Review: Acer Travelmate 5520 Notebook

Don Bradbury rates this mid-power, high value, Vista Home Premium computer

Product	TravelMate 5520-5A1G12
Company	Acer
Web	www.acer.co.uk Acknowledgments: Our thanks to Laptops Direct for the loan of this machine
Price	£384.31 plus VAT, from www.mpcomp.co.uk
We like	Vista Home Premium installed; good keyboard and touchpad; bright, evenly lit screen; excellent connectivity options; price.
We don't like	The AMD Turion dual core processor is not the most powerful within the reach of this price bracket. The manual is barely adequate for a computing newcomer, and purchasers deserve to know which of the many “manufacturer’s option” or ”selected models” he has to hand.
Rating	9/10
Specification

Acer offers a simply astounding range of laptop computers, so much so that you may wonder where to start if you want to select from their range. The TravelMate 5520 model, in its 5A1G12 trim - among sundry options you can consider - is a 1.7GHz dual core AMD Turion 64 X2 TK-53 powered computer. Not the most powerful "kid on the block", though adequate, but perhaps the machine's main claim to fame is that it's simply bristling with connectivity options. More on this later.

With total installed memory of 1GB, a 120GB 5400rpm Hitachi hard drive, graphics by ATI Mobility Radeon X1250 using 384MB of shared memory, a DVD+/-RW +/-DL optical drive that matches the operational speeds you expect of this price bracket, an integrated Orbicam 1.3 megapixel webcam, and all the usual provisions of such a machine such as headphones and line-in sockets (accepting output from an MP3 player, audio CD player, Walkman etc), plus a microphone jack (an alternative for the built-in mic by the webcam), it lacks but little provided you don't want to play the latest high power games on it.

The curved keyboard is one of the best in the laptop range, with adequate key travel and positive feel, though there is very slight "sink" as you hit the more central keys. The trackpad, similarly, is what you would expect from Acer; sensitive, excellent touch, and managed by responsive controls.

Connectivity

Very little has been forgotten by way of connectivity options, either, as we said. With graphics output of D-sub, S-video/TV out (NTSC/PAL), and composite, you can connect the video to most anything. The WXGA 15.4inch TFT, native 1280 x 800 pixel resolution glossy screen is excellent provided you can avoid bright backgrounds where reflections might be troublesome.

There are four USB 2.0 ports, three at the rear and one down the left side, and one Firewire 400 port on the left, albeit with a mini-port connector for which you might need a special connector. But digital video cameras normally provide a cable terminating for this port size, and that, for many, will be the usual application.

A type II CardBus and an ExpressCard/54 slot cater for both legacy and future expansion cards, but unfortunately (though understandably on a notebook) these two slots are stacked one on top of the other, so any bulging-port card in the lower ExpressCard slot necessarily impinges on the space of the upper CardBus area. You'll get away with a slim ExpressCard in the lower slot and a bulging CardBus in the upper slot, but not the other way round (see graphic below). Fortunately, few will want to use both expansion options together.

A built-in memory card reader was most welcome; it can accept the commonest formats currently in use, including Secure Digital, MultiMedia, Memory Stick Pro, and xD cards. With an InfraRed port, Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000, 802.11a/b/g Internet connectivity, integral modem for those using dial-up, and as a good a RealTec HD sound system as you're likely to meet on a laptop, especially in this price bracket, the machine looks, feels and sounds splendid.

Status

A bank of status lights on the front indicate power, battery, Bluetooth wireless, and wireless LAN activity, though Bluetooth is not installed as delivered on this model. Wireless reception can be switched off from a control on the front of the machine. At the rear a set of status lights reflect the situation with respect to hard drive activity, plus the usual num lock and caps lock status.

Down the left is a range of easy-launch buttons by means of which you can launch mail, web browser (both reallocatable) , an Acer Empowering Technology key, and one user-programmable key. Another key runs Windows' lock function for security while away from the machine, the Presentation key minimises open application windows, and finally the Synch key can synchronise the computer with an external storage device, again ensuring data security.

NTI Shadow is a backup scheduling and archiving utility. It supports backups to hard drives, both local and USB or Firewire, USB sticks, NAS devices, and in fact any drive that has a drive letter assigned in Device Manager.

Software

Norton Internet Security comes pre-installed. This is a trial-period installation, for which you later have to pay for updates, but it is intended to protect the user from virus attacks, hackers, spammers and so on. Whether you intend to use it or uninstall it and use your own security software is up to the user, but you do need some form of extra security to add to Windows' own Firewall.

The machine also comes with a trial-period version of Microsoft Office 2007, Cyberlink PowerDVD 7 caters for all your DVD needs, NTI CD-Maker similarly provides for your CD burning requirements, and as we said, NTI Shadow is for backups.

There are, as you'd expect, no legacy ports, although those who need them could always add then via a USB port adapter. No carrying case, no Windows CD, and no optional extras are again what you might expect in the price bracket.

A Restore Partition operating system restore option is there, though, and there's so much software installed as standard that, in two partitions on the main drive, just 41GB (75%) remains free out of 54.6GB on the C: partition, and 32GB (68%) remains free out of 47.4GB on the D: data partition.

Windows Vista Home Premium is the installed operating system, and that brings with it Windows Media Centre for your audio, video, and photo files. It also enables an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) for a TV tuner, if you add one. Backup scheduling is useful, the Vista Aero Desktop you may come to appreciate, and live application previews when you hover over an icon are also useful.

Windows' Mobility Center is a good tool for networkers, showing also battery status and other useful functions that are thereby more readily to hand.

Running on batteries

Battery life varies with the power setting. We measured around 1hr 35mins at the high power setting, and 2hr 15mins when running on lower power, each timing taken with appropriate disk and video activity together with a little webcam operation - which appeared to zap battery life somewhat.

This Orbicam webcam, a 1.3megapixel type, gave excellent picture quality, with minimal loss of synch when facing a moving object. Acer Video Conferencing software features support for the webcam, and enhanced Acer PrimaLite and optional Acer VOIP phone. The plethora of optional additions, or manufacturer's options, we have to say, did not make for quick assimilation of this machine's total functionality. Ideally, manufacturer's would produce machine-specific manuals, though we understand the problems of adding print costs to those of the hardware itself.

Acer's InviLink software for fast 802.11b/g/Draft N wireless networking is integral; it is Wake-On-LAN ready, and WPAN Bluetooth 2.0+EDR wireless technology also adds additional wireless functionality if you choose to add it.

Vista's integrated performance benchmarking software didn't reflect the differing power options we tried when testing battery life, nor anything else we varied for that matter, though moving between the three options made obvious differences to workability. The balanced option, which is the default, we found entirely adequate for normal operations.

In conclusion

This Acer TravelMate 5520 will probably not be considered a high-power gamer's machine, we should make that clear, especially if they are into the latest whiz-bang games, but in all other respects it's no slouch, running the demanding Vista Home Premium as well as you'd expect. The connectivity options were excellent, power saving options made for usefully selectable battery life, a Kensington lock added security, and with the typical one year return-to-base warranty, at this price it could be regarded as something of a bargain.

 

Don Bradbury