Product Reviews

Notebook manufacturers are as prone to fads as anybody else. Silver is the current chromatic favourite, sub-A4 is the hip size to be, and now a new notebook craze has appeared. Compaq arguably set the trend, followed by Sony, and now Acer and IBM (for whom Acer manufactures many machines) have launched portables with CD drives that can function independently of the rest of the notebook.

The idea seems to be that you can nudge a portable in the direction of the consumer market by equipping it to play audio CDs while the computer itself is switched off. Whether or not this is true is open to debate, but it's a useful enough facility, and certainly does no harm.

This feature aside, the Extensa is a fairly restrained piece of technology based on a Pentium 266MMX with 512K cache, with a rather light 32Mb of SDRAM, a 3.2Gb UltraDMA hard disk and a 12.1in SVGA TFT screen. The entry-level specification is reflected in the price, which stands at a relatively affordable £1,049 before VAT.

It's quite well made, with a solid body and a sturdy lid, which will protect the screen from damage when the unit is closed. The case styling is attractive and, along with the build, this creates an encouraging impression of overall quality.

Better yet, although the Extensa is an all-in-one design with a built-in floppy drive and a 20-speed CD-ROM, it doesn't weigh too much. In fact, 3.3kg is a bit lighter than average for its type.

The usual ports and connections are present, with two Type II PC card slots offering Cardbus and Zoomed Video support, a USB port and a connector for a port replicator, but on this occasion no infra-red serial port - not that many people actually

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use them. What you do get is an internal 56Kbps V.90 fax modem - by no means a standard feature, and always well worth having.

You can use the CD while the notebook is off and without opening the lid, as the play controls, LCD status display and rotary volume control are positioned on the front edge of the case, between the speakers. The sound quality is better than usual for a portable, with a fair amount of volume, minimal harshness and a little more body than you get from most notebook speakers.

The Extensa is a comfortable enough machine to use, thanks to a broad palmrest with the usual centre-mounted mouse pad. The keyboard isn't too cramped, with large Enter, Backspace and Shift keys, and key functions haven't been combined in unusual ways to save space. The firm action made for confident typing, and the keytops were fairly stable, all of which adds up to a keyboard that you can easily get used to and work on at a sensible speed.

The 12.1in screen operates at 800x600 rather than 1024x768 resolution, but text and screen objects were therefore larger and easier to deal with. This, coupled with a good, bright backlight made the panel pleasant to use. Anyway, you're better off with a good SVGA screen than a cheap XGA one, which would have been the alternative at this price point.

The arguably rather meagre 32Mb of RAM can be increased to 128Mb, which should be more than enough, and there is a second memory socket free so you could go up to 96Mb without replacing the existing 32Mb module. You can't access the hard disk without tools, and the manual recommends that upgrades be carried out by a dealer. Still, the 3Gb on offer should last the lifetime of the machine. Acer has used its own motherboard and ALi (Acer Labs) chipset rather than an Intel one. Graphics are handled by a 2Mb NeoMagic MagicGraph 128ZV+ accelerator, sound by a Yamaha OPL3-SA chip - both decent choices.

The machine uses a nickel metal hydride battery rather than the up-to-date lithium ion type, so you will need to run it flat and recharge it periodically to keep it operating efficiently. That said, it lasts around three hours under normal, light usage, which is a good figure, even if partly due to the notebook using a low-power Pentium MMX rather than a Pentium II.