No, not the sportscar! The Ferrari laptop from Acer ;o)
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a person at Microsoft asking if I would be interested in checking out Windows Vista running on Acer’s Ferrari 1000 laptop. I had actually received a release candidate CD of Vista while attending this year’s Mobius event in Boston. But, I didn’t have any hardware to install it on, so I’ve never had a chance to play with it. I was told that I could send the machine back to Microsoft, keep it or give it away after testing it. He actually even said that I didn’t have to write about it if I didn’t want to. Of course I wanted to test and write about my experiences, so I happily gave him the ok to send me one.
About an hour ago, DHL dropped off the box. I’m supposed to be writing a review for tonight, but I have a feeling that isn’t going to happen now…
Nice box :o)
The top tray holds the notebook, a neoprene slip case and a black plastic compact-type snap case with a polishing cloth inside. The bottom tray holds all the cords, extra battery (high capacity), external drive and user guides.
All the goodies spread out (oops, I forgot to include the neoprene slip case… sorry). The little PC Card sized device in the foreground is a PC Card VoIP Bluetooth phone. Also include is a nice wireless Ferrari branded mouse. Nifty.
The Ferrari 1000 appears to be a very slick notebook. Here are the specs:
AMD dual core 64-bit TL-56 1.80GHz
1790mb RAM
ATI Radion Xpress 1150 video
SATA 160gb Hard drive
Acer CrystalBrite 12.1 Widescreen LCD
External bus powered IEEE 1394 DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive
and… Windows Vista Premium
All I’ve done so far is power it on and admire the nice display and Mac-like widgets on the desktop. I have noticed something while I’ve been sitting here writing this entry (on my iMac), the fan and hard disk on the Ferrari seems to run a lot even when it’s in idle mode. Noise annoys me.
More as I get acclimated to this new machine and OS. I think I may take this laptop with me to CES in a couple weeks.
