The Insanely Cheap Acer TravelMate 2428

Laptop manufacturers are racing to see who can build the fastest, finest notebooks boasting Intel Duo Core processors or the latest 64-bit AMD processors. These are the machines for people and businesses who can drop mad bills for the latest technology and not blink. At the other end of the pricing spectrum, is there any similar madcap development? Yes, there are entry level machines like the Acer TravelMate 2428 notebook.

Thankfully Acer hasn’t forgotten the little man-the student whose mommy and daddy don’t pick up the tab for everything, or the small business who financially can’t write off big IT checks yet. For these folks, at least they’ve put together in the Travelmate 2428 a nice little package, complete with an Intel Pentium M 735A (yes, only single core) that runs at 1.7 GHz along with the old 910 GML Express chipset for superior mobile battery life.

And despite the portable size, the Acer Travelmate 2428 does have a 14.1-inch widescreen with 1280 x 800 resolution. As this is Acer’s cheapie, however, do not expect their proprietary CrystalBrite high-gloss finish.

Oops, I’ve let the cat out of the bag. This is one of Acer’s cheaper notebooks, and yes, the company has done a complete service to the low-end buyers out there by releasing this laptop. But at the same time, there are some serious gaps in the Travelmate 2428, beyond just the lack of CrystalBrite.

Start with the memory. It only has 256 MB of DDR2. It can be upgraded, sure, to nearly double and triple that. Yet to start out with such little memory could hamper even the most basic of business users from multitasking. With the hard drive you only get 40 GB of memory.

But why dwell on the negatives, when this small business or college laptop has more than adequate wireless capabilities, and a read-write CD/DVD reader. It can even come loaded with Linux, for you penguin fans. And best of all, it can be had for only around $530 CDN-about $40 cheaper if you get the one with Linux!

Read – Indepth Review of the Acer Travelmate 2428

Related articles:

– Acer Travelmate 3000 wins design award

– Review of the Acer Travelmate 8100

By Matthew Brodsky – Laptopical

Monday, August 21, 2006