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The important dimensions are 42x32x6cm with cables inserted. It is black with chrome effect front. This is extremely thin for a PC given that there is a DVD/CD-RW on the front that also has a drop down door that hides four USB2 ports and a four pin FireWire.

The sides have nothing so either side can easily be placed against a wall. The back has one external card slot occupied by a digital TV and radio card. There are the standard three audio connectors, a further four USB2 ports, a six pin 1394 (FireWire) port as well as PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports. There is also a parallel port, 10/100 port and TV and S-Video ports.

See also: Laptops

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The unit is supplied with one of the wireless keyboards with mouse on it. I am told there should be a wireless adapter that looks like a small black mouse but this failed to arrive. I therefore used a standard mouse and keyboard in the PS/2 ports. As with all media centres there is a remote control (48 keys) and luckily the receiver for this was shipped. Once in ‘media centre’ mode you rarely need the keyboard. There is no monitor or panel supplied but all the leads including a SCART adapter plug to run it from a TV. Also supplied is a USB Wireless LAN adapter that looks exactly like a Pen Drive.

Software supplied is Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005, Norton Anti Virus, CyberLink Power DVD, NTI CD-Maker Gold and Adobe Reader 6.

I used the unit with my TV, a 15inch panel and an excellent 20inch panel that a review will follow shortly. Both the 15 inch and 20 inch panels have internal speakers and while the sound chip in the unit was okay for sounds from within Windows neither had enough volume to watch TV programs unless you have ‘bat ears’. As soon as you attach external powered speakers the volume level is plenty even if you are slightly deaf.

The TV/Radio card supplied is Digital and I think it found 36 TV channels using my standard TV aerial. I found the TV image perfect but do remember digital TV images are either perfect or non existent. While doing some of my tests I had my Analogue TV on beside the Digital signal on the TV/Radio card I knew there was a lag with digital signals but I timed it at almost four seconds, certainly more than I expected.

Remembering that I had to use a corded keyboard and mouse, the cordless keyboard offering is a good idea however I always find the mouse part ‘built in pointing device’ on these cordless keyboards very hard to use with any accuracy. I would suggest a corded rodent or at least a separate cordless one if you plan to use the non media centre part for any great amount on time.

The unit is extremely quiet in use and only a whirl is heard on initial boot up. The unit has an AMD Athlon 64 processor 3200+ and 512MB or RAM and a 160GB hard disc. If you want a Media Centre PC then this should be on your shortlist. This is still very new and as yet not on the Acer website, likely price around £899. It could be called the Aspire L200 or maybe Aspire Living Centre either way it’s a Media Centre.

www.acer.co.uk  and then search for any of the above possible names in the next few weeks.