Acer TravelMate 2414LMi

...on from my last two Acer laptops, when my mother wanted a budget laptop to buy, Acer was one of the names that immediately sprang to mind.

Fortunately that week Comet had a large advert in the newspapers that meant she could buy this model for only £299. One quick car journey later and the credit card was handed over and a shiny new cardboard box containing the Travelmate 2414WLMi was given back in exchange.

BORING BIT ...
...Network adapter
Wireless NIC: Acer InviLink 802.11b/g
Data Link Protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
Remote Management Protocol: DMI 2.0
Features: Acer SignalUp
Compliant Standards: IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED
Expansion Slots Total (Free): 2 ( 1 ) x memory 1 ( 1 ) x PC Card - type II
Compliant Standards: ACPI 2.0, EPA Energy Star
Battery 4-cell Lithium ... more

Following on from my last two Acer laptops, when my mother wanted a budget laptop to buy, Acer was one of the names that immediately sprang to mind.

Fortunately that week Comet had a large advert in the newspapers that meant she could buy this model for only £299. One quick car journey later and the credit card was handed over and a shiny new cardboard box containing the Travelmate 2414WLMi was given back in exchange.

BORING BIT ALERT!!!

Skip over this if you don't like techie stuff

It has
Built-in Devices: Stereo speakers, wireless LAN aerial
Width: 36.3 cm Depth: 27.5 cm Height: 3.3 cm Weight: 2.7 kg
Intel Celeron M 380 / 1.6 GHz Data Bus Speed: 400 MHz
Cache Memory Type: 1 MB L2 Cache. 256MB DDR II SDRAM
Hard Drive: 40 GB
DVD±RW (+R double layer) - integrated
Display Type: 15" TFT active matrix
Video Graphics Processor / Vendor: Intel GMA 900
Video Memory: Dynamic Video Memory Technology 3.0
Audio Output: Sound card - Compliant Standards: Sound Blaster Pro
Audio Input: Microphone
Input Device(s) Type: Keyboard, touchpad, 4-way scroll button
Modem: 56 Kbps Fax / Modem ITU V.92
Features: Wake on Ring
Networking: Network adapter
Wireless NIC: Acer InviLink 802.11b/g
Data Link Protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
Remote Management Protocol: DMI 2.0
Features: Acer SignalUp
Compliant Standards: IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED
Expansion Slots Total (Free): 2 ( 1 ) x memory 1 ( 1 ) x PC Card - type II
Compliant Standards: ACPI 2.0, EPA Energy Star
Battery 4-cell Lithium Ion - Run Time (Up To): 2.1 hour(s)
Operating System / Software Windows XP Professional
Software: Norton AntiVirus, Cyberlink PowerDVD , Acer Launch Manager, NTI CD-Maker, Acer eManager, Adobe Reader, Acer GridVista 2.0
Manufacturer Warranty 1 year international warranty

Ok, that's the boring bit out the way.

Setting Up
Setting up the laptop was very easy, XP and the other software had already been installed so it was only a case of setting up the software for first time use by choosing the default details and registering. It was a simple matter of installing the broadband connection and within 20 minutes of it coming out of the box it was fully up running and connected.

Err…… almost. The dreaded updates to XP and Norton etc had to be downloaded. Anyway, an hour after coming out of the box it was up and fully running and up to date.

Software
To be honest one of the first things I did was to uninstall Norton. Ok, it may be a good virus killer but it's a total resource hog and to my mind AVG is just as good.

While Cyberlink is quite a good DVD player again it could be easily replaced if you wanted to. The NTI DVD program is good for beginners and is my burner of choice, even above Nero.

CD Grid Vista for most people I think, a waste of space. It supposedly lets you work with multiple windows on the screen while you use different applications. Bearing in mind this is a budget machine and the vast majority of people will be using it only for leisure then I don't see the point. Certainly I would consider myself and fairly advanced user but I would never use it let alone the silver surfer brigade. It was disappointing to see they only included Adobe reader 6 rather than 7 which has been out for a long time.

There is no Office software with this machine which means you either need to have already a copy of MS Office or Works, Lotus Smartsuite or get a freeware Office clone.

Look & feel
The case itself looks quite smart with a brushed silver aluminium appearance with the bottom being black plastic. On opening the top you are greeted with a smile. The keyboard has a definite curve on it so it looks like a smile! Whether this is more erganomic or a subtle psychological ploy I don't know. One thing that is apparent, at least with my heavy touch is the amount of flex in the keyboard when typing. It certainly doesn't give the impression that its going to fall apart but the give is visibly noticeable which may put some people off. Apart from that, the key function is nice to the touch with the actual key resistance just right.

Above the keyboard is the power button and the special function buttons to get you to email, the internet browser etc faster - the buttons are user defined. ( Personally, I don't like them but my mother does - go figure! ) I don't know if it's because of the chassis or what but again the keyboard layout it is slightly different from my Acer. The Delete, Home, Page Up, Page Down buttons are on the extreme right side rather than beside the arrow keys. Below the keyboard is a standard track pad with mouse buttons.

On the front edge of the laptop are the indicators for wireless activity, power, hard drive activity and so on.

On the left there are three USB 2.0 slots which is good - as with all the peripherals you need as many as you can get and a spare PC Card slot. On the right hand side is the drive bay for the DVD drive but the eject button is not raised to the touch and can be quite difficult to get unless you have very sensitive fingers or are looking for it.

At the back there is the jack for the AC power as well as another USB slot, the modem and Ethernet ports, a VGA port for a monitor as well as a Kensington lock slot.

One thing to be wary of is that there is no floppy disk. You either need to move onto the flash thumb drives or get an external USB floppy drive.

The monitor is very good, nice and bright with, I would guess, about a 90 degree comfortable viewing angle which is much better than just a few years ago. No complaints there.

Using it.
One of the ways they were able to cut the cost is by cutting back. If you look at the specs I put up earlier to what the manufacturer says you can see they are different. A 40Gb hard drive instead of a 60Gb. To most people that is going to cause no problems at all. The other one is a bit more contentious. 256MB Ram not 512MB. Comparing speeds when multitasking ie running Word & Media Player and running a virus check, to my 18 month old laptop which has 512MB Ram and a 1.6Ghz Pentium Centrino, I find my older machine is slightly faster which is disappointing. The only thing I can put it down to is the smaller RAM. The good thing is the RAM is fitted into one slot so it can be boosted easily.

Like most laptops. Its not a game machine. If you want to play games you would be better off with a tower system or even a far more expensive laptop with separate graphics card. Again, if you really like your music or DVDs this should not be your primary machine. For the odd weekend away its fine but if not, again you should buy a more expensive machine if you care about quality. The picture is fine but the in built speakers are somewhat tinny and shallow, there is not a huge amount of bass.

Battery
Heres the real bug bear with all laptops. In the manual it claims that the Li-Ion battery will run for "about 2 hours under most circumstances". Umm. Mot in my world it doesn't. The most I have got so far is about 100 minutes working just on MS Word. Use a media player and that drains even more power. Recharging when not in use is quite quick, around 2 hours although I haven't times it exactly.

Wireless
As yet we haven't used the full wireless capability of the machine yet but it can pick up networks my older machine cant and the ones we can both pick up are far stronger. So whatever the SignalUp does, it works.

Portability
The machine weighs just under 3 kg which doesn't sound much but if you need to use it over any decent period of time, you will need the AC cord or a spare battery and maybe the mouse by which time it starts to feel quite heavy in the supplied bag.

Again with ACER come a free international warranty which is not typical. So if you do a lot of travelling, that might be something to consider.

Summary
Now so far, it may seem I have been a bit negative and well yes I have. But that's only because I keep on forgetting just how cheap this machine was. I keep on having undue expectations for it and that I think is far better than thinking "when is this pile of rubbish going to break down"

For the price this is a great machine and if you are on the lookout for a no nonsense budget machine then this will do you fine.

It just fails to get 5 stars because of the keyboard and 256MB of RAM.
 

...less