications, you can still access keyboard shortcuts and draw on tilted screen that is close enough for comfort. It's also convenient for performing live music using touch-capable software (like Usine), again with having screen tilted and upfront, while also having keyboard and mouse accessible at any time. By the way in ths kind of scenario it's so good, that I can save money and hassle from having to use additional heavy and bulky midi hardware.
All other types of transformer laptops don't offer much of flexibility, you either have screen too close or too far away. R 13 hinge is a downgrade since it's getting in the way of adjusting the screen and it makes bezels too huge and screen too small to be useful. And the way R7 folds at sharp angle is more useful for artists (like Surface does with it's kickstand).
To sum it up, this kind of design is best for creative work.
2. Full aluminum chassis provide great endurance and good heat dissipation. I also love that it have 2 fans and it's quite easy to disassemble and change parts.
3. Needless to say, the reversed position of keyboard and touchpad is a good idea for this design.
4. Quite powerful hardware options (at least for it's time), still doesn't feel slow at all and it's gaming capable (might have to tone down settings for more recent games, but that's expectable for old model).
5. Backlit keyboard, also have a spill-proof wrapping (I don't think it was ever mentioned in specs), which also keeps mainboard away from dirt or pieces of food. It saved my laptop from a coffee spill once. Of course I immediately tunred it off, cleaned and disassembled, then cleaned from inside (I'm a service engineer myself, so that helped as well), it's just that I didn't had to deal with potential damage of the mainboard and it wouldn't fit in regular ultrasonic bath for deep cleaning.
6. Wide range of available ports (and dongles for what was missing were included). Also having at least one USB 2.0 turned out to be a blessing for compatibility with some old hardware that would refuse to work properly on USB 3.
7. Beautiful IPS screen and quite thin bezels for touchscreen.
If we can't have all that in new R series, then maybe repurpose those features on models like Predator Triton?