Acer Aspire L100

...end we decided on the Acer Aspire L100 with 19" Widescreen Monitor - Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - 19

This is classed as a compact (or mini) PC. Its dimensions (H x W x D) are 10.1 in x 4 in x 7.8 in (25 cm x 20 cm x 6 cm) and it weighs 8 lb (4 kg), as you can see it is a small unit this is described as an ultra small form factor. It is a very attractive addition to our electronics not looking out of place or bulky and unattractive. The ...
...periphery.

Acer has built its reputation on making computers that are stylish and look more expensive than they actually are. The PC stands upright and has an attractive curved base which is a good idea as it ensures the unit gets those couple of mm it needs for ventilation. I think many of us ignore the recommended ventilation space guidelines on our DVD players , video recorders, cable boxes etc but it is more important with a PC ... more

Our PC at present is upstairs in the study as I work from home fairly frequently and need some peace and quiet away from the TV. The trouble is we don’t use it to the maximum and have been toying with the idea of upgrading and moving it downstairs. Unfortunately it is a big black bulky box that would look out of place.

We have been looking at different options including laptops but in the end we decided on a compact media centre. During the decision making process we have considered many, discarding some due to cost, others due to appearance and some due to limited flexibility.
In the end we decided on the Acer Aspire L100 with 19" Widescreen Monitor - Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - 19

This is classed as a compact (or mini) PC. Its dimensions (H x W x D) are 10.1 in x 4 in x 7.8 in (25 cm x 20 cm x 6 cm) and it weighs 8 lb (4 kg), as you can see it is a small unit this is described as an ultra small form factor. It is a very attractive addition to our electronics not looking out of place or bulky and unattractive. The casing is brushed silver and there’s is a curved fold out panel covering the front ports. These are very convenient as you don’t have to reach round behind the unit when you plug in temporary periphery.

Acer has built its reputation on making computers that are stylish and look more expensive than they actually are. The PC stands upright and has an attractive curved base which is a good idea as it ensures the unit gets those couple of mm it needs for ventilation. I think many of us ignore the recommended ventilation space guidelines on our DVD players , video recorders, cable boxes etc but it is more important with a PC where good ventilation is necessary to cooling and a chip that gets too hot is a chip with a reduced lifespan.

I bought ours as a package with a monitor, keyboard and mouse included but you can just buy the PC alone. I will discuss the PC first, then the monitor but won’t describe the keyboard and mouse as we decided to pay a small premium and have a wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse (we felt it was pointless buying such a good looking machine then spoiling its appearance with trailing wires.)

The Acer Aspire L100
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One of the major points about having a PC in the living room is how noisy they can be with the fan cycling on and off and the hard drive creating its trills and thunks as it works but there is none of that with the Acer. This PC is as quiet as a breath. Its noise is equivalent to 26 dB which is better than industry standard.

The Processor is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ which is dual core. It is supplied with - 1 GB RAM installed and will take up to 4 GB maximum (the RAM is DDR SDRAM - 400 MHz - PC3200). It has a 160GB hard drive which is plenty big enough as those movies which aren’t on DVD are already stored on a removable drive anyway. It comes with a DVD rewriter which obviously not only burns DVDs but plays both them and CDs. It also has a 4 in 1 card reader

The graphics card is an integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 which is an excellent card for a media centre as it gives superb picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling. it Smoothes video and DVD playback on progressive displays to deliver a crisp, clear picture and scaling and filtering technology delivers a clear, clean image at any window size including full-screen HDTV resolutions. It does play games well but it is a media card rather than a gamer’s card. It also has an integrated sound card which gives 7.1 channel surround high definition audio. The experience of watching a DVD through this system exceeds going to the cinema.

It is possible to Connect to the Internet via its integrated Ethernet, included external USB 56K modem, or go wireless and connect via its IEEE 802.11b/g Wi-Fi which is our choice

It has ample interfaces and expansion slots; 2 free memory slots and 1 processor. It has 6 Hi-Speed USB slots of which 2are in easy reach at the front. There is 1 display/video - VGA and 1 display/video - DVI-Digital. 1 audio line-in (mini-phone 3.5 mm) and 2 audio line-out ( mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm)1 of these is on the front panel. 2 microphone input (mini-phone 3.5 mm) 1 of which is in front and 2 firewire ports 1 in front 1 at the back.

There is a choice of operating system (although this does depend on who you purchase through) Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows Vista home premium. We opted for XP mainly because we already know it but also as reports of vista are at present a mixed bag of positive and negatives. We will let others do the bug testing!

It is supplied with a variety of software although this too can vary depending on supplier. We have Norton antivirus 2006, Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0, Cyberlink Power DVD, NTI CD-Maker Gold for DVD burner, Aspire self burn Recovery CD, Acer Resource CD, Acer Empowering Framework.

One thing that will always seem strange to me is the absence of a floppy drive- that will date us just as surely as Dr Who in the future!

Acer AL1916WAS 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor;
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This is a really attractive monitor. It is silver and black. The design maximises the viewing are resulting in the frame being a slender curved silver strip around the outside rather like a picture fame. The stand is black. The dimensions of the monitor are (height x width) 38.5 cm x46.2 cm and it weighs 5.6 kg. Its horizontal resolution in pixels is 1440 x its vertical resolution in pixels is 900 gives a maximum resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels with a Dot Pitch of 0.28 mm.

Its response time is 5 ms, Colour support is Up to 16.2 million colours .Image brightness is 300 cd/m2 and image contrast ratio is 700:1
It has adjustment controls for:
• Brightness,
• Contrast,
• H/V position,
• Colour balance
• Colour temperature

The image quality is superb, the colour depth and clarity are excellent. It can be wall mounted if you chose, but we didn’t.

The Acer Aspire L100 comes with a 2 year warranty and the Acer AL1916WAS 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor comes with a 3 year warranty.

My opinion
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I feel that this set up is a bargain for around £500. The build quality of the media centre and monitor are excellent; well finished, stylish yet sturdy. They don’t look out of place in a living room at all. The PC itself really is so quite in operation that you couldn’t tell it was on at all if it weren’t for its lights.

The picture quality when watching DVDs is superb as is the sound reproduction. Anything that you can see on the monitor can be watched via the TV which makes it great for looking at photos and the internet- no more does everyone have to gather round the monitor to see things, we can now watch in comfort from our armchairs. Our stereo runs through it now too which gives us even better sound and if only movies came out on DVD at the same time they opened in the cinema we wouldn’t bother going out to see them again.

We do play games on it but we aren’t great gamers so don’t actually have anything that it wont handle. We have installed all the usual components such as office, photo-shop, paint-shop pro, Hoyle etc and it handles them just the same as any other PC.

I would not hesitate to recommend The Acer Aspire L100 to anyone looking for a decent media centre at a reasonable price as long as they aren’t hung up on having a ‘name’ on their set up. 

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