Jacques Rautenbach
Product: Acer TravelMate 330T Price: R18 995
With so much new kit having entered the technology market over the past year, one tends to start feeling a little blas about new products. Things don’t seem to be changing radically enough to impress.
But every now and then you come across a real gem that harnesses current technology to deliver a product that is simple yet perfect.
The Acer TravelMate 330T is right up there with the perfect score laptops.
That is not to say that it has some godly powers that enable it to produce your cup of coffee in the morning, but merely that it takes the available technology and gives the market the features it wants.
The TravelMate is designed for mobile users with critical business needs incorporating the power for multimedia intensive applications in a compact and slim notebook.
At a mere 1,8kg and dimensions equivalent to a sheet of A4 paper, the TravelMate can be transported under your arm with the same feel as that of a journal.
The magnesium-alloy shell is an interesting innovation: it’s 33% lighter than aluminium and 15 times stronger than conventional plastic casings, enabling it to withstand the day-to-day scratch and bang.
Acer’s extensive tests of TravelMate notebooks included coffee spills, drop tests and pressure tests.
The TravelMate comes standard with a 1,44 megabyte floppy drive and a choice of CD-ROM or digital versatile disc. But the key to the TravelMate’s small size is that these drives come as a compact EasylinkT hot-pluggable module rather than being built-in.
This may appear inconvenient, but how often do you use these drives anyway? Any inconvenience is lessened by the fact that it’s hot-pluggable (it can be plugged into the TravelMate without restarting the operating system).
I took the opportunity to install some newly acquired software on the machine, including the full Office 2000 premium suite as well as some gaming software.
The installations were speedy and trouble- free and I found that the ergonomic design of the keyboard and touchpad mouse were a pleasure to use while typing, scrolling Internet pages and playing games.
Bonus software that comes with the laptop includes diagnostic tools to troubleshoot hardware problems as well as management software for governing power and liquid crystal display control.
The TravelMate comes standard with an on- board international 56 kilobyte modem making for trouble-free use of the laptop abroad.
Also included is a traveller’s warranty which enables the owner to find support from Acer while abroad.
A lot of research went into this product and most users will not be disappointed with the performance.