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Acer Travelmate 290XVi


Date
: 02/8/04 – 05:14:52 AM

Author
:

Category
: Systems

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Acer

I had recently acquired an Acer Travelmate 290XVi Notebook. My purpose was not necessary for gaming but more school related. We will get to that and some other fine details a little later.

I really don't think Acer is a company that really needs any introduction. So, I'll just keep the introduction very brief. This company was established in 1976. To date, it employs approximately thirty nine thousand people with distributors in well over one hundred countries.

Acer mainly focuses on complete systems, hence the somewhat lack of reviews in the hardware community. Some of the products you may find are complete desktops, notebooks, tablet machines, hand held devices, server machines, monitors and projectors.

Well, that's enough about them, I'm sure you are dying to see what I've done to O²'s first laptop review!

I really don't need to say much about the packaging, it was done very well. Double boxed, wrapped in plastic and packed in foam.

Page 2 : Specifications

Using a variety of sources, I've complied a semi-detailed specifications on the Travelmate 290 XVi.

Specifications

Processor

Intel Mobile Pentium 1.3 Ghz, 400 Mhz System Bus, 1024 KB L2 Cache

Motherboard

Montara-GML, FAB2

Chipset

Intel i855GB Rev. 02
Southbridge: Intel 82801DB (ICH4-M) Rev 3

Graphics and Display

Intel Montara-GM Up to 64 MB up to 16.7 million colors
14.1" TFT 1024*768 @ 60 Hz

Battery

4 Cell Sony Li-I

Recharge Time

LiteOn AC Adapter 18.5 Volts 3.5 Amp Output
2 Hours System Off
3.5 Hours System On

Sound

Realtek AC97

Memory

Infineon 256 MB PC2700 200 Pin
Expandable to 2 GB using two 1 GB sticks

Hard Drive

Toshiba MK2023GAS – 20 GB

Optical Devices

QSI 8X DVD-ROM

Communication

Agere Systems AC'97 – 56K
Realtek RTL8139 10/100 Base T Fast Ethernet NIC
Intel PRO/Wireless 802.11b

Peripherals

1 Parallel, 1 VGA, 1FIR, 3 USB 2.0, 1 IEEE 1394 (FireWire), 1 S-Video Out, 1 Mic/Line In, 1 Speaker/Line Out, 1 PCMIA Slot

Dimensions

13.3*10.88*1.26 (length*depth*height in inches)
6.26 lbs with primary battery installed

Warranty

1 Year Carry-in or Mail In

Inside the box, you'll get more than just your laptop. Included are warranty details, laptop user manual, modem user manual (this one is actually thicker than the user manual), two Windows XP Home rescue CDs, Norton Antivirus 2003, Acer system CD, Windows XP Home Edition guide and a RJ11 cable.

That's more or less the run down of what you get in this laptop. Now I'll go into a bit more detail about the system.

The clear selling feature of this notebook is the Intel Centrino Mobile Technology. This allows for a lighter, faster, wireless notebook with a longer battery life. As noted above, the system is based off the Intel i855 Chipset using a mobile 1.3 Ghz processor. My first note, as with many of the features in this notebook, is that you should not expect the system to be always running at 1.3 Ghz. This would be a complete drain on the batteries. Instead, expect it to hover around the 600 Mhz range when doing a little more than just idling. The processor will hit 1.3 Ghz when doing something intensive like gaming, benchmarking or running a distributed computing client.

The built in Intel Extreme Graphics controller is by far not the best possible graphics accelerator available but it does work if you don't plan on playing the latest games currently available. The video card and memory both share the same total amount. To allow for maximum free RAM, the video card varies from 16 MB to the full 64 MB as specified. Under the display profile, you are able to see how much RAM is being dedicated to the video card. In Windows, approximately 17MB was used. When watching a video, the usage increased to about 20 MB.

The 14.1" display isn't horrible, and works perfectly fine for work applications. However, if you scroll too fast there is a small bit of visible ghosting. The same applies in games. The ghosting effect doesn't appear when I watch my the original Matrix movie. So, there is definitely a tiny bit of room for improvement in this area. I guess everything cant be perfect!

I have one final note about this TFT, there is one dead pixel. :( It's stuck on red near the very top three quarters across the screen from the left side. It could be worse, at least it's not in the dead middle!

Page 3 : Layout

The layout of all the features on the laptop wasn't too bad. There are a few minor things that could be improved, but that all depends on what hand you are.

The keyboard is probably going to be the most abused feature in a laptop, so it is very important that it is done correctly. The keys must be easy to press and the hand layout should be very comfortable for prolonged use. In general the keys are of a nice size for my fingers. According to the specifications, most of them span about 19mm and can be pressed down about 2.5 mm. Of the 85 keys, I seem to press the "Page Up" and "Page Down" instead of hitting the "Right" and "Left" key. This main problem is due to the change in size from the rest of the leys. You should be able to see that from the picture.

Not a lot really goes on here in the front. You get your DVD-ROM, the latch to open up the laptop and a couple of LEDs. These LEDs really just tell you whether or not the laptop is turned on, the status of the battery and whether or not the wireless communication has been activated.

By far the busiest sections of the notebook as all the useable features are crammed to the right side. Here the parallel port, VGA out, the last 2 USB 2.0 ports, RJ-11 and RJ 45 ports, S-Video out and IEEE 1394 Firewire ports are located. To the left, it may appear blank, but there are some key units located here on the underside. Ill get to that in a bit.

Note the one tiny feature on the left side, there is a little hole allowing you to lock down your laptop. Although this isnt one of the most expensive notebooks in the world, I suggest you invest in some security if you plan on moving around and pulling it out in public for work.

On the left side of the notebook you have access to several features. You get to plug in your microphone and headphones, activate or deactivate the wireless communication. Make use of the one PCMIA slot, take advantage of the IR Port or use one of the three USB 2.0 ports.

On the right side, it isn't nearly as busy as the left. The hard drive, power and ventilation slots are located here. Being a right handed person, I would prefer the USB to be on this side, that way I can plug in a mouse and not have to run it behind the notebook. Maybe just switch the USB and AC connector location.

On both sides of the notebook are tiny little speakers, definitely not 5.1 surround sound. There is no physical volume control on either side but there are hotkeys to do this job. Nonetheless, I suggest investing some money in a good pair of headphones as these two speakers are terribly weak. I was having trouble listening to the audio of the Matrix when I was only a few feet away. It wouldnt of killed Acer to put in a better sound system.

Not a heck of a lot can be found here. You got a nifty looking logo and that's about it. The top is mainly to provide some protection to the internal organs. I don't suggest you try putting a load on top, although Acer claims it is somewhat durable. It feels like of weak to me. If you're skilled with the Dremel, etch something cool on it!

On the bottom, you'll find a whole bunch of closed doors I suggest you keep most of these closed while the notebook is running. On the underside, you will see the battery, a latch to hotswap the optical drive with something else and a cover for the last available RAM slot. You will also find 5 rubber feet to rest the notebook on and a mini grill at one of the corners where air is vented. I suggest you do
not
cover this slot. The laptop bottom is warm enough with it active.

Page 4 : BIOS and Software Settings

BIOS

You really cannot do a heck of a lot in the BIOS. From the front page, you get a tidbit of information regarding the laptop. Nothing all too spectacular, nothing you can change.

I'll just leave you with a few pictures showing the different settings you get to, more or less, look at.

Apart from the lockdown feature at the back of the notebook, all you are left with is some passwords to safeguard unwanted users from your computers.

Within the boot menu, you are allowed to set three different orders. You get your usual options, nothing fancy or special here.

When you're all done just save and exit.

As you can see, nothing fancy in here. So, let's just move right along.

When you've gotten the laptop ready to go and booted into Windows, there are some features that are quite handy and I think may be of interest if you don't feel like flipping through the length 80 page user guide.

Battery

You might want to keep an eye on this one! The documentation claims that you will get about 2.5 hours on the standard battery. I got a little over 2.5 hours and the indicator said I had about 4% of my juice left. I decided to recharge considering I was working on the review for the last part of it and had not yet saved! :D

One of the accessories you can purchase for this notebook is the 8 cell Li-I battery. This should give you about 5 hours of juice.

Mouse Pad

This is a fairly standard mouse pad for all your mouse work, don't expect too much from it. A few things I never knew about this little devices is that you can scroll up and down and left and right by just using the sides.

You can also program a few features with the pad such as having it do specific tasks when a certain area is tapped or when one of the two buttons are pressed.

I've been using the laptop for a fair while now, and one of the things I've noticed about the touchpad is that sometimes it can be too sensitive and at other times not quite sensitive enough. Why? I don't actually have any idea. I have read from other places that the touchpad is a common problem where it stops functioning after the general warranty period ends. Whether this is a fact or a rumor, I can't say.

Launch Manager

You may have noticed the three buttons at the top of the keyboard just below the hinge edge of the base. The big one is the power button, the other two labeled P1 and P2 and programmable buttons through the Launch Manager.

Here you also get the option of turning on or off the wireless and Bluetooth connection. (Only if they are currently available)

That sums it up for all the nifty software features you get bundled in a laptop that you may or may not see in a killer desktop machine. Let's move on to what you've all been waiting for – performance. AKA benchmark time!

Page 5 : Benchmarking

This is my first laptop so finding something suitable for comparison was quite a challenge. I admit that what I am doing is pretty much comparing apples to oranges, but I think the comparison itself it quite valuable. I've decided to bench the Acer Travelmate 290 XVi against my current desktop machine.

Clearly my desktop machine seems out of place for these tests, and I somewhat agree. It's not a notebook, how hard can that be to understand. At the same time, it is also a work machine. It would be doing the exact same things as the laptop. The current price of my desktop is probably about lower than the notebook, it is definitely not topnotch.

In essence, I'm trying to compare if this laptop is actually better than my desktop by how much and in what aspects. We'll see what the numbers say, but first some details.

Here are the machines:
Stock Acer Travelmate 290 XVi*
WinXP Home SP1
My desktop machine(all settings stock):
Epox 8KHA-L
Athlon XP 1700 +
512 MB PC 2700 KingMax Memory
MSI 64 MB Ti4200
40 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM Primary
80 GB Segate 7200 RPM Secondary
WinXP Professional SP 1

*Due to system configuration, some benchmarks did not use all 1300 Mhz from the system. In particular, SiS Soft Sandra ran some benches just above the idle clock speed of 600 Mhz.

The benchmarks that I used:
3D Mark 2001 at 1024*768 16 Bit
3D Mark 2001 at 1024*768 32 Bit
*3D Mark 2003 at 1024*768 32 Bit
PC Mark 2002
PC Mark 2004
Sis Soft Sandra
Distributed Net RC 5 72 Client all cores

*Do to the hardware limitations of all three machines not all of the benchmarks could be completed.

That sums up the benchmarks and there is only one thing left to do.

Page 6 : Conclusion

My overall experience with the Acer Travelmate 290XVi has been very positive. It's taken over as my primary machine and my desktop now stands idle. As you could see from the benchmarks, it is an excellent work rig. The graphics aren't very good, but for a laptop, the expectations cannot be very high. For the price I paid, just over one thousand dollars Canadian, you can find graphics cards half that price, but here I got one excellent mobile system.

The Good

Affordable
Light weight
Intel Centrino Mobile Technology
2.5 hour battery life
Excellent performance to cost ratio
Quieter than a desktop

The Bad

Graphics system is rather weak if you want to play the new games available
14.1" could easily be replaced with the larger 15" display
Speakers are terrible
Sensitivity issues with the touchpad