The Laptop review

Going on the experience of sales at Cheap Laptops and immediate colleagues, friends and family ACER are a real contender for affordable but capable laptops.

But why is that? Well, for just £352.49 (we musn't forget the obligatory 49p...) you can get your hands on an Acer Aspire 5051WLMi. Now, that's an ACER laptop with economy in mind - ie. you might "aspire" to upgrade to a Travelmate, Lamborghini etc.

What do you get?

For the price it is an impressive package powered by a powerful 2GHz AMD Turion 64 low power processor supported by 1 Gb RAM. Unusually for laptops it also has a 120 Gb hard drive and a built in DVD +/- RW. Not bad eh? Well, that's the one reason why ACER seem to be killing off Toshiba's long term domination of desktop replacement notebook PCs.

I like to call these laptops "tabletops" because they have quote high end processors and aren't ideal for travel / mobility but can still be popped away in the drawer once you've finished doing your online shopping from Tesco, ordered your wife (or partner!) some sexy lingerie to keep you out the doghouse and poked fun at friends on Facebook.

All of which moves us swiftly on to display.

Can I watch DVDS?

Well, this little laptop has a 14.1" WXGA monitor. That's Wide screen XGA in English and yes, good for personal DVD viewing but perhaps you would fork out for a 17" if you want to share. ACER laptops are alway fully featured and the cheaper models are no exception. The Acer Aspire 5051WLMi has a 5 in 1 card reader to make it easier to grab photos from a digital camera.

The laptop comes with Windows Vista home and a built in wireless interface.