I think it would be right to compare the results of the TravelMate 371TCi with those of another notebook from Acer, the Aspire 2001WLCi, we reviewed earlier. Unlike the TravelMate 371TCi with its positioning as a mobile and compact portable computer, the Acer Aspire 2001WLCi is a “desktop notebook”. This computer is also based around the Centrino technology, but with the Intel 82855PM chipset that supports 333MHz memory frequency (the Intel 855GM chipset of the TravelMate 371TCi can only clock the memory at 266MHz). The Aspire features an Intel Pentium M 1.4GHz processor (Banias core, 0.13-micron technology), too. The notebooks have different memory frequencies (266MHz in the TravelMate 371TCi against 333MHz in the Aspire 2001WLCi), hard disk drives (a 5400rpm 40GB Seagate ST94011A with 2MB cache against a 4200rpm 40GB Toshiba MK4025GAS with 8MB cache). The Aspire uses the RADEON MOBILITY 9200 as the graphics subsystem, so we’ll only compare the results of SiSoftware Sandra 2004 and Business Winstone 2004 tests.

SiSoftware Sandra 2004 produced close CPU performance ratings (fitting into the measurement error range), while the PRs of the memory and disk subsystems differ between the notebooks (the Aspire 2001WLCi has a higher memory clock rate, and the TravelMate 371TCi has a higher HDD spindle rotation speed). You can see the results in the following diagrams:

The TravelMate 371TCi uses a faster hard disk drive (5400rpm against 4200rpm), so the performance of its disk subsystem is 15% higher.

The results of Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests that emulate the standard Windows environment with office and multimedia applications running, are reassuring. The TravelMate 371TCi is about 3-4% faster than the Aspire 2001WLCi in Business Winstone 2004. The following table contains the results:

The diagram below shows the performance of the notebook in Business Winstone 2004 and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004: