At first glance, the Acer Ferrari One – with an 11.6 inch screen looks more like a small notebook in the class of the Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile U9200, rather than a netbook in the class of the current Asus Eee series. That’s because it’s a large, premium, co-branded, high end netbook with some souped-up features such as 4GB of memory and 320GB hard disk drive. That’s sets it apart from most netbooks and adding to its exclusive image is its pretty souped-up price.
In the Ferrari tradition, it has a racing red colored cover with some flashes of racing red on its sides and its chrome plated here and there like those solid, steel bumpers on older cars.
The large, square, keys on its keyboard make typing easy and the white lettering on their matte black surface are easily and unambiguously visible. The left and right click button is pretty responsive and so was its multi-gesture touchpad for zooming in and out of a picture, web page and other similarly enable applications with your fingers. However, the touchpad does not work with its main screen and some other applications.
Noteworthy are its pair of Dolby Home Theatre Virtual/Surround Sound Stereo loudspeakers, the 1.3 megapixels video conferencing camera, a Sony/Philips Digital Interface (S/PDIF) audio socket and a multi-to-one memory card slot.
The Ferrari branding is also featured in the main screen of the netbook’s Windows 7 OS in the form of a nifty calendar for each month with the day highlighted, a picture of Ferrari racing car, racing red colors, the Ferrari name and logo, an AMD sponsorship notice and the roar of a racing car whizzing by on the track after boot up. However, these bells and whistles are of little practical use beyond being a portable wall calendar.
Even so, its Dolby Home Theatre Virtual Surround Sound lived up well to its claim as it certainly sounded clearer and richer with more depth than typical notebook speakers when playing MP3 music files and videos. However, listen through headphones for the best audio experience.
A sense of 3D realism is enhanced by a Realtek HD Audio Manager, which comes with 23 different environments, 13 equalizer settings, left-right balance and eight default sound format settings from 16-bit, 44,100 Hz CD-quality to 24-bit, 192,000 Hz studio quality. Microphone settings have acoustic echo cancellation and auto gain control.
There’s also the Acer Game Zone which comes with 10 arcade-type games for you to try with option to buy plus more games which can be downloaded. Beside that, the Ferrari One – comes with McAfee Secrurity Center, Norton Online Backup and a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office Suite.
The Acer Ferrari One is a high end netbook with premium features which are easy and enjoyable to use, coupled with an enlargeable display for easier reading. The only thing that will stop more people buying this is its high price tag which is far above what most netbooks sell for.
Pros : Ample hard disk capacity memory, Enhanced sound, Large visible keys
Cons : For its price, one could buy a full-blown notebook PC
Acer Ferrari One Specifications :
Standard package : Acer Ferrari One, battery, pouch, power cable, quick start guide
Screen : 11.6 inch
Weight : 1.5kg
CPU : AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 1.2 GHz
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Graphics : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200
Memory : 4GB DDR2 RAM
Storage : 320 GB SATA HDD
Popularity: 9% [?]
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