| Product: |
Acer Travelmate 3043WTMi |
| Date: |
02.11.07 (125 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: stylish, easy to use, fairly light for travel, built - in webcam
Disadvantages: poor battery life, quite expensive in comparison to similar laptops
***INTRODUCTION***
I am very cautious of laptops after my last one went terribly wrong. First the mouse pad broke then the screen went bitty in places. After a few months the battery was very weak and the mains plug would not work. Unfortunately all this happened after 13 months and the 12 month warranty was out of date. I decided to stick with a desktop computer as my laptop had not lasted very long at all.
As a trainee teacher however I started to realise how much I would need a laptop. I was quite fortunate to get the Acer Travelmate 3043wtmi laptop secondhand for £520 not bad for a laptop that would usually cost between £800 and £600 new. I am not very technical with my language so this review will not be in 'technical speak' and is quite simple. I do not use the laptop for 'amazing' things. It is just a laptop for storing and transferring documents to and from home.
***ACER***
Acer was founded in 1976 by Stan Shih and Caroline Yeh and was known as Multitech. The name was changed to Acer in 1987. The headquarters is in Taiwan and was originally set up to provide electrical components. Acer is famous for providing sponsorship for the Formula 1 Ferrari team. They have a range of Ferrari laptops on sale and look rather sleek and sexy. I first heard about Acer whilst on my teaching practices because they provide many schools and colleges with Acer laptops at a good price.
***FEATURES***
*Weight*
I found the laptop fairly light to carry. The laptop is marketed as 1.5kg however I would compare it to a bag of sugar. It is quite light so easy to carry around, which is very useful when running for buses.
*System*
It uses an Intel Centrino Duo processor and has a RAM of 4GB and a 120GB hard drive, so stores quite a lot of my documents. My old laptop was very slow and you could hear the little hamsters running around in wheels trying to load my documents. This one loads my pictures, videos and documents almost instantly. It has a built in wireless LAN and a Bluetooth Arial.
It has a 5 in 1 card reader which is very useful for me. I have two cameras with different memory cards. A card reader is very useful and makes downloading pictures much easier. The screen is 12.1" TFT so is big enough for watching DVD's but is also easy to carry around.
The laptop also has a built in camera which can be rotated. The camera is 1.3 Mega pixels so is quite poor compared to many cameras out on the market, it is great for users of MSN however.
***SETTING UP AND USE***
The set up was very easy, after getting the laptop out of the box, turning it on and connecting the necessary parts I was ready to go. It came with set up disks and Microsoft Office CD's these were very easy to install. I chose to use my own antivirus software. The instructions were easy to follow, and the programmes easy to install.
Funnily enough despite my need of a laptop I prefer to use a desktop especially for surfing the net and typing. I find laptops very hard to use due to the mouse pad and small keyboard. I managed to get RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) due to my posture when using the laptop. I am a little scared to use it as it is not as hardy as a desktop computer. I do however love to use it for storing MP3 music, pictures and home videos. I have played games on the laptop as it is fast but I needed to connect a mouse as it is very hard to use the mouse pad.
This laptop is still sold with XP and Vista which is great for those people who are funny with change. I cannot get used to the Vista version of Windows and love my old trusty XP. This to me is a great feature as it comes with both meaning you can choose which system you would prefer.
***APPEARNCE***
I must admit that I would rather have a slimline, pink laptop as it looks more stylish. This one however is quite bulky. I did not purchase the laptop for the 'look' but for the features available, such as camera and high storage space. I have a thing for silver products as I feel that they look more stylish. The sexy silver appearance is appealing. I find that it goes well in my bedroom as the lilac walls with chrome fittings make it look at home. The keybopIt does not have a catch so it does not close completely. I have found a few abandoned, lost coins tucked away inside. This is a very unfortunate thing as the interior has small scratches now.
***BATTERY LIFE***
The laptop comes with two types of battery a slimline 3 cell battery and a heavy duty 6 cell battery. I rarely use my laptop off the battery power which is probably a good thing as the battery does not last very long at all. The battery life is about 1-2 hours and if carrying both batteries you may be fortunate enough to get 3-5 hours worth of battery life.
***PRICE***
As I said I bought this laptop second hand for £520 however it is possible to get it for £600 from online shops. The Acer Travelmate 3043wtmi retails at £711 on Amazon, this version comes with Vista business.
***SUMMARY***
This laptop is not cheap especially if you are only looking for a basic model. If however you would like a laptop with a nice amount of disk space this laptop is perfect. I would say that it is well worth the money as it has many great features and is easy to use whilst traveling. I was disappointed with the battery life although 3-5 hours is OK for most journeys.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading this review, despite the lack of technical language ;-)
Summary: A stylish, easy to use laptop
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