The 630s curved keyboard feels great to type on and removes the cramped feeling that you get when typing for long periods on a notebook. As the new Pentium 4 range hits notebooks youll find more people will be using it in place of a new desktopwhich means more typing and, therefore, more ergonomic solutions an area where Acer is clearly leading the pack.

The 630 comes with 512MB DDR RAM (expandable to 1GHz) and the Pentium 4-M 1.7GHz. Graphics are handled by NVIDIAs GeForce2 Go 100 chipset with 16MB RAM which unfortunately holds it back from offering strong competition to the ATI Mobility Radeon- and GeForce4-based chipsets found in the others. Like the Targa and Digital Star entries, the 630 could not run 3DMark2001 SE at 32-bit, resulting in a 16-bit test at the same resolution. Both 3DMark2001 and Quake 3: Arena tests highlighted the limitation of the graphics chipset beating only the Targa and Digital Stars non-dedicated 3D chipsets.

Unfortunately, the 630 also did not perform very well in our application-based tests, scoring at the bottom of the pack in SYSmark2002 and PCMark2002, however its battery life is outstanding and brings its overall performance score up. Its difficult to recommend it based on performance, and harder still considering its $6,000+ price tag. The Toshiba and IBM units are the only notebooks that are more expensive than the 630 and offer a better combination of performance and features for the money.

It has a standard array of features including IEEE 1394, two USB ports, 10/100 Ethernet, internal 56K modem and, like many others in the lineup, an 8x DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive. The high feature score also comes from its extremely light (2.4kg) and thin design. The common thread with the notebooks this month is their comparative enormity, so its refreshing to get our hands on the light and thin 630. Where the others felt big and unwieldy, it retains portability while still providing the necessary power required for standard office-based tasks.