Acer TravelMate 200T

Materialism might be politically incorrect, but none of us would turn our noses up at owning a Dell Inspiron 5000e G750VT (see Labs, issue 73, p120). With its svelte lines, muscular Pentium III/750 processor and 128Mb of RAM, the Dell is the perfect mobile companion. But not everyone needs a notebook with so much power. Indeed, some real-world tasks like surfing the Net, word processing and spreadsheet work can happily be done using a chip with just a modicum of the Pentium III's punching power.

This is where the Acer TravelMate 200T comes into its own, and thanks to its 550MHz Celeron processor, it should be powerful enough to run a modest mobile office. It fits into the budget bracket of notebooks, hoping to strike a compromise between a low price point and a feature set that's just powerful enough.

Clad in matte-black plastic, the Acer is generally well built, and the case will be able to withstand the rigours of life on the road. The only exception to this rigidity is the cladding that backs the screen, which could do with a little strengthening. Grip the side of the screen with your fingers behind the TFT and the image distorts as pressure is applied.

When analysing the screen's performance, we discovered something of a mixed bag. Natively the screen works at a resolution of 800 « 600, which may disappoint demanding users, although for real-world applications like word processing we found the Acer's screen to be acceptable. Indeed, the first impression was that the TFT provided a very crisp image, and Microsoft Word looked great with all the usual icons appearing sharp. Next we turned the Acer's screen completely black to test for dead pixels, and happily we found none.

During this test, however, we did uncover a downbeat chapter in the screen's story, which involved the less than satisfactory viewing angles. Not only that, but the bottom of the screen was markedly brighter than the top, and there was a definite inconsistency in the brightness over the whole display.

Below the screen are two stereo speakers, which are easily up to the job of Windows' general beeps, squeaks and bells from the ALi WDM sound chip. However, they start to sound disappointingly weedy in some multimedia applications.

Compensation for this comes in the form of a great keyboard. We found it was easy to type on, with key spacing that was spot on. The keys are all sensibly sized too - only the spacebar has been reduced in size but this doesn't affect the Acer's ergonomics. To boost the notebook's usability, Acer has also built in four hot keys. Two are programmable, while the others launch the Internet browser and email client.

The bottom of the Acer also remained cool even when the notebook was connected to the mains. This may sound like a bizarre observation, but when you're working with a notebook on your lap, excessive heat build up can be very uncomfortable.

With this concern resolved, there are two more points to cover when looking for the perfect mobile companion. The first is weight and we have to concede that at 2.9kg, the Acer was heavier than we'd have liked. This might not sound much, but the Acer generated achy shoulders after being carried around the London Underground rush hour. Battery life is also a prime concern when looking for the ideal notebook. Here the Acer also falls down, managing only one hour and 24 minutes in our standard rundown tests, so it isn't ideal for life on the road.

With an overall benchmark score of 1.22, the Acer's performance, like battery life, isn't sparkling either. But the Acer isn't about rip-roaring speed - it's more about striking a compromise between specification, speed and price. However, there's room for memory expansion with a free SODIMM slot if you ever needed a performance boost, and the two Type II PC Card slots also give you room for future peripheral upgrades.