The rapid expansion of computer and mobile technologies has led to portable PCs of small size and weight and generously endowed with wireless capabilities. Such notebooks are good performers, running office and multimedia applications as well as modern 3D games. They are indispensable little helpers and sometimes even substitutes to desktop PCs. This miniaturization trend has its shortcomings, though. The compact size doesn’t often allow for making such a notebook into a high-performance machine.

Still, there’s a hope that the situation may change in the future and the gap between mobile and stationary systems will diminish.

As for today, we would like to offer you a review of the Acer TravelMate 371TCi notebook – exactly the product outlined above with its small size (273x213x24mm), light weight (1.7kg) and rich wireless capabilities.

Ergonomics and Design

Small and compact notebooks easily draw our attention and this model is no exception. Its original design, light weight and small size work on the customer as bait. The plastic case of the TravelMate 371TCi is colored light-silver. Sliding the spring latch on the butt-end to the left and lifting the lid you can see some dark-gray color, too.

The 12.1” screen has a maximum resolution of 1024x768; it is bright, good at rendering colors and with rather wide viewing angles. You control its brightness with appropriate functional keys. The range of the screen brightness is rather small, but the minimum level allows reading text in complete darkness without any discomfort.

Along the bottom edge of the display there are indicators of the system status; they form a row of LEDs under appropriate symbols. They include:

• Indicator of wireless connection (it shines in orange when the WLAN connection is active);
• Power indicator (green);
• Standby mode indicator;
• HDD activity LED;
• Indicator of the battery charge;
• Caps Lock indicator;
• Num Lock indicator.

You can’t see these LEDs when the lid is closed, so the WLAN, power and standby indicators are also duplicated on the outer surface of the lid (I think it would be even better if they had placed a battery charge indicator here, too).

Above the keyboard, in the center, there’s a round power on/off button and quick-launch buttons:

• a button that activates the WLAN connection module;
• three user-programmed buttons for launching your favorite applications;
• a button that starts up your default Internet browser;
• a button to launch your e-mail client.