Acer TravelMate 8200

The Acer TravelMate 8200 is one of the first Intel Core Duo laptops out of the gate. In addition to its bleeding-edge Core Duo processor, the midsize portable features a great case design and top-of-the-line components, such as a 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics chip, a mammoth 120GB hard drive, and a double-layer DVD burner.

Though this sweet system delivers on the Core Duo's promise of extremely fast multimedia performance, its performance gain was less pronounced on our productivity benchmarks, making its AU$3,999 price too expensive for users who just want fast performance for office work.

Still, the TravelMate 8200 is worth the price premium if you're looking for a well-outfitted laptop for graphic design, video editing or heavy-duty multitasking; otherwise, you can likely meet your needs by purchasing a less expensive laptop with a single-core Pentium M processor, such as the Acer TravelMate 4650 or the ThinkPad Z60t.

Design
In terms of design, the TravelMate 8200 is a logo-free, all-black version of the Acer Ferrari 4000. The TravelMate 8200's tough carbon-fibre case lid has a cool kaleidoscopic lattice pattern; the rest of the case consists of sturdy magnesium alloy. The laptop measures a reasonable 364mm wide, 271mm deep and 26.3/38mm thick. Its 3 kilogram weight is identical to that of the Dell Inspiron 6000 and about average for a midsize system -- the Acer TravelMate 4650, for instance, weighs 2.9 kilograms.

Like many Acer laptops, the TravelMate 8200 includes a broad, comfortable keyboard with an ergonomic curve. The crisp 15.4-inch wide-screen display offers plenty of real estate with its high 1,680x1,050 native resolution. As on some Sony VAIO models, a 1.3-megapixel DV camera sits in the bezel above the screen; unlike the cameras in the VAIO models, the Acer's rotates 225 degrees, allowing you to snap shots in front of, above or behind the laptop. The rectangular touch pad is nice and wide, as are the two mouse buttons below it; a convenient scroll button sits between the two mouse buttons. Four application-launch buttons sit above the keyboard. Finally, the laptop's front edge offers two handy sliding switches for turning the integrated Intel Pro/Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) hardware on and off (to conserve the battery when not in use). While we like all these accoutrements, we wish this high-end portable provided multimedia controls, better sound and other thoughtful touches.

Features
The TravelMate 8200 offers a full complement of ports, jacks, and slots. The left edge includes a 56Kbps-modem jack, two USB 2.0 ports, a PC Card slot, a smart-card slot, and a double-layer DVD burner. A Gigabit Ethernet jack, a VGA port, two more USB 2.0 ports, and an ExpressCard/34 slot are on the right edge. The front edge features S/PDIF, headphone, microphone, and audio-in jacks, four-pin FireWire and Fast IR ports, and a five-in-one flash media slot. Last but not least, the back edge integrates docking, S-Video-out, and DVI ports.

Windows XP Professional is Acer's operating system of choice for the TravelMate 8200; given the laptop's wide screen and fast processor, we were a bit surprised that Windows XP Media Center is not even offered as an option. The company includes the same meager software bundle -- just a few disc-burning, video-viewing, and system-management apps -- that it includes with most of its less expensive laptops.

Performance
We tested the TravelMate 8204WLMi, which has a killer list of specs: a 2GHz Intel Core Duo T2500 processor; 2GB of scorching 667MHz RAM; a discrete ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card with 256MB of dedicated GDDR3 VRAM; and a colossal 120GB, 5,400rpm hard drive with antishock protection. As we described in our earlier story on the Core Duo, Intel designed the processor to provide blazing performance on games and multithreaded applications; the Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi delivers on the second half of that promise. While it scored ahead of single-core systems such as the Acer Aspire 1800 and the ThinkPad Z60t on our Doom 3 performance benchmarks, the TravelMate 8204WLMi trailed behind the superspeedy Dell Inspiron E1705; the Dell has the same processor and less RAM but includes the Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 graphics card. However, the TravelMate fared better on the suite of multimedia performance tests that CNET Labs originally developed to test dual-core desktops. Aside from the Sorenson Squeeze video-encoding program, the TravelMate 8204WLMi dispensed with every application in our suite faster--often much faster -- than any single-core or other Core Duo laptop we've tested. The TravelMate 8204WLMi also scored well ahead of single-core laptops on the SysMark 2004 Internet-content-creation tests, though its performance gains on office-productivity tasks were not as pronounced.

Our high hopes for the Core Duo's power-conserving capabilities were dashed in CNET Labs' battery-drain tests; the TravelMate 8200's cell lasted for 3 hours, 20 minutes, which would be just average for even a single-core Pentium M processor. By contrast, the ThinkPad Z60t's battery lasted 4 hours, 15 minutes. At 3 hours, 52 minutes, the battery life of the ultraportable HP Pavilion dv1000 was the longest of any Core Duo portable we've tested to date.

NOTE: Products in this test are for comparative purposes only and are not necessarily available in the Australian market.

Find out more about how we test Windows notebooks.

System configurations:
Acer Aspire 1800
Windows XP Home; 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4 540; 1GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X600 128MB; Seagate Momentus 5400.2 100GB 5,400rpm

Acer TravelMate 8200
Windows XP Professional; 2GHz Pentium M-T2500 Core Duo; 2GB PC4300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 512MB (256MB shared); Seagate Momentus 5400.2 120GB 5,400rpm

Dell Inspiron E1705
Windows XP Media Center; 2GHz Intel Pentium M-T2500 Core Duo; 1GB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 Go 256MB; Fujitsu MHV2080BH 80GB 5,400rpm

ThinkPad Z60t
Windows XP Professional; 2GHz Intel Pentium M 760; 1GB PC4300 DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express 128MB; Toshiba MK1032GSX 100GB 5,400rpm

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