Acer TravelMate 600TER

For those who feel a subnotebook lacks too much to be classed as a useful tool, Acer's TravelMate 600TER attempts to redress the balance. The case is compact but not quite to the extent of qualifying as a subnotebook. Still, with its 300x240mm footprint, 33mm thickness when closed, and pleasantly light 2.5kg carrying weight, the Acer is certainly portable.

A couple of sacrifices have been made to keep the size down, the most obvious being the external floppy drive, which connects via one of the machine's two USB ports. Also, the serial and parallel ports have been omitted, and are instead supplied at the ends of a Y-split adaptor cable that plugs into the machine's expansion bus. A complete port replicator is also available as an option, but the choice of ports available on just the notebook is enough for most people's mobile needs.

The build quality of the case is very good. Needless to say it didn't flex or creak and I was pleased to see that the lid surface was made from magnesium alloy to ensure that the screen doesn't get damaged.

The battery pack locked snugly into place in its recess in the base, as did the drive in the multipurpose bay on the right side of the case. There were several indications of intelligent design, like the absence of vulnerable hinged port covers, a rubber impact shield over the hard disk compartment, and a safety catch on the exposed sliding power switch to prevent the machine from being turned on accidentally.

The review sample came with a Matsushita CD-R/RW drive installed, providing 20-speed read and quad-speed for both write and re-write functions. However, on purchase you can opt for a straight CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM depending on your requirements. The bay can also be used to hold a secondary hard disk, but not a second battery pack.

Acer hasn't been exactly generous with the RAM, supplying just the basic 64Mb as standard, but there's a spare SODIMM slot under a plate in the base so upgrading is straightforward. The hard disk is fairly easy to remove - there are a couple of screws holding it in place - and it's encased to ward off static which is a very encouraging detail.

There's just the one PC Card slot (Type II, Zoomed Video) on the left side of the case, but the TravelMate is fitted with both an integrated V.90 Lucent modem and 10/100 Fast Ethernet based on the Intel 82559 chipset.

The designers responsible for the keyboard clearly gave it some thought, electing to make the main pad as wide - and therefore as spacious - as possible. The result is a realistically usable alpha pad bracketed by sensibly sized keys where they're needed, notably Enter, Backspace, left Shift and Tab.

The smaller than average casing means less room for the screen as well as for the keyboard, so the TravelMate comes with a 13.3in XGA resolution TFT panel rather than the more common 14.1in screen. This is nevertheless perfectly legible and just about bright enough to hold its own in a well-lit room. As with the keyboard, the ergonomics have survived the reduction in size from typical A4 quite well.

Considering that it wasn't exactly overburdened with RAM, the TravelMate did reasonably well in the benchmarks, returning an overall score of 1.51. There was no evidence of severe performance bottlenecks, although with its IBM Travelstar hard disk and 8Mb ATi Rage Mobility-P graphics this was to be expected.

While notebooks can arguably get away with more latitude when it comes to speed than desktops, the situation is rather less forgiving when it comes to battery life. This especially applies to machines designed with portability as a major focus. Consequently, I was pleased to discover that the TravelMate was capable of soldiering on for a good four hours of continuous moderate use, which is more realistic than the two hours and 30 minutes that's becoming commonplace among most other notebooks.