Marketed as a (semi) desktop replacement notebook alongside the Travelmate 6492, this 15.4″ laptop isn’t the lightest on the block at an average weight of 2.9kg. But it does pack quite a punch with its 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X2300-HD (up to 896MB if supplemented by your system RAM) graphics card, 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and max. 4GB DDR2 RAM.

ZDNet UK takes a look at it and awards a 7/10 rating, plus the conclusion that: “This is an affordable notebook that should suit anyone looking for a capable, mostly desk-bound, system. Although it’s fairly basic, the webcam is a nice extra, while fingerprint recognition is fast becoming a ‘must have’ feature for business users.”

I’m sure you’ve seen people running 4 windows per screen before, all arranged neatly in a square grid. Besides the oomph factor that comes with having the screen size (and the tech smarts) to do something like that, it does help improve productivity, at least if you know what you’re doing.

Well, that’s actually what the Acer GridVista tool helps you to accomplish. It provides you predetermined grid configurations (as shown below), dividing your screen into blocks to place your windows in. And it supports dual-monitor rigs as well, so that’s up to 8 windows displayed at once. One extra feature you may not see on competing software is the transparency option, which allows you to set certain windows as transparent - helping you organise a multi-window workspace.

Most Acer notebooks should already have it preinstalled, but if you happen not to have it, download the software from Acer’s support website. Just choose any new notebook model, e.g. the Aspire 9920, and pick up the GridVista tool for that notebook.

Oh yes, there are competing tools available. My personal favourite is running a combination of Ultramon for proper multi-monitor support and GridMove (freeware) for the multi-window grids. You can find more alternatives at Lifehacker’s post on GridMove.

(Source: Fujitsu)

Trolling through Acer’s recent laptop offerings, I was particularly fixated by those with massive storage space. In particular, the Acer Aspire 7720 and 9920 got my attention, each with two 160GB hard disk drives.

But with 320GB HDDs already set to ship in the 4th quarter of this year (Toshiba’s MK52GSX) or at latest Q1 2008 (Fujitsu’s MHZ2 BH), one wonders how far (or rather how big) we’re going to get in 6 months time. Is a 2x 320GB = 640GB configuration realistic heat-wise (since other technical issues seem entirely solvable)? Anyone with enough tech-smarts to give us any input on this?

Here’s another budget AMD Turion64-powered Acer notebook, this time a 1.7GHz model (compared to the 1.8GHz sported by the Aspire 7520 reviewed earlier). Everything else looks to be somewhat similar, i.e. 1GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB HDD (vs. 80GB on the 7520), except for the 5050’s smaller 14.1″ screen.

TigerDirect video reviews this laptop and well… waxes lyrical about it - even though the reviewer clearly knows nuts about giving useful comments. The entire review is pretty much a specs listing than anything else, but hey, it’s good enough for a laugh if you have nothing else to do I guess.

In any case, you’d be better served checking out the Aspire 7520 review, which conclusions should pretty much hold for the 5050-5430. What I can say is that the 5050 is a budget notebook good for everyday use, but it’s certainly not something for design or speed-lovers.

This 1.8GHz AMD Turion64-powered notebook certainly isn’t big on specs, but hey, for those in the UK, you’ll find it cheap at Tesco (sub-400 pounds). With a 17″ LCD screen, 1GB of DDR2 RAM and an 80GB hard drive, it’ll cover everyday use, but don’t expect too much.

At least, that’s Computeract!ve’s conclusion on this Gemstone: “While it’s certainly cheap and it will do the job reasonably well if you’re only interested in word processing, email and a little light web browsing, there are better deals available. Then again, if you factor in an extra £50 or so for a memory upgrade, the Acer Aspire 7520 starts to look like a much better deal. It is on sale now, in Tesco stores and online at tesco.com. ”