Acer Extensa 3002WLM

Acer's low-cost Extensa range is perfect for the budget and educational markets. Acer has reduced costs on this particular 3000 series configuration by omitting Wi-Fi and accelerated graphics--however, these remain options.

The stylish 3002WLM has a 15.4" wide aspect display with a maximum resolution of 1280 x 800, driven by Intel Extreme Graphics 2 graphics (part of the 855GME chipset) that can steal up to 64MB from main memory.

Core specifications include an Intel Pentium M processor running at 1.6GHz, 256MB of 333MHz PC-2700 DDR SDRAM, a 4200rpm 40GB hard disk, multiformat DVD writer, S-Video TV-Out, FireWire and three USB 2.0 ports. One Type II PC Card is supported and cursor control is via a touchpad with scrolling button. Acer pre-installs Windows XP Home, its own custom software (covering boot order, power management and system settings) in addition to Acer Aspire Arcade 3.0 multimedia playback. It also bundles NTI CD & DVD-Maker 6.5 software and CyberLink PowerProducer 2 Gold for video authoring.

This brings us to one of the key advantages of this model: Acer has included a multiformat DVD burner as standard.

Our SYSMark 2001 benchmark returned 247 on the Acer, which is excellent for a sub-$2500 notebook. If you don't have a lot to spend, want a notebook that looks good, has a wide screen and can burn DVDs, this could be for you.