The reason the keyboard is so far forward is that the battery takes up a large part of the back end of the 1810TZ's body. But that's a good thing, because it's a six-cell 5600mAh job so it can hold a charge for a good, long run.
The trackpad is a bit on the small side, but does do multi-touch
And it's well integrated into the 1810TZ's design, unlike some six-cell netbook batteries that jut out well beyond the lines of the laptop. Apart from a shallow bulge on the bottom of the machine, you wouldn't think this notebook had such a capacious power pack.
Speaking of the base, Acer has provided hatches for the 250GB Sata hard drive, the memory - two slots, both populated, alas - and the Wi-Fi card. Acer isn't currently selling a 3G-enabled 1810TZ in the UK, so while there is a SIM slot under the battery, there's no 3G card. Don't expect to be able to add one: there's space for it, but Acer hasn't fitted the secondary Mini PCI slot it would need, or the antenna cables. There's no Bluetooth, either.
But back to battery life. We took the 1810TZ to a conference, turned off Wi-Fi and nudged the display brightness down to its still-well-illuminated minimum and Windows reported we had well over eleven-and-a-half hours' runtime. And the battery wasn't even full.
Acer claims the Timeline series delivers over eight hours' battery life, and we can well believe it. Looping PCMark Vantage yielded a runtime of over four hours: 258 minutes, to be precise.
The keyboard's good to use
This is an extreme test designed to allow us to compare different laptop batteries properly, so don't expect a real-world runtime as low as this. We estimate you'll get around double this time using the Aspire for typical notebook browsing, email and productivity duties, so Acer's claim is right on the money.
Next page: Test Results
COMMENTS
What about linux?
I don't suppose you'd care to slap Ubuntu on it (and your other test machines) as a dual-boot and tell us what doesn't work out of the box?
I like the look of this, but if it can't do the linux thing, it's staying on the shelf...
@Steve Pemberton
A quick look at the spec reveals... 1.4kg / 3lbs.
first impressions
Just got my 1810TZ . Overall very nice--solid build quality, as suggested by the review. A few things the review didn't note: The USB ports are very tight. The sound has some background hiss, as expected for built-in sound. No hum or other frequencies (a problem I've encountered on other notebooks). There is a recovery partition on the hard disk. I made recovery discs (with an external DVD burner), then wanted to free up the space from the recovery partition, so I repartitioned the disk, and reinstalled from the recovery discs. This worked with no problems, though it did take it 1.5 hours (no human intervention required though).
Nice
Looks like a nice little machine. I would certainly consider one when I upgrade my current Acer Aspire 2920 (12.1" notebook, in fact reviewed on here a year or two back).
I just wish a few more manufacturers would start doing machines like this rather than over sized netbooks as not everyone wants to lug around a 15" or 17" machine (I certainly wouldn't want to lug a 17" machine around due to the weight), and sometimes we need a little bit more CPU power than an Atom can give.
Shame Acer didn't drop an ION chipset in this little machine though.
Rob
vs Asus Ul30A
I was looking at getting the same laptop, but with a bigger 13.3" screen, the 3810TZ.
Asus are bringing out their UL30A1 which is core duo, with other models such as UL30A2 etc. They work out a bit more expensive, but the battery life is considerably better, up to 11 hours.
The UL20A also seems a good deal. The 2 year international warranty compared to Acer's 1 year may also be a winner. Nothing on amazon UK as of yet, so I'm sitting tight for now. I think it's better to buy this after Christmas if at all possible once Asus' pricing has been confirmed.
