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The good: Cool Ferrari styling will appeal to some; solid build quality will appeal to all; large hard drive and 4GB of RAM help justify high price; strong Photoshop performance; fingerprint reader; comfortable keyboard and trackpad; slot-loading DVD burner and Webcam; plenty of ports and connections. The bad: Mediocre multitasking performance; disappointing battery life; weak speakers. The bottom line: The Acer Ferrari 1100 is a stylish, full-featured ultraportable laptop, but its disappointing battery life won't sustain users who spend a lot of time away from the outlet.
The new acer product with revolutionary and high performence. With Dual core procesor technology, Acer Ferrart 1100 compatible with your mobile activity.Acer Ferrari combine stylish of racing with mobile leading technology to bring your digital media in your life. This is the review of Acer Ferrari 1100
Processor : AMD Turion "64x2 Dual Core mobile technology
Chipset : AMD M690 T
Memory : 4 Gb DDR 2 667 SD Ram
Storage : 250 GB sata Hardisk with Disk anti sock protection
Operating System : Windows Vista Ultimate
All review:
The Ferrari 1100 includes a 12.1-inch wide-screen display with a native resolution of 1,280x800 While that sharpness occasionally results in text that's too small to read, we found it workable for everyday word processing and Web surfing. Mobile workers looki
ng for a flashy productivity tool probably won't like the screen's glossy coating. The coating resulted in some reflections in our office environment. Unfortunately there is not an option
for a display with a matte finish. But home users who want a highly portable media machine will likely enjoy watching movies on the Ferrari 1100. Above the display sits a 1.3-megapixel Webcam with a single microphone for Web videoconferencing.
Like most ultraportables, the Acer Ferrari 1100's tiny case requires a compact keyboard. But we were surprised to find that typing for extended periods was easy, perhaps in part because the keys are slightly separated from each other and have a satisfying spring. The touch pad is likewise compact, but it has a textured surface, which provides enough drag to make the small area usable. The groovy metallic mouse buttons, engraved with "Ferrari 1100," have been placed right below the touch pad (an improvement over previous Ferrari models). Above the keyboard are three glowing light-touch keys, next to a Ferrari logo, all of which disappear when the laptop is powered down. On the upper left corner are a large power button and a smaller button that launches Acer's custom setup and configuration software. With the exception of the power button, all the keys above the keyboard can be programmed to launch any application. Below the keyboard is a fingerprint reader that lets you log on to Windows and frequently used Web sites with the swipe of a finger.
The Acer Ferrari 1100's case is a little larger than most ultraportables. The size helps accommodate the ports and connections you would expect to find on a larger thin-and-light laptop. For example, it's the rare ultraportable that incorporates both S/PDIF and audio line-out jacks. The laptop's Dolby "virtual surround" sound doesn't do much for sound quality; though well-balanced, music and movies still sound thin. We were pleased, however, by the laptop's slot-loading DVD burner, which maintains the sleek case design and is easier to use in cramped spaces, such as airplane tray tables. As with other Ferrari models, Acer throws in a Ferrari-branded mouse and a tiny, coordinating Bluetooth VoIP phone.
Currently you can buy only one configuration of the Acer Ferrari 1100, the Ferrari 1100-5457, for $1,800. The configuration includes a 2.3GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-66 dual-core processor, an impressive 4GB of 667MHz RAM, and ATI Radeon X1270 graphics. That extra RAM greatly helped the Ferrari 1100 on the Photoshop portion of CNET Labs' benchmarks, where it outran a field of competitors that included the similarly configured HP Pavilion tx2000 and Acer's non-Ferrari ultraportable, the TravelMate 6292. The Ferrari 1100 fared less well, however, on the Multimedia multitasking test. It trailed significantly behind the competition. We blame the processor; in general, we've found AMD Turion 64 X2 processors do not perform as well as than Intel Core 2 Duo processors when it comes to multitasking. That's not to say the Ferrari 1100 is a dog; we were able to listen to music and jump back and forth between multiple applications without any significant lag time. Without a better showing on CNET Labs' benchmarks, its hard to recommend the Ferrari 1100 over less expensive alternatives like Lenovo's bulky ultraportable, the 3000 V200, or Acer's admittedly less stylish TravelMate 6292.
We weren't impressed by the Ferrari 1100's battery life. The laptop lasted just over 2 hours on our DVD battery drain test--quite a bit less than both the Pavilion tx2000 and the TravelMate 6292 (which incorporates an Intel Core 2 Duo processor). Our DVD battery drain test is particularly taxing, so you can expect a slightly longer battery life during typical use; still, we would expect more from an ultraportable that's presumably designed for frequent use away from your desk.
Acer backs the Ferrari 1100 with a one-year warranty, which is standard for consumer laptops. Acer's technical support phone lines are open only Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT and on weekends from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT. The company's online support could stand some sprucing up. Though it does offer easy driver and manual downloads, it lacks such helpful features as forums and real-time chat with a tech-support representative.