It's not until you see the Acer Aspire 9810-6994 in person that you realize just how big it is. It looks like a stage prop-an everyday item up-sized for the audience members way in the back. But it's real, all 17 hulking pounds of it. Clearly, it was not designed as a portable PC but rather as a desktop computer that folds away and perhaps gets taken to a weekend house as the entertainment center.
Pop the latches on either side of the screen and lift the inch-thick lid, and you'll find the reason for the machine's bulk: A 20.1-inch widescreen. If you do actual work on the laptop (it begs to be used for image and video editing), you can have several windows open at once, and the 1680 x 1050-pixel resolution makes for sharp, readable text. Images and DVDs looked fantastic on the big screen, and the excellent viewing angle means a few people can watch at a time. And there's plenty of volume to share, thanks to the front-firing speakers and integrated subwoofer.
Needless to say, there's room for a comfortable full-sized keyboard and number pad. Blue-lit multimedia control keys reside to the left, and four application-launch buttons sit above the function row. We like the compact remote control for Windows Media Center functions of the Windows Vista Premium OS and that Acer has included all the A/V cables and connectors you're likely to need. Ports are plentiful, including a 5-in-1 card reader, an A/V input (for connecting camcorders and the like), S-Video, DVI-D, and even serial and parallel ports.
Acer includes a utility for setting up the twin 120GB 5,400-rpm hard drives in a RAID configuration. There's also a built-in 1.3-megapixel video camera for videoconferencing and a VoIP phone for the ExpressCard slot, as well as a PC Card slot and Bluetooth connectivity.
The machine's 2.16-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor helped deliver a very good score of 4,967 on PCMark05, and the 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 GPU delivers good 3D gaming punch (though avid gamers will wish for a 512MB engine). While playing a DVD, this system petered out at 1 hour and 17 minutes, the shortest time in the group, but we don't expect much in the way of battery life for any of these systems. Running F.E.A.R. on a Vista machine requires a patch (version 1.08 from Sierra). We managed to get it up and running on the 9810, with a decent score of 46 fps on autodetect. We were surprised by the 9810's low wireless throughput, however: just over 3 Mbps at both 15 and 50 feet from our router.
We encountered other minor annoyances. Media Center couldn't detect the TV tuner when we tried to set up TV functions, and Media Center also informed us there was no utility installed to handle the HD-DVD we wanted to watch. Our unit was one of the first with Vista, so we suspect the HD-DVD and TV tuner issues will be resolved on production models.
The 9810's clamshell design isn't as clever as Dell's 20-inch XPS M2010, which features a detachable wireless keyboard. But if you want the largest screen yet available in a laptop and HD-DVD (so long as you find your own player), the Aspire 9810 has the eye candy and performance you're looking for.
Pop the latches on either side of the screen and lift the inch-thick lid, and you'll find the reason for the machine's bulk: A 20.1-inch widescreen. If you do actual work on the laptop (it begs to be used for image and video editing), you can have several windows open at once, and the 1680 x 1050-pixel resolution makes for sharp, readable text. Images and DVDs looked fantastic on the big screen, and the excellent viewing angle means a few people can watch at a time. And there's plenty of volume to share, thanks to the front-firing speakers and integrated subwoofer.
Needless to say, there's room for a comfortable full-sized keyboard and number pad. Blue-lit multimedia control keys reside to the left, and four application-launch buttons sit above the function row. We like the compact remote control for Windows Media Center functions of the Windows Vista Premium OS and that Acer has included all the A/V cables and connectors you're likely to need. Ports are plentiful, including a 5-in-1 card reader, an A/V input (for connecting camcorders and the like), S-Video, DVI-D, and even serial and parallel ports.
Acer includes a utility for setting up the twin 120GB 5,400-rpm hard drives in a RAID configuration. There's also a built-in 1.3-megapixel video camera for videoconferencing and a VoIP phone for the ExpressCard slot, as well as a PC Card slot and Bluetooth connectivity.
The machine's 2.16-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor helped deliver a very good score of 4,967 on PCMark05, and the 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 GPU delivers good 3D gaming punch (though avid gamers will wish for a 512MB engine). While playing a DVD, this system petered out at 1 hour and 17 minutes, the shortest time in the group, but we don't expect much in the way of battery life for any of these systems. Running F.E.A.R. on a Vista machine requires a patch (version 1.08 from Sierra). We managed to get it up and running on the 9810, with a decent score of 46 fps on autodetect. We were surprised by the 9810's low wireless throughput, however: just over 3 Mbps at both 15 and 50 feet from our router.
We encountered other minor annoyances. Media Center couldn't detect the TV tuner when we tried to set up TV functions, and Media Center also informed us there was no utility installed to handle the HD-DVD we wanted to watch. Our unit was one of the first with Vista, so we suspect the HD-DVD and TV tuner issues will be resolved on production models.
The 9810's clamshell design isn't as clever as Dell's 20-inch XPS M2010, which features a detachable wireless keyboard. But if you want the largest screen yet available in a laptop and HD-DVD (so long as you find your own player), the Aspire 9810 has the eye candy and performance you're looking for.
| QUICK SPECS | |
| Acer Aspire 9810-6994 www.acer.com/us | |
| CPU | 2.16-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Ultimate |
| RAM/Expandable to | 2GB/2GB |
| Hard Drive/Speed | 240GB/5,400 rpm |
| Optical Drive | HD-DVD, DVD+/-R |
| Display/Resolution | 20.1 inches/1680 x 1050 |
| Graphics/Video Memory | Nvidia GeForce Go 7600/256MB |
| Wireless Networking | 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth |
| Ports | Four USB 2.0, FireWire, Coaxial, DVI-D, S-Video, VGA, S/PDIF, Ethernet, modem, IR, serial, parallel, headphone, mic |
| Card Slots | ExpressCard, Type II PC Card |
Memory | 5-in-1 |
| Weight | 17.2 |
| Size | 18.7 x 13.9 x 2.4 |
| Warranty/Support | One-year parts and labor/lifetime toll-free (Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. CT; weekends 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) |
| PCMark05 | 4,967 |
| 3DMark03 | 7,689 |
| Battery life (hours:minutes) | 1:17 |
| Wireless Performance (15/50 feet) | 3.3 Mbps / 3.3 Mbps |
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