Acer Aspire 5920

Woo, this is another interesting notebook. According to the CNET article, it is going to come in at GBP 799. So, it's a little bit pricier than some of the other Santa Rosa notebooks I've reviewed so far. However, it does have several interesting features.

Firstly, it's designed by BMW. Acer is famous for being the first PC notebook manufacturer to collaborate with a car company, Ferrari, to design notebooks. So, it has a fairly distinct look to it. Acer calls it the "gemstone" design.

Secondly, the review implies that it'll come in with a T7300 instead of the slower T7100 processor. The T7300 has a 10% faster clock speed with 2x the avalable L2 cache, both of which can easily boost application speeds up by a wide margin.

Thirdly, like the S41, it sports an NV 8600M GT graphics chip, which has twice the performance of the NV 8400M GS that the R70 (and many other entry level Santa Rosa) comes with. So, it's certainly quite interesting from the gaming perspective. All I want is a notebook that can play Doom3 decently. Although gaming isn't a high priority for me, it would be a useful feature to have if the price is right.

Fourthly, it's probably one of the only notebooks to integrate a 2.1 sound system, as it comes with it's own sub-woofer. I have no idea how this is going to factor into the weight and battery life. Although it's Dolby certified, I'm fairly certain that I'm unlikely to get the kind of auditory experience that I get with a standard 2.1 sound system. So, it's more a gimmick rather than a feature.

Anyway, just another notebook to consider. It's not available yet, so no ideas on final pricing yet. It might be a leading candidate if the price was right.