Acer TravelMate 4202WLMi
Notebook Reviews > Acer TravelMate > 4202WLMi

Targeted at the value-conscious small-business user, the Acer TravelMate 4202WLMi is a powerful workhorse at an affordable price. The 4202WLMi comes with an Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66 GHz) processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and plenty of storage capacity in the form a 100GB Ultra ATA hard drive.

At its standard configuration, the 4202WLMi weighs in at 6 pounds putting it somewhere between the desktop-replacement and the thin-and-light notebook categories.

The included 15.4" screen comes with an anti-glare coating making documents a lot easier to read but if you're looking to do any serious graphic/photo editing this type of screen may not be the best for you.

As with most Acer notebooks, the 4202WLMi's keyboard is curved upwards making it more ergonomically comfortable to use. Even those who are not used to this type of keyboard will still be able to appreciate it with frequent use.

Notebook speakers are usually not that great and the speakers on this TravelMate produce noticeably muffled sounds. The good news is, the 4202WLMi features a digital audio (SPDIF-out) port allowing you to connect quality external speaker when sound is of importance - at a presentation perhaps. For personal use, connecting your headphones should help you enjoy your music or DVD movie with much better sound than the built-in speakers. Speaking of DVDs, the 4202WLMi comes packed with a Dual-Layer DVD burner for easy backups.

Sadly, being a business-oriented notebook, the 4202WLMi only comes with the integrated Intel GMA graphics chip which can handle everyday business tasks without any problems but newer 3D games won't be able to run here, then again this is usually not a business user's concern. The good news is, this chip can handle the Aero GUI of the upcoming Windows Vista and should run that OS without issues once Microsoft officially releases it.

In addition, integrated graphics chips use far less power which could be part of the reason for the 4202WLMi's great battery life of 4 hours under normal use.

While it lacks in bells and whistles, the Acer TravelMate 4202WLMi is a very capable small-business notebook with superb processing power, a bigger screen than expected at its price range and great value for money.