Among other things, I bought a new Acer Travelmate 290 LMi laptop from Bestbuy.com. I bought it on the 27th, picked it up from Bestbuy, that is. Here we go…(dont even ask about the price right now )

Acer Travelmate 290LMi

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CPU: 1.3-GHz Pentium M

Screen size: 15 inches

System memory: 512MB of DDR266 SDRAM

Hard drive: 40GB

Graphics: Intel 855GM using main memory

Pointing device: Touchpad

Expandability: One multipurpose bay, one PC Card slot

Extra features

Bundled removable-media drives: DVD-R/RW drive

Communications: Built-in V.92, NIC, and 802.11b Wi-Fi

Extra ports: Headphone jack, S-Video and FireWire ports

Battery life (hours:minutes): Outstanding: 4:50

Weight (typ/min in lbs): Average: 7.2/6.3

Pros :

I love the design, it has
a)a smooth lid
b)a very responsive and lovable key board
c)no awkward projections on the sides
d)a hardware switch to enable/diable the in-built Wireless Device

It has enough and more ports, what matters to me is it has,
a)3 USB ports (could use 1 each for mouse and keyboard, and then one for CompactFlash/Camera)
b)a Firewire Port.(useful to trasfer from a digital camcorder, only I dont have one, but one of my friends might buy one soon)
c)S-Video Out. (Can watch cricket matches/online movies/just-about-anything) on a TV.

Of course what made me buy it was the fact that it had
a) a DVD-R/RW writer (Samsung – Japanese)
b) 512 MB RAM
c) Centrino Chipset and Processor that runs faster than a P4 2.5 GHz
d) 1 GB(!!) on-chip Cache
e) 5.2 hours of battery life

While I am at it, what I dont like about it is that
a) It has no hardware volume control.
b) The speakers are said to be not-so-loud but I find it okay for now.
c) with Shared Memory Video RAM, high end gaming is ruled out (almost).
d) The DEL key is to the right of the space button, and at the top right corner.

OF course, I can deal with all that, and I love this Laptop, especially since I got it for $1099, after a $200 mail in rebate

This Machine is featured in PcWorld’s Top 3 Value Notebooks, and so I presume that its a good deal.