Aspire 9800: Trending Toward Tyranasausus Rex

Notebooks are supposed to be ultraportable, and easy to carry across the world. Right? Anybody out there with me? Or are all of you desktop replacers? You know the demented folks I’m talking about-the ones who want the mass and multimedia of a desktop computer, but for some reason want it in the form (and I use that word lightly) of a laptop. Of course, no offense meant. We’re all friends here at Laptopical. I must just be having a bad day. USA just lost in the World Cup, 3 to nil

To make it up to you, I will recommend the new Tyranasaurus Rex of desktop replacement laptops, the Acer Aspire 9800. It definitely fits the size requirements for this category: it weighs in at 17-plus pounds with a 20.1-inch display that measures more than an inch thick.

But, oh, what Acer fit into that massive body. The display, first off, comes with Acer’s CrystalBrite coating, which is one of top high-contrast finishes on the market. That means your games, DVDs and photos will shine on beyond what you’d expect from the resolution. You’ll need this quality picture to appreciate the built-in 1.3-megapixel camera, hybrid TV tuner, and DVD/CD burner. (Supposedly, down the road there will even be a high-def DVD drive.)

Built like a brick warehouse, you would also expect this Acer laptop to have plenty of storage, and actually the desktop-er, I mean laptop-goes above and beyond most people’s needs. The Aspire 9800 has two 120GB hard drives, both set into RAID 0 array, meaning both are practically 100 percent open for full independent storage. RAID 1, on the other hand, would have provided backup storage, and security, but wouldn’t give nearly 240GB of space.

And what would be a laptop made in 2006 without a dual-core processor? One possible mix of components in the 9800 includes an Intel Core Duo T2300 with 1.66GHz and 1GB of DDR2 memory, along with an nVidia GeForce GO 7600 with 256MB dedicated memory.

Add in nearly every port and card slot under the sun, and you can understand why this Aspire 9800 is as big as the moon – but that’s exactly what you desktop replacers want, right?

More – Review of the Acer Aspire 9800

By Matthew Brodsky

Monday, June 19, 2006