Acer TravelMate 4060

Prioritizing value and usability over technological prowess, Acer’s update to the TravelMate 4000 line packs a 15.4-inch WXGA monitor into a 6.4-pound, $999 package. Sporting a comfortable, if not stunning, design and a range of flexible power-management features, this mainstream notebook almost overcomes its skimpy two-hour battery life.

The case is business oriented all the way, with a silver plastic cover and interior. The black keyboard features Acer’s five-degree curved design; it’s quiet and responsive. The two mouse buttons are large and easy to blindly use with your thumbs, as is the middle rocker button. The trade-off for the full keyboard and large screen is a sizable chassis, which occupies a 14.3 x 11-inch footprint. The system’s 1.5-inch profile makes occasional mobility possible.

A low-profile bank of configurable quick launch buttons sit right next to the Power button. By default, they launch a Web browser, e-mail client, and Acer utility panel, but you can program them to your liking. All feature a quick response time. Acer covers the basics with respect to ports; the right side features two USB 2.0 ports, a PC Card slot and phone and Ethernet jacks. On the left side is the CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive (upgradeable to dual-layer DVD-RW) and the rear panel features a VGA port. We noticed that the DC power cord jack is extremely snug; it takes work to remove the power cable.

The 15.4-inch WXGA display is presentable, but otherwise unremarkable. It’s easy to read when viewing text and spreadsheets, but didn’t impress us while displaying video and photographs. It’s a bit too soft to serve as a real multimedia display.

The front edge is busy, with indicator lights (power, battery, and Bluetooth), a USB 2.0 port, speakers, and headphone and microphone jacks. Like the display, the sound from the front-mounted speakers is workable, but not outstanding. The speaker placement will potentially muffle the output, especially if the Acer is positioned in your lap.

This TravelMate is well suited for productivity, scoring a competent 203 in MobileMark 2005. The 1.73-GHz Pentium M 740 processor is able to plow through several tasks at once. We edited a 300-page Word document, browsed the Web, and ran a DVD in the background without a hitch. To keep the price low, Acer skimps on bundled software, packaging only Norton AntiVirus, PowerDVD, and NTI CD-Maker, which means an extra expense for those who require an office suite.

The 4060 is not suited for multimedia creation or gaming, demonstrated by the low 3DMark03 score of 1,080. The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 managed to squeak out under ten frames per second in most tests. We chugged through The Movies with the settings cranked down, but the experience wasn’t fluid.

On a full charge, the battery squeezed out a paltry 2 hours and 15 minutes, and four minutes less with the Wi-Fi radio turned on. Watching Out of Sight on DVD full screen with the Wi-Fi turned off, the TravelMate 4060 gave out after 80 minutes. Acer includes a smart power management application, which comes with a number of presets that will change the screen’s brightness, tweak the hard drive’s idle settings, and turn the wireless on or off. With such short endurance, using these settings is a must.

One unique feature is Acer’s wireless SignalUp technology, which strengthens Wi-Fi performance. At 50 feet from our access point, the TravelMate 4060 delivered very good throughput of 11 Mbps, a very slight dip from 12.2 Mbps at 5 feet.

The TravelMate 4060 is a solid business performer, but its short battery life prevents us from recommending it to road warriors. For home or office users, however, this system is a solid value.