David Shapshak
It seems almost silly to have a remote control for a laptop. But if you are doing endless PowerPoint presentations the infrared device is a very welcome peripheral. It even has a built-in laser pointer and is appropriately slick and silver, much like the laptop itself.
The remote is one of the features that makes the Acer TravelMate 610TXV stand out in what has become a crowded marketplace as the world’s computer makers have homed in on the mobile computer user.
The laptop stands out for another reason: it has a smart card security system that immobilises it when the card is removed.
And it has foregone the once de rigueur stiffy drive (although it offers one as a USB peripheral) in favour of a CD-RW/DVD combo drive, which offers you a built-in drive that uses rewritable CDs.
All of this makes it smaller and lighter, fitting it into the increasingly popular ultra-portable realm. It weighs just 2,3kg and is only 24,5mm high. Its magnesium alloy casing gives it lightweight strength and the right sex appeal. It goes without saying that it has the prerequisite silver finish.
Under the cover it is equally appealing. It has an 800MHz Intel Mobile Pentium III processor and uses Intel’s 815EM chipset (which has onboard audio and video components), as well as 128MB of SDRAM. Its 12MB VRAM both drives the 14,1-inch screen and renders a good DVD image. The latter is provided by the CD-RW/DVD combo drive, which is one of the many drives, and devices, that plug into hot-swappable media bay. Other options are 8X DVD-ROM, 24X CD-RW or a 20GB second hard drive, or a second battery (which doubles the battery life to five hours).
I was impressed with the 610’s usability features. The touchpad has a scroll button (like the middle dial of a wheel mouse) and the keyboard is nicely angled (a 5 curve, the literature says) and emulates the ergonomic keyboard I usually use.
As with most laptops these days, it has an integrated 56K modem and a 10/100Mps Fast Ethernet card, as well as the requisite ports and an optional plug-in replicator for plugging in peripherals, such as a keyboard and mouse, when working on a desktop.
However, the 610 also features a built-in capability for the next generation of wireless networking (the 802,11b wireless LAN and a Bluetooth card) and the world without cables that is not too far away.
Perhaps a more impressive feature than anything else, though, the TravelMate has a three-year carry-in warranty, including a one-year ultra-service (a 48-hour collect and repair warranty). It retails at about R24 999.
As laptops go, especially so lightweight and high spec, it’s a winner.