16, Jan, 2025
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Acer TravelMate 382TCI

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Outstanding battery life gives Acer’s newest sub-2kg notebook a boost.
Acer’s latest business-ready ultraportable features a 1.6GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB of DDR RAM and a 40GB hard disk. The chassis measures a mere 27 x 23 x 3.6cm and weighs 1.6kg. While it’s not the lightest ultraportable unit on the market, it’s still on the sunnier side of the 2kg barrier.
The 382TCi is well appointed, sporting VGA-out, Ethernet, modem, IR, headphone and microphone ports, plus support for an Acer EasyPort III port replicator ($249.70). A hardware switch enables the user to disable the Bluetooth or 802.11 b/g wireless LAN access: a handy security feature.
On the downside, there are only two USB 2.0 ports, though the port replicator is recommended if you’re going to use the machine at a desk. A full-size FireWire connector is located on the chassis, providing enough juice to power an external CD-RW /DVD combo drive (bundled with the notebook).
A solid software bundle is supplied, including NTI’s CD & DVD-Maker Gold 6.7 and Backup NOW! 3, CyberLink PowerDVD 5 and Windows XP Home (an upgrade to XP Professional is an additional $199.10). The 12.1 in screen runs at a native resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels, and is driven by the 855 chipset. Not surprisingly, this leads to relatively poor game benchmarks (1,701 under 3DMark2001 SEPro), though the system is fine for DVD playback.
One increasingly popular design element on notebooks is an elliptical track pad. While it initially seems odd for controlling a cursor on a rectangular screen, it doesn’t pose a problem for navigation and is harder to accidentally brush while typing. The keyboard itself is surprisingly comfortable.
The TravelMate managed 20.4 under Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 and 20 flat using the Business variant. This confirms the 382TCi as one of the more capable ultraportable notebooks around, with reasonable performance benchmarks and a stellar battery rundown time of four hours and 30 minutes under BatteryMark 4.0.1.
A three-year, return-to-base warranty is included, during which time Acer claims to honour a two hour Commitment Express Warranty Service — another factor that makes the TravelMate a good choice for busy executives. Corporate users will undoubtedly want to spec Windows XP Professional, but that’s a bearable sub-$200 upgrade. It’s just a shame the machine doesn’t feature more USB ports.

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Notebooks

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