Netbook Review: Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T

The Aspire Timeline 3810T netbook from Acer is light on the shoulders and long on battery life.

IF YOU have seen the advertisements, you’d be familiar with the power efficiency theme of the Acer Timeline series of netbooks.

Indeed, Acer claims that its Timeline netbooks can last you a whole day of work with its eight hours of battery life, which is certainly an impressive claim.

I am usually wary of these kinds of assertions as they usually mean that users will have to switch off many features such as WiFi, turn down the brightness of the screen and scale back the general performance of the netbook.

While this is also generally the case with the Acer 3810T, I was nevertheless impressed with the close to six hours of battery life that I managed to squeeze out of it even with WiFi turned on.

Inner workings

Some of the main components that contribute to its power efficiency are the low voltage Intel SU9400 dual-core processor running at 1.4GHz and the integrated Intel 4500MHD graphics media adaptor.

Granted, this combination will not give you the blazing speeds required to tear through data crunching and graphics intensive applications but it will serve you well in regular office productivity suites, web surfing and some light image- and video-processing tasks.

I brought the laptop along with us on three hectic overseas assignments and can safely report that it performed admirably in most tasks it was expected to perform.

LIGHTWEIGHT: I hardly felt its weight as I traipsed the
cavernous halls of the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Suffice to say the 3810T hardly broke a sweat running office apps and it also handled some simultaneous image editing, VoIP calls and web surfing tasks with equal aplomb.

Of course, if you want better performance to minimise some of the understandable lag in multitasking, you can always choose to bump up the memory from the standard 2GB configuration.

In any case I found that you can even indulge in a spot of HD video playback without any fuss with the standard specifications.

For obvious reasons, however, I didn’t really bother running any games (other than online Flash-based ones) on the machine.

Another highlight is the built-in 720p webcam that produced clear and smooth videos in video chats.

Cool machine

Since I’ve established that the 3810T has long battery life, now it’s a matter of whether the machine is user-friendly enough for usage for long periods of time.

As with all netbooks, heat is an issue when it comes to prolonged use. Some models tend to get very hot to the point that you can end up with burnt palms or suffer the risk of impotence if you choose to have it sit on your lap.

Thankfully this is not the case with the 3810T as it employs Intel’s laminar wall jet air flow technology to great effect.

The technology, which dissipates the heat build-up on the laptop using the same concept found in jet engines, leaves the skin of the netbook cool to the touch. This certainly helps when you’re using the 3810T for hours on end.

Keys to comfort

Another aspect that makes the 3810T comfortable to use is its keyboard. The cut-out keys are large and flat and are almost similar to those found on a Macbook Pro.

Apart from the rather small arrow keys, the layout of the keys are good and they have just the right amount of travel that makes typing feel comfortable.

The only major drawback here is that the keys are raised a little so there’s a chance that dust and crumbs (if you’re the sort who likes to snack in front of your laptop) may accumulate under them.

COMFORTABLE: The cut-out keys are large and flat, with a good layout
and just the right amount of travel that makes typing feel comfortable.

The LED backlit 13in widescreen display is good — text appears sharp while pictures and videos look vibrant and colourful.

The screen is glossy which makes it great for watching movies and the viewing angles are actually quite commendable. However as with most glossy screens, it’s very difficult to use outdoors or in brightly-lit indoor areas because of the reflections and glare.

Just below the display is a row of touch-sensitive buttons to toggle the WiFi connectivity and provide quick access to the Acer Backup Manager and Acer PowerSmart functions.

Below the keyboard is the touchpad toggle and the touchpad itself, which supports some multi-touch gestures for zooming in and out of documents as well horizontal and vertical scrolling.

Multi-touch worked for the most part but I generally stuck to the tried and tested way of navigating as the implementation was not as seamless as I would have liked. Sometimes the touchpad failed to register the gestures properly.

Thin and light

One of the main attractions of the 3810T apart from the long battery life is its size and weight. It’s slightly over an inch thick when closed and weighs just 1.6kg with the battery.

I hardly felt its weight as I traipsed the cavernous halls of the Moscone Center in San Francisco while attending the Intel Developer Forum and Oracle OpenWorld events recently.

One of the prices you have to pay for this svelte frame is the lack of an optical disc drive.

I initially thought this would be a major drawback but the advent of cheap Flash memory drives and the ability to run programs off them (you can even copy Windows 7 onto a bootable Flash drive) makes this omission not so serious.

Still, if you are the type who likes to watch DVD movies, the lack of a disc drive (even an external one) in the bundle might put you off.

End word

Overall the Acer Timeline 3810T is a networthy netbook (pun intended) if you are looking for an ultraportable model with marathon-like battery life.

Sure, you’ll not be getting an ultra-fast netbook (although it looks like it is) for heavy image- and video-editing or gaming but it’s a solid performer for all your office productivity and general entertainment needs.

Pros: Thin and light; battery goes on and on; stays cool; comfy keyboard.

Cons: No optical drive; more memory would be good; keyboard can be a dirt trap.

Ultraportable netbook

Manufacturer: Acer Inc
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 (1.4GHz, 800MHz FSB)
Memory: 2GB DDR3 RAM
Graphics: Intel GMA 4500MHD
Display: 13.3in widescreen LED-backlit LCD (1,366 x 768-pixels)
Storage: 500GB SATA hard disk
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Ethernet LAN, Bluetooth
I/O Ports: Three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI-out, VGA-out, headphone and microphone jack
Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium
Other features: Acer CrystalEye HD webcam, 5-in1 card reader, Dolby Sound Room audio enhancements, multi-gesture touchpad, Laminar Wall Jet Engine cooling design.
Battery: 5,600mAh six-cell lithium-ion
Dimensions (w x h x d): 322 x 228 x 28.9mm
Weight: 1.6kg


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