(Source: TrustedReviews)

The past three reviews on the Acer Aspire 9500 were placed under the Aspire 9504WSMi name. So, this time, I thought it would be more comprehensive to place at least one review under the 9500 name for those who couldn’t care less about exact model names.

Anyway, the review in question is an average-length SMB IT review published yesterday. Like the previous reviewers of the Aspire 9500, this reviewer was clearly impressed by the Aspire 9500’s performance, and of course, relatively low price.

His verdict? He says that the Aspire 9500 is, “…lighter than most 17-inch footprint multimedia behemoths, but this jobbie still isn’t really meant to be a traveler. But for as an excellently priced all-in-one multimedia, work and gaming notebook, the Acer Aspire 9500 is right at the top of my list.”

(Source: NotebookReview.com)

It’s been a really slow week, with barely any interesting Acer-related news. So, here’s yet another review of the Acer Aspire 5672WLMi to tide all of us by.

The review itself is a short one, so we’ll skip right to the verdict: “Now that I’ve got the ugly parts of the notebook off my chest, I’ll come back to why this notebook is noteworthy. The battery life is commendable as it can last at least three hours after a full charge. Plus, the built-in Acer energy manager tool comes in handy in maximising the battery life. And so, despite the brash sound and the appalling webcam, the overall performance of the notebook makes it a good companion for work and play. ”

Surprisingly, this reviewer commended the 5672WLMi’s battery life, unlike the previous two reviewers which criticised it (though different performance settings could have led to differing battery life measurements). Other than that, the three reviewers gave mostly similiar conclusions.

(Source: PCMag)

PCMag had the first review of the Acer Travelmate 4062WLCi, so it isn’t really surprising to see it featuring the Travelmate 4062WLCi as one of the its top choices for sub-$1000 notebooks.

Little was actually said about the 4062WLCi, but unlike a couple of the other notebooks featured, it was all positive comments for the Acer. The 4062WLCI was said to be, “…a budget notebook with plenty of viewing space and nice amount of storage capacity. ”

The other sub-$1000 notebooks featured were the Dell Inspiron 6000, Lenovo 3000 C100, and HP Compaq V2000Z.

(Source: NotebookReview.com)

Following up on earlier reviews of the Aspire 5670 by PC Authority and NotebookReview.com is an OCWorkBench.com review.

But even as it comes weeks after the earlier two reviews, its conclusions are pretty much similiar: “We tested the notebook and found it to be a bit warm. The system ran through all the benchmarks we threw at it without fail. As the notebook comes with a ATi Radeon X1400 mobility edition, it enhances the system for 3D games and better image quality for playback of DVD. You can also use the AVIVO video converter to take advantage of the video processor unit in the graphics core to speed up conversion of video formats. I would probably use the features of the ATi for better DVD playback with attachment to DVI out or Svideo out from the notebook.

We tested it with 3Dmark05 and it scored 1643 3dmarks. 3Dmark06 also ran without a problem and scored 850 marks with Sm2 at 242, HDR/SM3 at 349 and CPU score of 1318. PCmark05 scored 305. As we do not have an equivalent speed Single core centrino notebook to compare, we aren’t able to compare. The CPU score in the 3DMark06 shows that it is dual core at work.

As for wireless connectivity, we have no problems connecting to bluetooth devices and WiFi seems to be able to detect networks that are in the neighbourhood with ease.

Overall, the notebook is a winner in almost all aspects but it is just the weight and 3 hr battery life that might turn people away for smaller size and longer battery life. ”

A few days back, Acer reported consolidated sales of $667.44 million for April, which is an increase of 11.9% from last year, but a drop from March’s $990.29 million. Reasons provided for the fall include seasonal holidays, international currency fluctiation and other economic changes.

As a result, Acer has attempted to assuage investors and analysts by announcing that it has several aggresive business plans in place for the next two months, and is thus confident that it will be able to ensure that its performance in the second quarter would be “close to the first quarter.”

[News via IT Week]

Webaroo, a piece of software that will effective keep a cache of the web on your PC, will come pre-installed on Acer notebooks worldwide. This piece of news was announced around a month back, but I didn’t want to report about it until trying it out myself.

On the conceptual side of things, Webaroo will cache webpages ranked within the Top 20 of search engine results in order to power its offline search engine, and this will be backed by a technology that allows its software to compress information by a factor of 25,000. But users will get to choose which web packs (clusters of sites or search terms) they want to install in order to optimize the amount of space Webaroo takes up on your hard disk drive.

I found it pretty interesting while traveling without access to the net recently, but not as useful as I had expected. For one, I already tend to “cache” articles I find interesting (which I want to read or blog about) myself, so Webaroo doesn’t help too much in that respect. Furthermore, some of the sites I’d wanted to read based on a particular search term were outside the Top 20. So, no cached copy for me.

Overall, it’s interesting to see how Webaroo develops from here. Their revenue model is primarily based on the keyword-related ads displayed when a user searched through Webaroo’s library, and this is solid enough, but only if there’s enough users to encourage advertisers to come flocking to Webaroo. After all, wireless access is spreading fast, even if storage could “spread faster”, and techies will always find ways of getting some sort of internet connection. As such, I’m not so sure a techy audience would need Webaroo, and non-techies won’t really need the net while travelling, will they?

(Source: TrustedReviews)

PCWorld.com recently ran a cross-brand comparison between the top “desktop killer” notebooks on the market, not unlike in style to PCMag’s recent media center notebook comparison.

Among the desktop replacement notebooks featured were the HP Pavilion dv8000z, Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV600, the HP Compaq nx9420, the Acer Aspire AS9504WSMi, and the Acer TravelMate 8200.

Although my personal choice would be an Acer TravelMate 8200 due to its strong performance and revamped Acer style, it seems that the HP Pavilion dv8000z was just too good - taking top spot with an overall rating of 85. At second place, also with a rating of 85, was the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV600. And at third place was the HP Compaq nx9420 with a rating of 83. The Acer Aspire 9504WSMi took fourth while the Acer TravelMate 8200 took fifth place with ratings of 83 and 81, respectively.

(Source: Acer)

Rounding up a series of reviews on the venerable 19″ Acer AL1916W LCD monitor is a review by Digital Media Online.

There’s nothing special about the AL1916W’s specs, but given its age, we’re talking about seriously low prices. So, it shouldn’t be surprising to see the reviewer’s conclusion: “I was quite impressed with the Acer AL1916W Widescreen LCD Monitor. Even though it is a ‘bare-bones’ monitor with only a single VGA input, no audio, and limited controls it performed well on just about every one of my tests. The backlight leakage will be noticeable on very dark images but for most applications you’ll never notice it. I wished the stand provided more height but I can live with that. The extra screen real estate is great when you’ve got multiple windows opened and, if you are using the Windows Multimedia Center to watch movies it’s nice to be able to see the complete widescreen image without black bars. Finally, you simply can’t beat the price! I give the AL1916W high marks in just about every category. It’s not perfect but it’s a pretty darn good monitor for the price.”