Acer Aspire 5051AWXMi - Turion 64 mobile technology MK-36 2 GHz - 14.1" TFT > Reviews > Fantastic little laptop!

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Fast
Look & Feel	Good
Comfort & Portability	Good
Robustness & Durability	Good
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Fine for Vista, Lightweight, Superb Screen, Easy to use,
Disadvantages:	Battery Life is only really average, Casing can get scratched easily  : (

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I bought this a week ago owing to my previous laptop (an Advent) dying with a lot of work for uni on it, so panic set in and this is what I ended up with for the bargain price of £399.99 from Comet. My sister has an Acer 3682WXMi, and I really didn't think much of it, but I am mighty impressed with this one! It's a tad smaller and lighter and easier to carry around with me. It's got 1Gb RAM, an 80Gb Hard-drive, DVD/RW, wi-fi, 3 x 2.0 USB ports and a 5-in-1-card-reader.

It came with Vista Home Premium pre-installed, all you had to do is input your details and it pretty much does the rest for you. You also get Norton for a 90 Day Subscription, Windows Media Centre and Acer's eManagement Suite which may or may not be useful. You have the option to create a recovery CD or DVD to restore the factory settings, or the settings after you've installed everything you want like MS Office, Money, Firefox etc. It connected to the internet very quickly indeed using both the wired and wireless approach (Fine for the Starbucks workers!) allowing you to register it with Acer and Norton if you want.

There were a few issues I encountered, but I think this is more Vista than the actual Laptop. Firstly, Acer's eData Security application clashed with Windows Live Messenger (As a student I find it essential as a distraction), and the reccommended solution was to download a patch from the Acer website - this was unavailable, but I've since found out many Vista users have issues with the latest version of Messenger (8.1). Reverting to version 8 alleviates this problem. Secondly, it refused to connect to the network at Uni, but after a nice lady from the IT dept. had a look, it's fine. And finally, the battery lasts for just over 2 hours 15 minutes. This may or may not bother you, but you can get a 9-cell battery, or even another 6-cell battery if it does. Personally I tend to run it off the mains, unless I'm travelling and even then I tend to do little work.

The display is absolutely fantastic, nice and shiny and very clear. It's not massive at 14.1", but plenty for having multiple windows open at the same time made easier by Acer's GridVista application. The native resolution is 1280x800 and perfectly fine for this, especially in Vista now you have the funky sidebar and all the gadgets! It has 128Mb shared graphics which I gather is necessary for Vista to run it's Aero thing, but as I don't play games it's not a huge problem for me.

It's by no means the fastest laptop, but considering my old laptop was of a similar spec running XP Pro, I think it's slightly faster, and it hasn't crashed (yet). So for the money I paid, I think it's well worth it. The only thing that puzzles me is that you get a little button for bluetooth at the front, but as far as I know, it's not even an option so why? Anyway, if you're looking for a decent Vista capable machine then I think this is pretty much the best budget laptop in the UK at the moment. I can't really fault it in all honesty.