Acer Aspire L200 Ath64 3200+ 160Gb 512Mb Dvd-Rw MMCe2005 Best Buy

Sounds perfect but isn't - 27 Sep 2006

0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

As a media networking bod and hardware engineer I bought one of these to test in my home. The idea being that it would replace my HDD and I could network it (wireless or wired) to share media (recorded TV, Ripped DVDs, MP3, files) and printing facilities throughout our home wireless network with 5 laptops. As it is XP based and the standard memory (512Mb) seemed a little low for the strain I would be putting on it I also added 1Gb more RAM and also added an external 350Gb USB Hard Drive to hold more media. All my tests below were done before the external hard drive was added.

On the plus size it is small and well designed with just enough ports of various kinds to link all you need to it without using the USBs and Mini-Firewire ports on the front of the machine. It was provided with a USB Wireless card and has a fixed ethernet port.

In no way did I expect it to cope with recording live TV and streaming video and audio across the network at the same time - it couldn't manage it making the streaming jumpy and the recording a waste of time - but this is to be expected so I cannot criticise it for this.

Microsoft's Media Center is pretty good if you can stand the usual pandering to the lowest common denominator of technical ability that they intend to use it. Setup was fairly simple and it tuned digital freeview channels without problem.

The keyboard is good but the built in mouse is annoying to the point of being unusable to say the least - I will be buying a new wireless keyboard/mouse for it.

One thing I must warn about is that it hangs (at least mine does) fairly frequently (about 4 times in an evening) causing you to have to reboot the machine - not good if you have left it to record something off the TV. I'm not sure what is causing this as I have applied all the latest Microsoft updates - I will be investigating with Hauppage and Acer as their updates are not as easy to apply - in fact their online support for problems such as this is non-existant at the moment.

I added memory, which meant removing the cover. I do this day in day out in a static free environment and know the process completely - yet there was no way of getting the box open without breaking the "warranty void if broken" seal - this is not at all good for a computer - beware if you intend to upgrade memory or any other internal component yourself, you could be left high and dry if you need a warranty repair on anything else and you have done this.

Also be careful which sort of TV you put this on - it needs a SCART connection or separate S-Video and Audio Inputs in its simplest installation configuration. Obviously you'll essentially be using your TV as a computer monitor and this isn't always a good experience due to picture quality. I have put this on a 46" Sony LCD and the rendering is pretty bad - don't expect to use it as a PC.

In conclusion, it has potential and I don't want to take too much away from Acer or Microsoft though - the product is still a good one but I won't be recommending it to anyone just yet.