Connectivity
At the back of the laptop their is disappointingly little. Only 1 monitor port and a socket for the charger, and that's it! The rest of the space is occupied with the battery. This does mean that you can push the laptop to the back of a desk and makes it a lot easier to muck around with various devices, without trying to spin the laptop about while you use it. The left hand side has the DVD drive, meaning that all of the ports and connectors are on the front and the right. On the right we have 2 USB 2.0 ports, a PCMCIA slot, a 10/100 LAN port and a connection for the internal 56k modem. On the front there is another USB port, audio ports (headphones, speakers, microphone), buttons for the wireless and lights. Being right handed I find this fine, but if you are left handed then if you use a separate mouse it may be a bit of a stretch. The audio ports on the front can also be a bit annoying if you regularly use headphones or need external speakers.
Design
The now-standard silver is used throughout, with black plastic for the keyboard and bottom half of the case. They keyboard, incidentally is in a sort of slightly curved shape, which may confuse touch-typers to start with, but it is actually quite useful in stopping your hands stretching if you rest them in the corners of the main laptop case. Unfortunately the keyboard does seem a little flimsy compared to the rest, especially if you type for a long time. The screen is a 15.4" widescreen (1280px x 800px) coated with a gloss-black plastic (known as CrystalBright) to make the image clearer and brighter, although it does seem to reflect some lights (mainly striplights) if they are very bright.
Touchpad
People always seem to ask about the touchpad on laptops, so I thought I'd put this in. The touchpad is easy to use and has a smooth surface that your finger doesn't stick to! Down the right hand side you can do the scrolling by dragging your finder down the right hand edge, or by using the special "scroll button" in the centre, between the left- and right-click buttons. This is very useful as continually scrolling with the touchpad or arrows is very annoying.
Usage
The processor is plenty powerful enough for running most applications very well and smoothly, and coupled with the 1GB of RAM you can easily do most of the stuff you'd do with a desktop. The only main downfall is the graphics, being integrated. Having limited 3D power is useful, but is only enough for the older games and you may be disappointed if you want a gaming machine. The 1650 model however, does have an ATi Radeon X300 card if you want graphics. Having a low graphics capability is useful in some ways, as I have managed to eek the battery out to around 4.5 hours of usage before needing a charge, which is quite impressive compared to a lot of laptops now. Acer also provide a suite of software for helping you get the most out of the laptop, called the eManager. This contains the capabilities to adjust CPU maximum speeds, monitor brightness and different power profiles to get the most out of the battery for whatever you are doing, and generally it is pretty good at guessing what you are doing and what you need most, vital if you are away from a power supply. The eManager also has a Wi-Fi utility, although this is just a glorified, graphics-covered version of the Windows default Wireless Connector. Something called GridVista is also included in this little package. This splits the screen into a sort of grid, allowing you to easily position windows where you want them, but I am yet to find too many practical uses for it.
Reliabilty
Acer are quite reliable, atlthough a few people have had bad experiences, everyone I have spoken to is pleased with Acer. I have had no crashes or system freezes or anything. The case, although plastic, is very tough and sturdy, and should protect the laptop from quite a drop (although I am not trying this
) The Wi-Fi is quite stable, but occasionally it is hard to get a connection.Annoyances
Probably the most important bit: What do I find annoying? Firstly, Acer do not tell you in advance that when you first start the machine up, you need either a blank DVD or 4 blank CDs, to create a backup image of what is already on the hard drive. This was annoying simply because I didn't expect it and took quite a while, but it only has to be done once. You're also not told that the hard disk is partitioned by default into 2 separate disks, each at 50GB. Long term annoyances? Well, the only one is the weight, at 2.9Kg (6lb), it is a bit heavier than some other laptops and can be a bit of load if you are taking it anywhere far.
Pleasant Surprises
The speakers, although small, pack a surprisingly good punch and are crystal clear. Some music and movie lovers however, will probably still want external speakers. An application called Acer Arcade (just a rebranded version of Cyberlink Power Cinema) is included which is a low-power media application for moves, images and music, and is very useful for saving battery while still enjoying slideshows or a good movie, and it actually works! NTI CD & DVD Maker also comes free, along with a trial version of Norton Antivirus. 1 years Worldwide warranty is also included for free. Anywhere in the world where your laptop goes wrong, Acer will come and fix it for you.
Overall
So far I am very pleased with this laptop, and for the price (just over £600 ($1100)) I think it's good value. Anyone who needs a laptop as a student (like me
), but still wants something quite powerful for a few classic games or multimedia then this is for you. With this spec it should be futureproof for a while and is perfectly capable of running things like Office 2007 (Beta version). The hard disk is ample for a music collection, and the Wi-Fi and LAN mean that even if it won't fit, you can access it somewhere else The screen is very clear and doesn't strain the eyes, so is perfect for typing or browsing for long periods of time. Overall, I'd give it 9.5/10 and so far I have been unable to better the spec for this price.Images
You can see these in my gallery here.
