Following news of its innovative Aspire Revo RL100, Acer also has a new pair of more traditional desktops. In keeping with Acer's mainstream desktop strategy the last few years, the two new tower systems both come in under $1,000, which positions them squarely for the mass market.

Acer&39's new Aspire X1 slim tower desktop.

The Aspire X Series slim tower straddles the line between a living room PC and a standard tower desktop. Starting at $398, CPU options include Intel Pentium Dual Core and AMD Athlon II X4 chips, along with 500GB and 1TB hard drive options, and 4GB of system memory. Acer makes no mention of a discrete graphics card or an HDMI output, which will make gaming or true home entertainment duties a challenge, but as a small scale PC for day-to-day productivity, the Aspire X Series matches the industry standard for other PCs in this price range, at least on paper.

Acer&39's new standard tower desktop, the Aspire M Series.

Further down the traditional PC scale comes Acer's Aspire M Series. Desktops in this line start at $499.99, and offer second generation Intel Core i3 CPU options, and up to 6GB of RAM. The hard drive is 1TB standard across the line, and you'll also find standalone graphics cards in certain systems as well. Again, the baseline configuration seems appropriate for the M Series' starting price. Acer says both new desktops, as well as its new Revo should already be available for purchase from the usual retailers.