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A Fast Ferrari with No Wheels
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With its bright red, reflective top and silver trim, the Ferrari 3200 certainly has the looks to act as an attractive accessory for the fashion conscious. Measuring 330 x 272 x 31 mm (W x D x H), this notebook will draw its fair share of admiring glances from those round where ever you are. Add in the slim-line mouse, also coloured red with a kicking horse logo, and you will probably be inundated with questions as to its specifications and how well it performs.
Acer has opted to base this notebook on the low-power mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor 2800+ with the VIA Pro Savage K8T800 series chipset. 512MB DDR RAM comes as standard and this can be increased to 2048MB. The use of AMD64 technology brings with it HyperTransport technology to improve multitasking. AMD PowerNow technology for extended battery life is also included but this appeared to have little effect as I was only able to achieve just over 2½ hours of working use.
Raising the lid of the notebook reveals a 15.0 inch SXGA TFT LCD screen which supports 1400 x 1050 pixels resolution displaying 16.7 million colours. The display is powered by an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 chipset with 128MB of DDR dedicated video RAM making use of an 8x AGP graphics accelerator. This set up is capable of producing excellent results although at some angles, using natural light, the quality tends to suffer a little.
The size of the laptop is such that Acer has been able to fit in a standard keyboard with additional items. There are a number of easy-launch keys for Internet and email plus two keys that are programmable. There is also room for a touchpad with 4-way integrated scroll control. On either side of this pad are areas for resting your wrists while typing.
Along with the 80GB hard disk, the Ferrari 3200 has a slot-loading DVD Super Multi drive that supports all the common formats. Whether it was due to the slot-loading feature, without the protection of a tray, or not, it was noticeable that any removable optical media tended to be rather warm to the touch if it had been in use for any length of time. This heat problem also affected the chassis of the notebook. Even after sessions lasting no more than thirty minutes, it was uncomfortable working with the unit resting of your knee. At just over 3 kilos, the weight of the notebook also didnt help in this respect but at least it meant you were getting a solid piece of kit.
Dotting around the sides of the unit is a wide range of connectivity options. The front of the notebook houses a four-in-one card reader covering Secure Digital, Smart Media, MultiMedia and Memory Stick formats. There are also infrared, Bluetooth and InviLink (for wireless) options. On the left you will find a PC Card slot, Firewire IEEE 1394 port and four USB 2.0 ports. The right side holds the DVD drive and power connection. Arranged along the back are connections for the built-in modem, network link and parallel ports plus external monitor, s-video and security key lock.
The Ferrari 3200 notebook looks appealing, has excellent connectivity options and a performance that should satisfy more users. Its tendency to get warm is common among the notebook fraternity; slightly more worrying is how this heat might affect optical media that is in use for extended sessions. With its quality build, specifications, brand awareness and Windows XP Home Edition, the Ferrari 3200s price of £1455 is reasonable.
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