Acer is working on a frameless laptop with touchscreen keyboard that uses the back of the panel’s glass substrate as the cover – with potential release in the second half of 2010.

Coupled with a touchscreen keyboard, the rumored device should be impossibly thin by traditional laptop comparisons. Keep in mind that we’ve already seen this Frame Zero concept from Fujitsu and Acer’s arch-rival ASUS has been showing off its dual-display laptop prototype with touchscreen keyboard for months. Even the OLPC XO-3 plans to eschew the clickity keyboard in favor of a touchscreen version.

The design will help reduce the thickness of the ultra-thin notebook and can also reduce material costs.

Acer will also adopt a touch keyboard to allow the notebook to be even thinner.

With the emergence of Windows 7′s touch screen capabilities, the major players for the New Year and beyond are already emerging. Let’s take a look at the contenders….

Lenovo Thinkpad T400s
This little fella has a simple tap application that lets you double tap anywhere

on the screen to bring up the control panel. You can then control the computer from the 14.1″ screen, which is probably the best feature. It has an anti fingerprint coating to protect the screen and also helps to lower power consumption. This laptop will set you back £1000+ and it comes equipped with a wider Touchpad and DDR3 memory modules.

Archos 9 PC Tablet

The Archos Tablet line jewel that offers a new way to enjoy Internet, your media, and TV – all in a handheld device. It clearly redefines the high-end portable device with its ultra-thin design 9-inch touch screen and still weighs less than 2 pounds. It comes with a 1.3 megapixel webcam for your video conferences, 1GB of RAM and 60GB of hard drive.

Asus T91MT

We love this touch screen that can turn in any direction you want – excellent for presentations. This can lay claim to being of the world’s smallest and slimmest touch pcs. It is also very light weighing in at 2.1 pounds and also comes with a 3D interface and touch friendly browser that will let you flick through floating panels on the screen. The touch screen is very easy to use and you can navigate the web effortlessly at the flick of a finger.