ASPIRE TIMELINEX AS4820T-5570

ASPIRE TIMELINEX AS4820T-5570 REVIEW

Greate battery life, lots of different programable buttons.
Greate performance for college rearly excede half the cpu and memory persormance. The design--it reeks of elegance and style, the size-to-performance ratio, bluetooth 3.0+HS, 802.11 b/g/n, built-in webcam, battery life, it's thin and light, the speakers are surprisingly loud.

fingerprint magnet shiny black case not good and brust allunminum cover fingerprint magnet and the hinges feel a bit flimsy., but it wipes off ok

f you want bang for your buck, this is your best bet!

Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4820T-5570 SPECIFICATION

ACER ASPIRE ONE D260

Aspire One D260

The Aspire One line of Netbooks has long been a bright spot in Acer's laptop lineup, thanks to the company's firm commitment to rock-bottom prices and decent, if unexciting, design and construction. The latest version, called the Acer Aspire One D260-23797 (one of several fixed configurations of the D260, each with slightly different components), scores points for being small, thin, and light, even for a 10-inch Netbook, despite having a decent-size keyboard and touch pad.

Currently available Price for $329 (but we've seen it previously for as little as $299), the D260 is right in the mainstream of entry-level Netbook prices, despite the good looks and smart design. Even more interesting, this is the first Netbook we've seen with the newer Intel Atom N475 CPU, instead of the more common N450 version. This new CPU runs at 1.83GHz, instead of the N450's 1.66GHz, but it didn't help the Acer Aspire D260 feel any faster than typical Netbooks; in anecdotal use, it actually felt more sluggish than we expected.

Of course, even fast Netbooks are still pretty basic machines, good for Web surfing, e-mail, and not much more. If you're most concerned with size and weight, the D260 is an appealing package with good battery life, but we'd also suggest checking out the Asus Eee PC 1018 for a better overall take on the high-design, low-cost Netbook.

The most notable design feature of the Acer Aspire One D260 is how small it is. Though the actual difference between it and other 10-inch Netbook bodies may be minuscule, at these small sizes every fraction of an inch counts.

Cast in dark businesslike gray, with straight lines and minimal flash, the D260 looks more buttoned-down than some of the curvier, more-colorful Netbooks we've seen, making it a good nondescript office companion.

The gray interior is offset by a black keyboard, which uses the current Acer/Gateway style of large, flat-topped, closely spaced keys. Most Netbook makers have moved to an island-style keyboard, which is similar, but with more space between the actual keys, which we find to be a little easier to use. The end result certainly packs the most key surface area into the least amount of space, but it took us a little while to get the hang of error-free typing.

The touch pad is generous for this system's small size, but mostly because it's wider than it is high. The feel of the pad was good, but the left and right mouse buttons are relegated to a thin rocker bar, rather than separate buttons.

The 10.1-inch display has a native resolution of 1,024x600 pixels, which is standard for 10-inch basic Netbooks--although slightly more-expensive models can be found with 1,366x768-pixel displays. The display was less glossy than many we've seen, which is good for avoiding excess screen glare, but we also noted that off-axis viewing (both horizontally and vertically) was iffy.

There are no real surprises in the ports and connections on the Acer Aspire D260, or in its RAM and hard drive, but we were pleasantly surprised to find the latest version of Intel's Atom CPU. The 1.8GHz Intel Atom N475 is technically a faster chip than the 1.6GHz N450 version found in most Netbooks, at least on paper.

In practice there was only a minimal improvement in our benchmark tests, and premium Netbooks with AMD's latest Neo CPUs were much faster (but also more expensive). In hands-on use, the system felt largely on par with other Intel Atom Netbooks, but despite the slightly better benchmark scores, we had occasional bouts of sluggishness.

As with most standard Netbooks, video playback isn't a strong suit, especially streaming online video. Locally hosted 480p video files play back fine, but Hulu and YouTube videos stuttered at 720p and even a bit at 480p when played in full-screen mode.

Acer Aspire AS7741Z-4643

ACER Aspire AS7741Z-4643

The good: Inexpensive 17-inch laptop; HDMI output; decent touch pad.

The bad: Low-end processor; plastic construction; flexy keyboard; limited connectivity.

The bottom line: The Acer Aspire AS7741Z-4643 does an admirable job for an entry level big-screen laptop, assuming you can live with the corner cutting.

Review: Based on its components, the Acer Aspire AS7741Z-4643 is just about right for a laptop hovering around the $500 mark. Similar systems with low-end dual-core Intel or AMD processors are available from Toshiba, HP, and others, including some with better designs and more features. What sets the Acer apart, however, is its 17.3-inch display. Even with low-end parts, 17-inch desktop replacement laptops rarely reach down this far on the price scale.

Of course, the actual display resolution is only 1,600x900--lower than most (more expensive) 17-inch laptops--and you miss out on any extras, making this feel more like a ... Expand full review

Based on its components, the Acer Aspire AS7741Z-4643 is just about right for a laptop hovering around the $500 mark. Similar systems with low-end dual-core Intel or AMD processors are available from Toshiba, HP, and others, including some with better designs and more features. What sets the Acer apart, however, is its 17.3-inch display. Even with low-end parts, 17-inch desktop replacement laptops rarely reach down this far on the price scale.

Of course, the actual display resolution is only 1,600x900--lower than most (more expensive) 17-inch laptops--and you miss out on any extras, making this feel more like a midsize budget laptop stuffed inside a 17-inch shell. That said, if you can live with those limitations, and just need a big screen and keyboard/number pad combo, it's been a while since we've seen a 17-inch laptop this inexpensive.

For a hair under $500, don't expect shiny metal or fancy paint jobs from the Acer Aspire AS7741Z-4643. Instead, you get a laptop that looks and feels a lot like other recent representatives of Acer and Gateway's low-end lines.

The plastic body has a textured lid, which repels fingerprints, and a plastic wrist rest colored to look like brushed metal (from a reasonable distance). Still, the construction feels sturdy, with the exception of some keyboard flex, and the tight hinges make sure the screen stays where you put it.

The flat-topped keys are a variation on the island-style seen in most smaller laptops this year. The Acer/Gateway variation is to place a wider key on top of a narrower pillar, which has the unfortunate effect of making the keys slightly wobbly, and giving the entire keyboard area too much flex under your fingers, a problem which extends to the included separate number pad. It's still usable, and the keys are large enough, but we wouldn't want to write a novel on it.

The large touch pad is better, although the 17-inch chassis leaves room for it to be even bigger. The surface provided just enough friction, and our main issue was the single rocker bar underneath that stood in for separate mouse buttons. The rest of the interior space in empty--no quick-launch or media control buttons. Only a large round power buttons and hard drive/Wi-Fi indicators sit above the keyboard.

The large 17.3-inch display has a native resolution of 1,600x900, which is decent considering the price, but lower than many 17-inch laptops, which have full 1080p screens. It's one of the few differentiating features between this system and budget 14 and 15-inch laptops in the same price range. Playing back HD video, the screen was nice and bright, but also slightly washed out. Audio from the built-in speakers was thin but listenable--for a full-length movie we'd suggest headphones.

If you're looking for anything other than the rock-bottom basics, keep looking. This system has only three USB ports, no Bluetooth, no eSATA port, etc. But as long as you're only plugging in a mouse and maybe connecting a phone or MP3 player, the limited set of connections will suffice.

With only a 2.0GHz Intel Pentium P6100 under the hood (with 3GB of RAM), this was far from a speed demon in any of our benchmark tests. At least it's a dual-core processor (even if it's about as far down on the dual-core ladder as one can get), so unlike an Atom-powered Netbook, you can surf the Web and work on basic productivity tasks all day without too much frustration. In some of our single-app tests, the Acer was close to laptops with Intel's underwhelming low-voltage Core i3 ULV chip (which is much slower than the standard voltage versions of the Core-i series chips).