The TravelMate 8200's souped up internal components and copious features make it an undeniably attractive proposition, but its weight and dimensions make it less suited to life on the road.

The TravelMate 8200 series will effectively replace the 8100 range, and Acer has made a number of both functional and cosmetic upgrades.

Upside
The 8200 features an attractive black chassis, accented by minor silver trimmings. With dimensions of 364 (W) x 271 (D) x 26.3/38 (H) mm and a weight of 3kg, it's firmly in the desktop replacement camp, but occasional travel is certainly plausible.

Located just above the screen is an Acer Orbicam 1.3-megapixel CMOS camera (mounted into the panel), which is capable of rotating 225-degrees to suit varying conditions. It's great for video-conferencing, and Acer offers an optional Bluetooth VoIP phone as an upgrade.

Another pleasing feature is the 5-in-1 memory card reader, which supports the Secure Digital (SD), MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick PRO (MS PRO) and xD-Picture Card (xD) formats. What's more, images pulled from your camera are bound to be displayed beautifully, thanks to a high resolution 1680x1050, 15.4in LCD display. Connection to a TV or external LCD display is made possible by S-Video and DVI-D outputs.

The notebook offers enough power for the vast majority of applications, as it's powered by a 2GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1GB DDR2 memory (upgradeable to 2GB), a gaming-capable ATI Radeon X1600 graphics chip (with 256MB of onboard video memory) and a 120GB Serial ATA hard disk.

Like all Centrino Duo notebooks, the 8200 supports dual-band 802.11a/b/g wireless connectivity. It's also got Bluetooth 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet support to boot.

Audio is powered by the Intel 'High-Definition Audio' chip, and there's an S/PDIF port for connection to digital speakers should the pair of internal offerings prove inadequate. On that note, we were pleased to see that the internal speakers are mounted up front, so sound isn't muffled when the notebook's lid is shut.

Acer claims that the 8200's 87W 9-cell battery will last for six hours on a single charge, but we feel this may be a tad ambitious considering that the notebook is a powerful desktop replacement after all.

Downside
From what we've seen so far, there are few glaring faults to point out with the TravelMate 8200. One concern we had was with the relatively high AU$3,999 price tag, which should deter most budget-conscious buyers. Further, its weight and dimensions make it more suited to life at a desk than on the road.

The 8200 also lacks data security features like a biometric fingerprint scanner (as seen on many Lenovo notebooks such as the ThinkPad Z60t), but this isn't a critical feature for most users.

Finally, we would've liked to have seen Acer bundle Windows XP Professional Edition as opposed to Home Edition with the notebook -- a minor qualm.

Outlook
The TravelMate 8200's souped up internal components and copious features make it an undeniably attractive proposition, but its weight and dimensions make it less suited to life on the road.

Acer TravelMate 8200
Company: Acer
Price: AU$3,999