By August 29, 2006

Acer TravelMate 3012 Review (Part 4)

Review Part 4 – Summary

Go To Part 1 of the review.

Go To Part 2 of the review.

Go To Part 3 of the review.

It’s been almost a month since the last part of my review of the Acer TravelMate 3012. I thought it was about time that I wound the reviews up with a conclusion.

TravelMate 3012WTMi

Since I bought the TravelMate back in July I have used it literally every day, I’ve hardly used my desktop PC at home. The raw performance of the 3012 model really surprised me. Typically laptop PC’s are somewhat slower than their desktop counterparts, however with the Intel’s Core Duo processor there is plenty of power on tap.

There are a couple of negatives with the TravelMate. Firstly the LCD doesn’t seem bright enough. Although indoors I have been running the backlight at 60% brightness, when I am sitting on a train 100% brightness isn’t enough. That said the clarity of the screen is good.

The battery life isn’t as good as I had hoped. Even with the backlight brightness set very low, and the CPU speed set to low I’m realistically only getting a few hours use. This is ok most of the time but is not great. Also, as I said in an earlier part of the review, I’ve had some issues with the power management. Sometimes the profile doesn’t change when you unplug the power and the CPU continues to run at maximum speed, using up the precious battery power.

The final annoyance is that the homepage for Internet Explorer has been set to the Acer website and no matter what I do and no matter how I change it the home page reverts back to Acer. If anyone knows how to resolve then please let me know!

The built in webcam is pretty good. Running it at the full native resolution of 1.3 mega pixels results in a poor frame rate but at the sort of resolution that you would use for the likes of Skype or MSN Messenger then the frame rate is pretty decent. The camera software also includes some neat face tracking software that has some fun options such as attaching bushy eyebrows or a mustache to your face.

In terms of quietness the Acer is really impressive. The CPU fan runs very infrequently but even when it is running it is very quiet. This is a welcome change to my old Dell which was really quite noisy.

In conclusion the Acer TravelMate 3012 is a very capable machine. It’s the fastest laptop I have ever owned and is a real pleasure to use. The problems that I’ve had with it are rather minor when compared with the rest of the package. It offers excellent value for money. I’m happy to recommend it to anyone looking for a small and light machine capable of delivering desktop performance.

Matt

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Posted in: Laptops

About the Author:

More than 20 years in the IT industry. Blogging with a passion and thirst for new technology since 2005.
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