Acer Aspire RC900

Instead of following the herd like so many manufacturers, Acer has decided it can make its own media centre PC without the guidance of Microsoft and its Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). The Aspire doesn't come with a monitor, as it should be plugged straight into an existing one or a TV set.

The case is made of thin plastic, but still looks pretty good thanks to its silver and black hues. However, size is certainly an issue - it's wider than even the biggest PC cases and therefore is likely to be a bit of an eyesore in a living room.

In fact, it looks more like a microwave or bread maker than a PC, mainly due to the black covers protecting both optical drives and the front-mounted ports. The Aspire comes with a dual-format DVD writer and a DVD-ROM drive. These are accompanied by a floppy drive, 6-in-1 card reader, a mini-FireWire port, two USB 2 ports, as well as headphone and mic sockets.

It's not particularly easy to get inside the Aspire, and you'll void the warranty by doing so, but if you do you'll find a tidy and reasonably quiet set of components. The low noise is due mainly to the fan-free graphics card - the GeForce FX 5200. It's a good card but not the fastest around, and this was shown in the 3DMark2001 SE score of 8,027. The rest of the outfit is good, though, with a 120GB hard disk, TV tuner and the usual array of USB, serial and parallel ports, along with a single six-pin FireWire port.

The most impressive aspect of the Aspire is the LCD on the top front. This shows operating status, be it the length of a track on a CD or that you're in PC mode, and is accompanied by CD player shortcut keys and a Super Dial that lets you navigate through the LCD's menus.

But that's where the media centre goodness ends, for the rest of Acer's attempts at making a MCE rival fall flat on their feet. To access music, picture and video playback functions, the Aspire shuts down Windows and reboots it in media mode, which itself is sluggish and difficult to manage. The reboot sequence takes quite a while; certainly long enough for us to prefer using Windows Media Player in normal PC mode. The included remote is a particular letdown, as it's unresponsive and only works when within two metres of the device.

Sadly, other than the LCD, we couldn't find many redeeming media features. The PC inside is decent enough, as you can see from the graph below, but the extra cost of the media additions means this isn't worth the high asking price.

Author: Mark Walsh