The Acer TravelMate 3200 is marketed as an all-rounder, combining performance, mobility, and value. It is one of the smaller notebooks submitted, mainly because of the 14.1in screen it uses. We found this notebook quite plain which is a contrast from what they usually send in for testing. Acer notebooks tend to be the most stylish and modern looking of the pack.
Underneath the bonnet is an Intel Pentium 1.6GHz M processor with 512MB of RAM and a 60GB HDD. It also uses an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics accelerator, which seems to be the most popular graphics chip right now.
The notebook combines a DVD multi recorder that can burn DVDs and CD-RWs.
In terms of ports this notebook has a quite a good mix. It doesn't have S-Video but it does have FireWire and a 3-in-1 card reader that accepts MS, MMC, and SD cards. Gigabit LAN, modem, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth are also standard.
The Acer has front firing speakers, which we're not big fans of as you tend to lose quite a bit of sound quality when you're typing and listening to music at the same time.
The Acer is one of the fastest notebooks tested. It ran all the tests at 1024 x 768 (its native mode) which would have given it a slight advantage. All the other notebooks ran our tests at higher resolutions as their native modes happened to be higher.
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