Netbook Review: Acer Ferrari One

The Acer Ferrari One netbook certainly stands out from the crowd with its personalised racing red cover and zippy performance.

Inspired by Scuderia Ferrari elements, the Ferrari One definitely sets itself apart from the rest of the netbook field with its scarlet red lid and famous prancing horse badge.

To complete its sporty look, the netbook also features a carbon fibre-design for the palm-rest, Ferrrari-engraved touchpad with multi-gesture functionalities and... get this, four rubber feet that look like tyres.

That’s not all, the Ferrari experience even extends to exclusive Ferrari calendars and themes for the desktop.

Under the hood

This netbook is not just banking on just its sporty looks to entice customers. With a dual-core 1.2GHz Athlon X2 L310 CPU and 1MB L2 cache in the driver’s seat, it feels snappier and more powerful than a netbook with an Intel Atom processor.

Of course, having 4GB of RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics comes in handy, especially when running high definition (HD) movies.

It also has a 320GB hard drive so there’s plenty of storage space for all your documents and multimedia files.

The netbook also has a built-in Crystal Eye VGA webcam with a low-light enhanced feature that allows it to be used even in a dim environment.

TOUCH HERE: The Ferrari-engraved touchpad supports
multi-gesture functionalities.

Also available are a myriad of wireless connectivity options including Bluetooth, WiFi and even a HSDPA slot. The latter means users can insert their SIM card directly for connecting to a 3G broadband service.

It takes about one minute for the Ferrari One to boot up to the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.

The netbook has a 11.6in WXGA LED-backlight screen, which produces sharp and clear images at a native 1,366 x 768-pixel resolution.

The keyboard offers comfortable typing with good tactile feedback and is also quite responsive. The multi-gesture touchpad supports two-finger scroll, pinch, rotate and flip features for faster access to the netbook’s functions. All worked quite well, we might add.

STYLISH STOPS: Even the Ferrari One’s
rubber feet look like car tyres.

Start your engines

I had no problems playing my current favourite test game Spore on this machine. Viewing YouTube videos and movie trailers were also not a problem.

I installed the KMplayer app to play a 720p version of the Transformers movie and am happy to report that the playback went smoothly with no dropped frames although there was some minimal jitter on some of the frames.

The Ferrari One also has an ATI XGP port, which allows users to hook up an external graphics solution directly to the machine to boost the existing graphics performance.

Unfortunately, this feature couldn’t be tested because there was no compatible graphics card available in the office at the time of this review.

Moving on, this model does not offer any HDMI port, which is a shame because now users need to connect two different types of cables — a VGA and an audio — when they want to view movies on a bigger HDTV screen.

It ships with the Dolby Home Theater v3-certified sound system but the problem is that the speaker doesn’t seem loud enough to let users really enjoy the experience.

Even at the highest setting, you need to be really close to the netbook to clearly hear the audio details.

I also noticed that the fan seemed to be constantly running to cool down the processor.

It is a well-known fact that AMD laptops tend to run warmer than their Intel counterparts but the noise was really quite loud at certain times.

When it comes to the test of endurance, the Ferrari One passed with flying colours as it managed to clock up to five hours of battery life on a single charge, which is in line with Acer’s claims.

The netbook was mainly used for wordprocessing and heavy photo-editing during this time. But when WiFi was switched on, the operational time was reduced by an hour or so. Still, this is not too bad in our book.

The finish line

If you can look past the missing HDMI port, noisy cooling fan and a price tag that’s not too wallet-friendly, the Ferrari One is really one good-looking and well-designed machine.

It also has enough firepower to run HD movies and regular office productivity applications smoothly.

A brain and looks, all in one package. What more can you ask for?

Pros: Impressive Ferrari themed design; dual-core processor on a netbook; smooth HD movie playback; good battery life.

Cons: Noisy cooling fan; no HDMI port; slightly pricey.

Netbook

Manufacturer: Acer
Processor: AMD Athlon X2 dual-core processor L310 with AMD HyperTransport 3.0 technology
Chipset: AMD M780G chipset
Memory: 4GB DDR2
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics (up to 2,047MB of HyperMemory)
Display: 11.6in WXGA Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD
Storage: 320GB hard drive
Connectivity: WiFi, 56K modem, 10/100 Ethernet, Bluetooth
I/O ports: Three USB 2.0 ports, VGA, ATI XGP socket
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Other features: Memory card reader, built-in webcam
Dimensions (W x D x H): 285 x 204 x 30mm
Weight: 1.44kg

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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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