1. Mighty Matt Screen And High-Grade Components

Although the Travelmate 803LCi looks relatively slim (overall height 34 mm) due to its 15.1" display, it is by no means small (area 333 x 284 mm). With 1400 x 1050 pixels, the display offers SXGA+-resolution, while rapid screen build-up is ensured by ATI's Mobility Radeon 9000 GPU, which features over 64 MB of dedicated RAM.

So that the DirectX8-enabled GPU's thirst for action is not held back, Acer equips this high-end model of the 800 series with what is currently the fastest Pentium-M (1.6 GHz). In combination with Intel's 855PM chipset and the Intel Pro WLAN module based on the 802.11b standard, this notebook is truly a Centrino device - after all, Acer wants to secure a chunk of the abundant marketing funds earmarked for Intel's Centrino-Mobile-Technology , too.

By way of a 10/100-Mbit LAN chip, Acer has quite surprisingly chosen a product from the company Broadcom . Evidently, some manufacturers are capable of contributing powerful network components for use in the notebook without stirring up much of a marketing hullabaloo.

The DVD-CD-R/RW combined drive also ranks at the top of the scale in terms of current (mobile) performance. Maximum writing speeds of 24x onto CD-Rs and 10x onto CD-RWs currently denote the top-of-the-range within the mobile segment.

With its decision to use the Hitachi Travelstar 40GN hard drive in this test sample, Acer is giving away quite a bit on the performance side, as the model spins at "only" 4200 rpm. With the Travelstar 60GH, Acer also has a larger and, with 5200 rpm, faster hard disk drive in its portfolio for the 800 series.

According to the manufacturer, the memory configuration of the 800 series is restricted to a maximum of 1 GB, despite the fact that the chipset would permit up to 2 GB of RAM. However, this should deter only very few users from purchasing this device.