The Swiss Army Knife (Acer Travelmate 371TCi)

Member Name: cepidlaka

Product:	Acer Travelmate 371TCi
Date:	06/05/05 (420 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Performance, Battery life, Small size, Powerful graphics card, Connectivity, Robustness, Port

Disadvantages: Small & slow HDD,Display not best, Only 2 USB ports, no floppy, Only 1 screen lock hook

...may be the word for a notebook less than 27cm wide that can do almost anything doable on a PC (in reasonable time). Liberating tool (as they say in Acer ad) it is definitely not. In less than a year since I got it as company laptop, my free time has become a serious resource bottleneck :(
It has been nothing but a tool in this time, running daily, sometimes left overnight for rendering or database queries, and it proved a good and reliable one. Pentium M 1.4 GHz processor can handle both these processes simultaneously at less than double the time it takes for P4 3.8 MHz desktop I used as benchmark with same 512 MB of RAM. On WinXP it has been remarkably stable, crashed only on major CAD calculations with complicated geometry.
Connected to bigger screen, it can handle movie playing and games in up to 2048x1536 resolution easily, external speakers or earphones are a must for entertainment, built-in ones are like Fiat engines - weak and don't last long when pushed to the max.
With all that firepower, You can do video editing, or anything You imagine, but it's most likely that the first thing accomplished would be to fill the 40GB disk, first on the "to upgrade:" list for the next two years. As it fills up it gets slower, exponentially it seems, defragmenting doesn't help. Supplied external firewire CDRW-DVD combo runs good (and frequently), Centrino, LAN card and infrared also very helpful.
Overall an awesome little machine, shame to use it as a typewriter or latest top executive gadget for boasting. Design is simple and elegant, too sharp-cornered for my taste. Having as many functionalities as a Swiss army knife is good, but it would be nice not to be stabbed with an edge or a corner everytime I put my hands around the already small keyboard. Construction is very solid for such a small machine, the bag with it fell down the stairs once, still works, nothing broke or loosened. Detail quality could be better for that price, the rubber pads on the bottom and screen rim are annoying, they are glued on and tend to fall off, and touchpad buttons are getting softer.
I guess in three years I still woudn't be ashamed of this notebook. Maybe the next one will have chassis by Victorinox.

Summary: