Laptops Arena

Acer's TravelMate series of business-orientated laptops sports a buttoned-down design and normally comes in suitably muted colours. With the ultraportable TravelMate 3020 series, though, the company has let its hair down a little and come up with a striking white system.

This Core Duo-based laptop (we reviewed the 1.66GHz TM 3022WTMi model) is a good performer and has a neat built-in digital camera. However, we'd prefer an integrated optical drive (even at the expense of a little extra weight).

Based on other Intel Core Duo systems that we've tested, we expected very good performance from the 1.66GHz T2300-based Acer 3022WTMi with 1GB of RAM. Although the 3022WTMi seemed very responsive in general use, we were unable to quantify this impression using our normal MobileMark 2002 benchmark, as this refused to complete on our test system in the time available. Acer claims 5.5 hours of life from the 3-cell and 6-cell batteries, but again we were unable to test this using MobileMark 2002.

Overall, Acer's TravelMate 3022WTMi is small, light and highly portable. Its wide-screen format, built-in camera and (optional) Bluetooth VoIP phone should all appeal to business users -- especially those who use the Internet for voice calls and video-conferencing. The new white livery is smart, although some business travellers may wish to carry a less eye-catching laptop, lest it catch the wrong sort of eye.

View full review here.