Jason Dunn
03-05-2004, 10:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115077,tk,dn030404X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115077,tk,dn030404X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"Acer America came out with a new notebook Wednesday that offers the performance of a workstation at a price that helps make up for the system's significant weight, the company said in a release. Heavy desktop replacement notebooks are nothing new to the PC market, having driven much of the consumer demand for PCs over the past year. <br /><br />True mobile workstations for traveling business customers, however, are generally more expensive than the $1499 Acer Aspire 1710 introduced Wednesday. At that price, the Acer notebook includes a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4 processor from Intel, a 17-inch wide-screen display, 512MB of memory, an 80GB hard drive, a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive, a GeForce FX Go5700 graphics card from NVidia with 64MB of video memory, and built-in 802.11g wireless LAN technology."<br /><br />Acer's new budget notebook weighs, are you ready for this, <b>15.7 POUNDS</b>! 8O That's insane! But I suppose if you want desktop power for media editing in a "mobile" package, this is the way to go. I've more or less got my heart set on an <a href="http://h30015.www3.hp.com/hp_dec/products/zd7000series.asp">HP zd7000</a> monster of a notebook, but it's a svelte 9 pounds. I priced out a zd7000 to match the specs on the Acer, and it comes in at $1722 - only $200 or so more than the Acer. Would you pay $200 more for a notebook that's half the weight? I would. ;-)