Latest Acer Laptop Model

With the latest Ferrari laptop, Acer is trying to inspire some collect-o-mania by limiting distribution to 99 units in Australia, the first three of which are on eBay. At the time of writing, there's one day left on the bidding and despite a AU$499 discount, there's not a single bid on any of the three.

The remaining 96 will be distributed as normal throughout the channel, with Acer posting a public lisit as to where each unit is on their Web site, under the dealership section.

Design
The 12-inch laptop is certainly light, and although unlike cars we doubt the carbon fibre backing has anything to do with that, it sure does look nice. In fact Acer has spent a lot of time in trying to theme its laptop, from the obvious Ferrari logos, to the more subtle details like the checkerplate touchpad, and foot-pedal styled mouse buttons.

While the marketing terms of "keyless entry" for the power button and "dashboard" for the status lights and shortcut touch buttons do sound a bit wanky, you can't help but feel that it all contributes to a much nicer computing experience, where a bit more thought than is regularly used has gone into the design.

A few things have crept in that aren't optimal. Firstly, despite the Dolby branding (which seems to be for kudos alone) the speakers offer a tinny, malnourished sound, as is the hallmark of laptop sound -- but further to this the positioning of two speaker grills on the wrist rest means that they're obstructed by palms when typing. Fortunately two further grills on the lip itself means this is overcome somewhat, but it's still an issue. Bring some headphones for best listening.

Lefties will once again get a warm hand if they're using an external mouse, as the exhaust vent is on the left hand side rather than the rear. This design decision is interesting mainly because Acer have included an ambidextrous Bluetooth mouse, one that's quite pleasant to use at that.

And there's a third minor niggle -- using the designated scroll section doesn't work on the touchpad -- you have to scroll immediately to the left of it. Things are otherwise hunky dory.

Features
It's here that this little 12-inch rattles off the usual suspects, with a slot loading DVD+-RW, SD/xD/MS card reader, USB and modem port on the right, and Ethernet, dual USB ports and Express Card 54 slot on the left. The front plays host to the usual Firewire 400, headphone, speakers and microphone jack, with the headphone jack doubling as an SPDIF out jack. Wireless and Bluetooth on/off switches sit to the right, with 802.11n being the highest flavour supplied.

Acer have spent a lot of time on the packaging itself, emitting a feeling of quality the moment you open the box. A Bluetooth mouse, VoIP phone (that is chargeable through the express card slot), monitor cleaning cloth and leather satchel are included on top of the usual manual and warranty cards.

Software is interesting -- while the damnable Yahoo toolbar is still there, crapware is kept within reasonable limits. More interesting is the fact that the default operating system is Vista Ultimate 64 bit -- indicating that the industry might finally be ready to step up from the 32 bit world we've been in for over 20 years.

Performance
Acer have essentially been locked into using an AMD processor, as AMD is another official sponsor of Ferrari. No surprises then that there's an ATI graphics chip in here as well, the Radeon Xpress 1270. The Xpress 1270 is not at all a powerful chip, pulling 353 in 3DMark06 -- meaning this laptop is not for games. A slightly better 3266 was to be had in PCMark05, indicating that productivity applications are the mainstay of this laptop

Battery time was not great at one hour, 28 minutes and 58 seconds when turning all power saving options off, and screen brightness to maximum. The whole reason for ultra-portables is meant to be easy to travel, and long battery life though, with competition like sony's computer (despite its considerably leaner hardware spec and more fragile build) nearly doubling the battery time of the Ferrari, it makes us wonder if the extra grunt in Acer's machine is worth it.

The Ferrari 1100's biggest problem is its price, and its perceived collector value. If you're willing to go one-inch larger, dell's computer does pretty much everything faster for close to half the price, and is lighter to boot. The thing you've got to ask yourself is simply: is the Ferrari badge worth it?