Acer Aspire 1500: a first look

Acer Aspire 1500: a 64-bit Athlon 64-based desktop replacement notebook, starting at £999 (inc. VAT).

The are three models in the Aspire 1500 range at launch. Hitting the £999 (inc. VAT) 'sweet spot' is the 1501LCe, which features the Athlon 64 3000+ with 512MB of DDR333 RAM (upgradeable to 2GB), a 40GB hard drive and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive, plus a 15in. XGA display driven by ATI's 64MB M10 Radeon 9600 graphics accelerator. Wired (gigabit) and wireless (802.11g) networking is provided, along with a floppy drive, dual Type PC Card slots and a 3-in-1 flash memory card reader. You also get a good set of ports: 4 USB 2.0, FireWire, parallel, VGA and S-Video-out.

This is hardly an entry-level specification, but the £1,199 (inc. VAT) 1501LMi model adds an SXGA+ display, a multi-format DVD burner and a 60GB hard drive, while the top-of-the-range 1503LMi (£1,299 inc. VAT) rounds off the feature list with an Athlon 64 3200+ processor.

The Aspire 1500 is not a notebook designed for use on the move, although Acer reckons you'll get between 2 and 3 hours' life if you do use it away from a mains power source. Neither the optical nor the floppy drive is modular, though, so there's no option to fit a second battery if you want more mobile uptime.

The Athlon 64 processor has performed well in benchmark tests running 32-bit applications on a 32-bit operating system, and Microsoft's 64-bit version of Windows XP for AMD processors has just become available for download in beta form. So the well-priced Aspire 1500 should prove a tempting prospect both for power users of today's software and for early adopters who are keen to run 64-bit applications when they arrive.

We expect to test a review sample of the Aspire 1500 within the next few weeks, so keep checking back for our verdict.

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