The Acer Aspire has a lot of handy multimedia functions that help it work as a desktop replacement/media unit. One of the Aspire’s main selling points is the Arcade feature, which is a Windows Media Centre clone. A button on the notebook fascia opens Arcade, bypassing the Windows OS and enabling all media player functions: DVD, MP3 etc. It works quite well but isn’t as graphically stunning as MCE.
The notebook also contains a PCMCIA-sized remote, which means it is easy to stow away when not in use. The screen is 16:9, and quite legible in its native 1440 x 900 resolution, and there are S-video out and VGA out options as well. The case is a sturdy silver plastic which is quite durable. There are four USB ports, a sensitive touchpad and the full-sized keyboard (with numberpad) has a good tactile response. The DVD-RW drive is also quite respectable, and even boasts support for the often neglected DVD-RAM.
The Acer is quite large, and is not intended for portable use. The unit uses a desktop 3.0GHz Pentium 4, and the amount of cooling needed - four fans mounted underneath and on the sides of the unit, and a large rear copper heatsink - make the Aspire uncomfortable for placing on your lap. The upside is that the processor also makes the Acer quite powerful, and achieves the highest PCMark score (4050 marks) for notebooks in our roundup.
As a media centre it fits the bill, but as a games machine, it is a bit limited by the Mobility X600 graphics processor. Even though the X600 uses the high-bandwidth PCI-Express standard, it is equipped with only 64MB of onboard RAM, and its performance is only equivalent to a 9600 – making it a middle-to-lower range card. Ultimately, this means the notebook lags behind notebooks like the BenQ in the Doom 3 and 3DMark tests because they use a more powerful Mobility 9700. Overall, the Acer is a very capable media workstation, which will play most media types and will also handle the occasional game or two. The only downside to this machine is its lack of portability due to its size and power-hungry processor.