SMB IT | Curtis Franklin » Value Notebook Has a Whole Lot of Muscle

February 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Value Notebook Has a Whole Lot of Muscle

TAGS: SMB Hardware

I've been using an Acer TravelMate 4062WLCi notebook as a semi-primary system for about a month now. Initially, I was just using it as a secondary machine to get some usability feel for the thing, but after Black ThinkPad Friday, it's been my sole machine.

At first blush, it looks like a run-of-the-mill business executive notebook. You've got a 15.4-inch screen with great color (though not HDTV), DVD/CD-RW, a 1.7GHz Pentium M, 512MB of RAM (at least my tested version) and an 80GB hard disk. There are even design niceties like decent front-mounted speakers (okay, but you don't want to listen to music on these), front-mounted audio jacks as well as a single front-side USB port backed up by two more on the right side. The keyboard is slightly curved, like a smile, in some effort at ergonomics, but this doesn't make everyone happy.

The case is made of silver-hued ABS plastic, but still feels sturdy. And light. Real light considering the size of the screen and case. But what's really light about this notebook is what makes it stand out: the price tag.

Our tested unit costs about $900 on the street. Yeah, that's pretty damn good considering the hardware.

Once I factored in the price, the TravelMate quickly became a very impressive machine. (My ThinkPad cost a multiple of this box, for instance; and while that machine could run performance rings around the TravelMate, the latter is perfectly adequate for general business tasks, just as large as the ThinkPad and noticeably lighter.) Battery life in the real world averaged around 2.5-3 hours depending on the task, which is good but couldn't hold up to the ThinkPad's long-life battery. Then again, that's a $128 add-on to the Lenovo.

Downside? Networking.

Acer tried to get fancy with WiFi and it backfired on them. The company has included a number of additional software tools on top of its 802.11a/b/g integrated wireless adapter, both for connectivity and diagnostics but the thing barfed up on me after the very first connected session. It simply refused to see, register or connect to the internal SonicWall access point that covers my office after its first session.

Wired connectivity was better, but at several client sites, it refused to take a DHCP IP address. A manual address worked perfectly, but that's sometimes hard to get at client sites where you don't know the local net admin.

I've got a feeling that's because this is a slightly early production unit, but it did keep me from taking the notebook on any airline-oriented trips because I couldn't guarantee connectivity. Had I tinkered with it for a while longer, I think this would have smoothed out, I just didn't have the time.

If you can handle this problem (and I think most IT managers can with some patience), then this is one nice notebook for the money. SoHo road warriors with limited budgets should definitely check this out before buying anything else.

TravelMate 4062WLCi
Acer America
Price: $900 (street)
Verdict: Great value, but networking system needs some work.

Posted by Oliver Rist on February 9, 2006 10:20 PM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: