Fantastic Cheap Laptop

I had wanted a laptop for a long time but had never been able to justify the cost when I already had a desktop computer. With the prospect of planning my wedding and spending hours on the internet searching for suppliers etc, I wanted to be able to do that from the comfort of my settee, so I now found myself with a reason (clutching at straws here) to buy a laptop. I spent months looking for the right one to buy, I must have looked at every laptop available under £700. My initial budget went out the window (I stupidly thought I might be able to get a basic one for under £300) and my list of requirements increased from just basic word processing, spreadsheets and internet to being able to play my favourite game (Civilization 4). Having narrowed it down, the Acer Aspire 5633WLMi LX.AG50J.169 was the clear winner. I bought it for £562.83 plus £12.99 next day delivery from Technoworld.com at the beginning of March, but you can get it for £549 from them currently.

The specifications of the Acer are head and shoulders above anything else in the price range. It has the latest Intel processor, an Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66 GHz. The processor (or CPU – Central Processing Unit) is the part that does all the calculations, it’s the brains of the computer so to speak. The better the processor the faster the machine will be. It comes with 1GB of RAM (Random Access Memory). This is the computers short term memory for the processor. I have heard that 256 MB of RAM is needed just to run Windows, so the minimum RAM you should aim to have is 512MB, and the more you have the quicker your machine will be able to do stuff. For those of you who are interested, the RAM is DDR II SDRAM and the laptop has 2MB of L2 cache, but I must admit I do not have a clue what this means.

My model (some versions of the Aspire 5633 don’t have this graphics card) has an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 dedicated graphics card with a turbocache supporting up to 256MB. This was my main requirement for my laptop as if you wish to play more advanced games (e.g. other than solitaire) an integrated card is not good enough (have found this out through personal experience with my desktop computer). I have no desire to play the latest games so I did not need a top of the range graphics card, but this one handles my beloved Civilization 4 perfectly. In fact the graphics look amazing, and the last time I played Civ 4 I got rather fed up with my Fiancé commenting on how good the graphics were every time he walked past.

The laptop is silver in colour and very thin and light. The dimensions of the laptop are 35.8cm (W) x 26.5cm (D) x 3.6 cm (H) and it weighs 2.8 kg. To open it you slide the catches on the front and lift the screen at the same time which I find can be a bit tricky and some people might struggle (namely my fiancé and it causes arguments about whether he is being careful enough with my precious laptop, sad I know). I find it best to slide the catch and lift with one hand whilst holding the base of the machine with the other. The machine feels well built and sturdy which considering it is at the lower end of the market is surprising.

The keyboard is well laid out and well proportioned. It takes some getting used to not having the numeric keypad, but that is common to most laptops. The keyboard takes up 2/3rds of the base and is the width of the laptop. The keys are large and don't look like they are going to break. There are four buttons at the top of the keyboard. One button gives you access to the Acer Empowering Technology System. This makes it easier for you to access frequently used functions and manage your Acer notebook. One of the buttons opens your internet browser and another button your email software. The forth button is user definable. To the right of the keyboard there are some media shortcut buttons, such as volume, that are rather handy. The mouse pad is located centrally in the bottom third of the base. The majority of it is a touch pad that is very sensitive. You also get a left mouse button and right mouse button and a silver 4 way scroll button which is very useful. Either side of the mouse pad there are two areas you can rest your wrists on. There is an internal microphone for sound recording located to the far right of the palm rest.

There are two speakers on the front of the machine. These are quite good but I have found that they are not loud enough if you want to watch TV or a film on the laptop. The slot for your headphone is on the front of the machine so it is easy to plug them in, also the line in and microphone jacks are located next to in on the front.

This laptop is Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity, also known as Wireless LAN) enabled. This lets you set up a home network wirelessly if you have a wireless router, and if you connect your broadband to your router (or get a router with a modem) you can access the internet wirelessly from anywhere in your house and share it with other laptops and computers. This laptop has IEEE 802.11 a/b/g. 802.11g is the most common form of Wi-Fi at the moment, and has data transfer speeds of up to 54 Mbps, which is fine for surfing the internet and file sharing. I currently access the internet via ADSL broadband connected to the laptop via USB. We only have 1Mbps broadband but I find the laptop is fast enough, I have watched videos on youtube.com with no problem or delay, whereas my desktop always struggled with this. I have not used the Wi-Fi so can’t comment on this at the moment. I have just ordered a router so will update when I have this up and running.

This laptop came with one years collect and return manufacturers warranty. It also has international travellers warranty. I have not needed to use this or the customer support. The instruction manual is very easy to understand, and as it also only has the English version of the manual in it, it isn't the size of a small novel.