BIOS: Technology Means Business

Acer’s silver-and-black Aspire 9410 (400x300x40mm, 3.6kg) is one of the company’s latest range of 17-inch laptops. The others include the Aspire 9400, Aspire 7110 and Aspire 7100 series. All of the families are designed to combine the needs of both home users and office workers, which they do relatively well, but lack a few features which we’d now consider key in a desktop replacement laptop.

Building on the growing demand for larger screen size across a wide range of systems and configurations, the Aspire 9410 (Best Current Price: £899) is a panoramic-screen laptop equipped with a relatively crisp and bright 17-inch colour TFT LCD display that uses a sharp WXGA+ resolution of 1440x900 (display ratio 16:10). In addition, Acer’s CrystalBrite technology helps to increase the clarity, brilliance and brightness of the image, improving contrast and colour saturation.

While Acer’s ‘Empowering’ technology helps to expand laptop functionality by giving you easy control over the laptop’s performance, settings and communication with a touch of the dedicated button, Acer has also improved the in-front-of-screen experience with the development of ‘GridVista’, a software utility that provides comfortable and rational use of the display. GridVista allows side-by-side viewing of applications that makes multi-window management a simple and easy task.

Both home and professional users need to seamlessly switch from different connectivity options, which is why the Aspire 9410 offers flexible connectivity solutions that help you adapt to different situations and requirements. From WLAN (InviLink 802.11b/g Wi-Fi Certified solution, supporting Acer SignalUp wireless technology), WPAN with the built-in Bluetooth 2.0 module, to 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet and a V.92 modem, the laptop is fully configured for most networking environments. Unfortunately, there’s no integrated 3G technology, so you’re stuck with old-school PC Card or USB 2.0 connectivity.

Powered by Intel’s Centrino Mobile Technology Duo platform (1.66GHz Intel Core Duo T2300 reviewed here), the Aspire 9410 offers most of the power you need to run complex office and multimedia applications. Along with its eye-catching colour TFT LCD display, nVidia’s GeForce Go 7300 GPU with TurboCache (64MB of dedicated GDDR2 VRAM, 192MB of shared system memory) drives graphics, or you can save some money by opting for Intel’s lacklustre Graphics Media Accelerator 950, which uses up to 224MB shared memory. Battery life should last around 3 hours with the 8-cell battery or just 2-hours with the standard 6-cell battery.

We’re disappointed that there’s no built-in Web camera or memory card reader as standard - both of these are optional extras - but the Aspire 9410 does ship with a 120GB HDD (5400rpm, 8MB buffer) and a double-layer DVD burner to record and store thousands of multimedia files (as well as make exact backups of your favourite DVD movies). Also worth mentioning is the inclusion of a full-sized numeric pad on the right of the keyboard and accessible communication function buttons positioned to the left and top-right of the keyboard. The shortcut buttons allow you to toggle Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, as well as launch your preferred Web browser and e-mail client.

Other core features include 1GB of system memory (upgradeable to 4GB), four USB 2.0 ports, analogue video-out, and Type II PC Card slot. We’re shocked there’s no S-Video or DVI port, and the lack of FireWire is a real disappointment for audio and video editors. A pair of stereo speakers is built into the wristrest and, although they’re relatively loud, a near total lack of bass makes them frustrating when listening to music. The location of the speaker output on the front of the machine is also problematic, as it will leave a trailing wire down the front of the desk, but we welcome the addition of a 3.5mm S/PDIF port. The lid, when closed, also exposes the speakers so you don’t have to put up with muffled audio.

The system ships with Microsoft’s Windows XP Home Edition, Professional or Media Center Edition pre-installed. Additional installed software includes Adobe’s Reader, Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus, CyberLink’s PowerDVD (or CyberLink Power Producer), as well as Acer’s GridVista and Arcade Software Suite. Arcade Software Suite’s is clearly a poor relation to Windows MCE, but it’s a simple way of browsing through your photos or watching a DVD. Quite frankly, the software bundle is basic and hardly worth getting excited about. Acer hasn’t even considered business users, especially when it comes to data security and recovery. There’s also no TV tuner support either, so even if you add a USB tuner later you’ll need to use third-party software.

Acer’s Aspire 9410 is a nicely presented and solidly built laptop, but its range of features are relatively basic. There’s plenty to appreciate however, such as the crisp display, large keyboard and capacious HDD, but the lack of a few fundamentals such as FireWire and DVI make you wonder who exactly the machine is pitched at. For instance, it’s too big and heavy for frequent business travellers, lack of top-end multimedia features will turn off graphics/video editors, and the so-so graphics chipset is a joke for 3D gamers.

For the price, the Aspire 9410 meets the criteria for a performance machine. An Intel Core Duo Processor and 1GB of RAM is enough to handle several tasks at the same time, such as running an anti-virus suite, creating a PDF file, and transcoding a video file - which primarily burdens the processor - but power users or those looking for more jazz should probably look elsewhere. [7]

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