Product Reviews

Portable PCs that use Microsoft's Tablet PC operating system are usually sleek and slimline affairs - so the Acer TravelMate 250PE came as a bit of a shock. Measuring 332x294x49mm, it's big and -unsurprisingly - pretty damn heavy. This is not a machine you'll want to sling over your shoulder as you walk to gate one-hundred-and-something at the airport.

But weight isn't the only unusual thing about the 250PE. Unlike most Tablet PCs with keyboards, the screen cannot be swivelled into a tablet-like position. The 250PE is a traditionally-styled notebook with a not-so-traditional touchscreen that allows input directly on to the display through the use of an electromagnetic pen. And that brings us immediately to our first -and biggest - gripe. There's nowhere to store the stylus when it is not in use! This makes it extremely easy to misplace. In fact, we lost ours at one point. Although a brief search of the Buyer Labs quickly located the pen, we can see that for many users this is going to be a big problem. Because you can't just use any old device (or, indeed, your finger) to write on the screen, this could prove to be costly as well.

Attached to the back of the 250PE is a stand (inexplicably referred to as the 'TIPS'). This keeps the lid in a firm, upright position, so that it's easy for the user to tap away at the screen. This means that, although the 14.1in display is only attached to the main chassis with two small hinges, it nevertheless feels solid, with hardly any wobbling when in use. We were quite impressed with the clarity and sharpness of the display too - although we had to turn the brightness up from its default setting. The native resolution of 1,024x768dpi is also the highest that

The 85-key keyboard is a decent size, with well-proportioned keys, and its good, clean action also makes it a joy to type on. But the enter and right-hand Shift keys are awkwardly positioned too far to the right. This took quite some getting used to.

Given the 250PE's sheer size, you'd hope it would be a true replacement for your desktop PC. Fortunately, it has ample power. It's based around a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 processor, supported by 512MB of RAM. Because this is a desktop chip, it doesn't have the heat-reduction features found in a mobile processors. The 250PE's chunky chassis means that heat dissipates adequately, but the constant whirring of the system fan is fairly noisy. On the down side, the 250PE doesn't really make use of its powerful processor. Its slow graphics mean that both 2D and 3D scores are rather poor.

In addition to its 40GB hard disk, the Acer has a floppy disk drive and a Matshita CD-RW/DVD combo drive. Also, the Acer has a Type III PC Card slot - almost unheard of these days. The advantage of this is that it will take two of the more common Type II PC Cards. There's also a generous helping of four USB ports on the rear of the machine, along with parallel, modem and network connectors. There's no serial port - but then, we haven't seen a device that uses one in years. The 250PE also has 802.11b wireless networking built in.

Although the Acer has a lithium ion battery, the size of this notebook means you're unlikely to carry it away from your desk too often. Just as well - compared with the Rock DTS and Samsung V30 notebooks reviewed in this issue, it performed poorly in our intensive battery tests, lasting 1 hour and 17 minutes.

As a desktop replacement notebook, the 250PE is a good choice. Users get all the components they'd normally get in a desktop PC, with the added advantage of a touch screen display and the ability to close the lid and slip it into a drawer when not in use. If you need portability, though, the TravelMate isn't for you. And while it's a small point, it's really annoying that there's nowhere to store the stylus. The RM Teacher Tablet in our Guides is still the best Tablet PC we've seen.