Acer Aspire Timeline

With eight hours of battery time, this laptop weighs a cool 2 kg, has an LED screen, big keys and a multi-gesture touchpad. It may sound like a Mac, but it’s not that. It’s the new Acer Aspire Timeline. A brilliant-looking laptop, for under Rs 45,000. And the best part of this series is, the prices of 13.3 inch, 14 inch and 15.6 inch models are roughly the same. The only differences among the models are features such as: size of RAM, hard disk drive or the optical disc drive. The machine looks nice and sophisticated. The keys are big, very similar to the keyboard on a MacBook. The heart of the machine is a Core 2 Solo ultra low voltage 1.4 GHz processor, and it ships pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home Edition. The 13.3 inch model boasts of 2 GB RAM with a 250 GB hard disk. The 15.6 inch model has 3 GB RAM and a 320 GB hard disk. Its screen is HD capable (ie, 1,366 x 768 pixels) and supports 16:9 aspect ratio. The built-in 5-in-1 card reader, Bluetooth and gigabit ethernet port are great connectivity options. The machine (though not available in India) is available with an built-in HSDPA 3G modem and some of the models also support WiMax connectivity. The pinch-action zoom, circular motion scroll and the page flip on the multi-gesture touch pad—all make it feel (not behave) like an iPhone. The screen is great at 200 nit brightness for indoor use, but I am not sure how it will behave in bright sunshine. Dolby sound enhancement on its speakers makes the machine sound professional, especially when using multimedia applications. The built-in microphone and webcam let you video conference with ease.

http://bit.ly/open-acertime

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The above review was printed in the Open Magazine, Issue dated 18th July 2009