The Acer Ferrari 4000 Series is destined to become a popular laptop, with its celebrated Ferrari emblem and race-car design. It's a bit big for frequent travelers, though, and in order for Acer's Ferrari notebooks to count as a full line, there had to be another system. Just like Batman had Robin, the Ferrari 4000 now has a sidekick, and the new guy's got mobility in mind. The ultraportable Acer Ferrari 1000 Series ($1,999 list) gives new meaning to the term "carry-on," as it weighs a scant 3.5 pounds. It's also got a pretty fast engine, which we tech geeks refer to as an AMD Turion 64 X2 processor.From a distance, the Ferrari 1000 Series looks just like the Ferrari 4000: It has the same carbon fiber design, with red streaks running along the sides and Ferrari's signature stallion emblem. But as you move closer, you realize the Ferrari 1000 has been playing tricks on your eyes. At 11.7 by 8.7 by 1.4 inches (HWD), it's approximately half the size of the 6.6-pound Ferrari 4000, small enough so that the chassis actually leaves some wiggle room in your backpack.
Part of that magic is a result of the Ferrari 1000's smaller screen. It uses a brightly lit 12.1-inch widescreen (compared with the 4000 Series' 15.4-inch display)—great for watching movies on the go. The keyboard is full-size and fairly pleasing for touch typists and those who aren't (like, say, me). The mouse buttons below the touchpad are comfortably large, with "Ferrari 1000" emblazoned across the top. They complement the responsive touchpad well, though I could've done without the discernable clicking noises.
The system is built like the TravelMate 3002WTCi—Acer's business ultraportable—and like the 3002WTCi, it doesn't have a built-in optical drive. Given the Ferrari 1000's size, I feel it could've integrated one (other similarly sized ultraportables, such as the Sony VAIO SZ Series, manage to fit in an optical drive). Instead, you get a flashy external (FireWire) dual-layer DVD burner, decked out with a similar Ferrari design. I liked the addition of a 1.3-megapixel webcam on top of the screen. It rotates 360 degrees so you can type and do your own webcasting without turning the notebook around. And to feed the growing popularity of Skype and VoIP services, Acer includes a Bluetooth-enabled VoIP phone in the shape of a PC card. It both charges through and fits snuggly into your PC Card slot when you're not using it. Though that's certainly an intriguing design idea, the execution is less than ideal. The card doesn't work very well, and it actually feels hot when you pull it out of the card slot.
The Ferrari 1000 carries three USB ports. It also has a six-pin FireWire port, instead of the traditional four-pin type associated with camcorders. (If you need the four-pin connection, you can buy the appropriate FireWire cable at your local Radio Shack.) It also has integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; the Bluetooth came in real handy when I had to pull some pictures off my Bluetooth-enabled phone. But the Ferrari 1000's most impressive feature has to be the 160GB hard drive—it's the largest I've seen on an ultraportable.
Acer elected to go with a 1.8-GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-56 processor. The dual-core X2 is AMD's answer to Intel's Core Duo processor; the company has yet to come up with a match for the newly released Intel Core 2 Duos. The notebook's SYSmark 2004 SE performance scores were in line with those of the Dell Inspiron E1505, which houses a slightly slower, 1.6-GHz Intel Core Duo T2300. Still, the Ferrari 1000 completed our Adobe Photoshop and video encoding tests to my satisfaction (at 2 minutes 18 seconds and 8:46, respectively), albeit a bit slower than a similarly clocked Intel Core Duo-equipped system.
For graphics, the Ferrari 1000 uses the ATI Mobility Radeon 1150, which shares 256MB of video memory with the system's 1GB RAM. Two batteries come standard, and you'll need both, as the 22-Wh (3-cell) standard battery lasted only a miserable 1 hour 20 minutes on MobileMark 2005 tests. The 58-Wh extended battery fared much better, at 3:07.
If you're a big fan of Acer's Ferrari notebooks, the new Acer Ferrari 1000 Series offers a much smaller alternative to the Ferrari 4000 Series. It's small enough to be included in your travel plans, does a good job of representing the Ferrari brand, and even has the horsepower to match.
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