Product Reviews

For many people, there's no need to buy a desktop PC. If all you want to do is surf the Internet, send e-mails and listen to MP3s, then a notebook will do the job just as well - and it doesn't need half a room and a desk to itself. The problem is that even basic spec notebooks often cost quite a bit more than an equivalent desktop - and they're often great big ugly hulking brutes too. Not the Acer TravelMate 2403WXCi, it weighs just 2.4kg and costs just £475.

SOLID AND COMFORTABLE

While it's slightly too heavy to be classed as an ultra-portable laptop, at 2.4kg it's still light enough to take on the road, and is much lighter than other budget notebooks we've seen. The front of the Acer has a disable switch for the wireless card and also one for Bluetooth, even though Bluetooth is not fitted to this model. There are also two USB 2 ports on the left and one on the rear, so it's easy to connect an external keyboard, mouse and printer.

The TravelMate's keyboard has Acer's slightly curved layout, but once you get used to the way the keys arc up towards the left and right edges, it makes typing for long periods less tiring. Its wide layout also leaves more room for big hands to rest on the notebook's base. There is some flex when typing, but the keys themselves have well judged feedback and a surprising amount of travel, considering the slim base of the notebook.

For those who don't want to carry around an external mouse, a good touchpad is essential. The TravelMate's is recessed into its base to make it harder to accidentally move the pointer when typing and its buttons have a solid click. The touchpad is, unfortunately, not the most accurate we have used, so navigating Windows can be a frustrating experience.

Surprisingly for such a cheap notebook, the TravelMate has a 14.1in, 1280x800 pixel widescreen display. The extra

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width makes it easier to view wide Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint documents, or watch DVD movies. The display is bright enough on its brightest setting, and colours are saturated and vibrant, if fairly unevenly distributed over the display. Viewing angles, however, are only average, so people viewing the screen tilted at a 45-degree angle may find it hard to see a presentation clearly, and large blocks of colour appear grainy.

STANDARD FEATURES

The 40GB hard drive is a fairly standard size for a notebook at this price and provides enough storage for plenty of Office documents and some music, although this amount of space is not enough to store large amounts of video.

The TravelMate's internal optical drive can write to CD-R and CD-RW discs, and read DVDs, but it cannot write to DVD-Rs or DVD-RWs. If you need to make large backups, the more expensive TravelMate 2403WXMi has a double-layer DVD writer, which can write to high capacity 8.5GB discs.

The widescreen display is ideal for watching DVDs on the move, but you will need a pair of headphones as the built-in speakers are barely loud enough to watch a film, and their tinny sound is no good for music.

PERFORMANCE

The TravelMate uses the 1.5GHz version of Intel's Celeron M processor, which is designed to be used with portable computers. This means that it uses less power and produces less heat than a desktop processor. The notebook's scores in our 2D benchmarks show it to be capable of normal office tasks and browsing the Internet, as well as some more processor-intensive tasks, such as photo editing.

However, the TravelMate's performance is hampered by its 256MB of memory, as shown by its poor score in our image-editing test. 512MB of RAM is really the minimum you need for good performance in Windows XP, so it would benefit from an upgrade. This would cost around £26 from www.crucial.com. Its battery lasted 99 minutes in our intensive battery life test, which is nothing spectacular, but good enough for getting some work done on the move.

BUYING DECISIONS

Despite its inaccurate touchpad, the TravelMate 2403WXCi is a good bargain for only £475 - as long as you're prepared to carry a mouse around with you to stand in for the dodgy touchpad. If you want to do more than just basic Web surfing and letter writing you should pay the extra £26 for a model with more memory.