Acer TravelMate 3004WTMi

The display shows 1,280 x 800 pixels in a widescreen format, and that's a good amount of detail for personal use. It's too small to present to more than one or two people, but would make a great companion to a portable projector. Protection built into the lid is about average: adequate for regular travel, as long as you don't throw it about.

The VGA output is on the left side, with Gigabit Ethernet, 56K modem and two USB ports. Besides the DVD drive's FireWire on the right, there's a third USB port, a Type II PC Card slot and a 4-in-1 card reader. Infrared and audio ports are along the front edge, together with speakers and on/off buttons for the Bluetooth and 802.11b/g wireless radios. That's a good range of connections, but there's also a docking port if you need more or you want to quickly connect to desktop peripherals.

Acer's TM3000 chassis is highly desirable, being both lightweight and attractive. But it's an opportunity missed in this configuration - a 2GHz processor simply isn't the optimum choice for this system. While it's available with a 1.7GHz Pentium M 740 (TM3002WTMi) for a more attractive £890, it has the same 27W TDP, and we'd rather have a low-voltage chip that sacrificed a bit of power for extra stamina and cooler running. The keyboard also needs refining before the TM3000 squares up to the likes of Samsung's Q30 or IBM's X40.

Author: Roger Kirkwood