Are most netbooks too dull for you? Want to attract some attention? Like cars? Then the Acer Ferrari One could be for you.
Acer has been consociated with Ferrari for some years now,Laptop Batteries and has produced a succession of suitably adorned laptop computers as a result of this partnership. Notwithstanding, netbooks are the happening machines of the moment, so it’s no surprisal to see the well-known Maranello marque now on a new small portable machine from Acer in the form of the Ferrari One 200.
The Ferrari One scored 0.48 in our benchmarks – that’s 9% quicker than the Samsung NC10 (0.44), which was the smartest netbook we’d seen before the AMD-powered Acer arrived.
It’s marginally quicker than its A List competition too, with the Samsung N110 scoring 0.41 and the 12in Samsung NC20 achieving 0.40. And if the margin of difference doesn’t sound that impressive, the fact that it did so while running Windows 7 (slower in our benchmarks than XP) Hp Hstnn-lb94 Battery should make anyone sit up and take notice.
The inclusion of ATI’s embedded Radeon HD 3200-series graphics chip is another novel addition, and it lends the Ferrari a modicum of gaming performance. It can’t handle demanding titles such as Crysis – a frame rate of 14fps (with all the settings turned down and at 1,024 x 768) isn’t quite playable – but it will manage less intensive games such as Trackmania Nations Forever much better than the less-powerful Intel GMA 500 or 950 chips you get in most other netbooks.
More significant, perhaps,HP Omnibook xe4400 Battery is that it’s able to decode HD video without breaking much of a sweat: even 1080p video clips were handled smoothly when played in Media Player Classic’s Home Cinema Edition – a media player that supports hardware acceleration. And although the Acer wasn’t quite as proficient with streaming video – it couldn’t handle the BBC iPlayer’s high-definition programmes – it played back YouTube HD content without any fuss.
What will first stike the eye is the lid, which is painted the well-known Ferrari red. The yellow prancing horse sits at the centre, pushing the Acer logo to the side – a clear indication of who’s boss here. The paintwork is of a suitable quality too, beseeming a Ferrari-branded machine.
Once you’ve got past the in-your-face paintwork, you’ll notice that this netbook is bigger than most. It boasts dimensions of 285 x 205 x 24mm (WDH) and weighs in at 1.5Kg, which makes it heavier than some full-blown laptops, such as the Apple a1057 Battery and Lenovo X301 or the Macbook Air. The depth figure is also worthy of note. This is actually a pretty chunky machine.
Open it up and the racing motifs abound. At the bottom of the keyboard, to the sides of the trackpad, is a cris-cross carbon fibre pattern. But don’t be fooled, it’s just a pattern. The Ferrari logo again sits in the corner and the power light is angled and glows red. The red edging also extends down from this to what looks like car like vents at the bottom rear, in which sits a Gigabit Ethernet socket on the right and a VGA port on the left.
We peculiarly like the fact that the Ferrari One doesn’t just have the regular dimensions of most netbooks and is angled at the edges. The track pad is angled too, Hp Hstnn-xb80 Battery and a single silver plastic strip acts as the trackpad button, again with the words Ferrari One etched onto it. While it looks good, we would have preferred it to be longer and feel more responsive.
The motoring touches also extend underneath the machine, with the stands all featuring tyre treads – very Evo.
The display is a healthy 11.6in in size, which is a touch more than most netbooks. It is also light and vivid and we had no problems using it even under harsh office lighting. A 640 x 480 resolution web cam sits at the top.
The larger dimensions at any rate mean that there’s plenty of space for the keyboard and Acer Toshiba PA3612U-1BRS Battery has made the most of it with worldwide keys and a comfortable action and some travel. The arrow keys at the bottom right are still a little cramped, but the backspace, Enter and Shift keys are all sensibly sized.
Connectivity is handled by three USB ports, two on the right and one on the left. On the right you’ll also find headphone and microphone sockets, a Kensington port socket and an SD card slot.
On the left, there’s a rather unacquainted looking port. This is in fact an XGP port and is really designed to plug into an external graphics system, designed to give you more grunt than you could otherwise get from the integrated ATI Radeon 3200 chip. The idea is that you get the benefits of a small machine when you’re out and about, but when you’re back at base you can plug in for extra power for graphics or amusement proposes.
It’s an fascinating idea, but we’re not convinced that users will embrace it and it Sony Vgp-bps5 very much depends on the price and relative performance of the external XGP boxes.
With that in mind, being hamstrung by a VGA port is a shame. Users who have gone to the lengths of buying external graphics would surely want a high quality digital connection to an external monitor too?
As for working power, the Acer does live up to its Ferrari branding as it features the first of AMD Vision-based chips in the guise of a dual-core Athlon X2 L310. This only clocks at 1.2GHz, but in our tests still manages to become the fastest netbook we’ve ever tested – coming in at 0.48, besting the previous best – a Samsung NC10 (0.44) – by nine per cent.
The central processor is backed up by 2GB of RAM, which powers Windows 7 Home Premium along quite nicely. In fact, this is the first shipping Windows 7 machine we’ve looked at,Asus m3n4s2p Battery and is a decent showcase ahead of the operating system’s launch next week, with everything feeling snappy and responsive. HD content from YouTube played smoothly, but the higher quality streams from BBC HD prove a little too much for it.
Storage is handled by a liberally sized 250GB 5,400rpm hard disk. Unluckily, battery life was less amazing.
You’d believe the larger chassis would enable it to hold a hefty HP Pavilion dv1700 Battery, but we got less than five hours from our light use test, and less than two under heavy use – around half of what you see from class leaders such as the NC10.
Despite its garishness the Ferrari One has appealattract, but the fact that, like a real Ferrari, it requiresneeds regularstandardaveragestandardized fuel top up, means it’s only reallyactually suitable for occasional use away from the power socket.
For those that want a bit of motorsport-inspired style, in a typically understated Ferrari way, it’s a winner, but if you need a serious business machine we’d look elsewhere.
All in allOn The WholeAltogetherTout Ensemble, this is a veryreallynice interestingconcerningfascinatingworryingentertainingintriguingabsorbing machine. But, in all honestlycandidlyfrankly, it’s really just a small, relativelycomparatively inexpensive laptoplaptop computer – there’s not really anything netbook-like here.
