ACI Centurion

On first impressions, the Centurion is a very understated notebook. It doesn't have any gimmicks to speak of and runs a 1.3GHz Intel Pentium-M Centrino processor, which contains technology to extend battery life and provide Wi-Fi capability. This is backed up with 512Mb of memory.

However, all the formidable processing clout is blunted somewhat by a very average 40Gb hard disk. For this kind of price we would have like to have seen a bigger hard disk. Many people's MP3 collection can amount to over 10Gb and hard disk intensive uses, such as video editing, will gobble up even more megabytes once you have an operating system and a few games and applications installed. For a notebook of this stature and price, we'd expect nothing less than 40Gb.

The Centurion comes with a DVD/CD-RW combination drive to watch DVDs and create data and audio CDs. If it wasn't Centrino enabled, we would have expected a DVD-RW drive. However, Centrino technology is still quite expensive so manufacturers tend to compromise on hardware to keep the cost down.

The TFT screen has a maximum resolution of 1440 x 1050, and is great for watching DVDs. The ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics card utilises 64Mb of dedicated memory, allowing most modern games to run well.

The keyboard is also a nice treat, with loads of room to rest your wrists while typing. It also feels a great deal more comfortable than many notebooks we've looked at recently.

There are also a couple of useful extras that help the Centurion's case somewhat. The memory card reader is a handy addition, if you use SD cards and the DVD/CD-RW drive can be 'hot swapped' for an optional floppy disk drive.

The Centurion has all the basic connectivity we would expect. There is a built-in modem, network port, mini-FireWire, PC card and infrared. There are also three USB 2 ports, but there are no ports for attaching a keyboard or mouse. The software bundle is pretty reasonable with Nero, WinDVD and Microsoft Works included, which is enough to begin taking full advantage of the Centurion's processing capability. A year's parts, a collect-and-return warranty, lifetime labour and technical support will also provide peace of mind to a lot of people.

Overall, there aren't a great deal of outstanding features and in comparison to some of the other notebooks we've seen recently (which we're far better specified for the same cost), there seems to be little that would make the Centurion worth the money. The promise of improved battery life and mobility offered by the Centrino processor simply isn't enough reason to justify the large price tag.

Contact: ACI 020 8830 1958
www.aciplc.com