Acer Aspire 1710 Review

Acer Aspire 1710

Desktop replacement notebook/laptop

Think of the Acer Aspire 1710 as a notebook equipped with the power of a desktop. The Aspire 1710 laptop is big, powerful, and heavy, but its high-end components do help future-proof it.

The Acer Aspire 1710 is heavy even for a desktop replacement, and the power brick that comes with the unit increases its total travel weight to almost 17 pounds. The full-size keyboard with separate number pad and the ample real estate of its 17-inch screen make the Acer Aspire 1710 feel more like a portable desktop than a bulky laptop.

The Acer Aspire 1710 sports a nice set of integrated speakers, including a separate bass-boosting subwoofer in the unit's base. Unfortunately, the speakers are hard to appreciate when the system is running because of the laptop's loud cooling fan. Fortunately, the The Acer Aspire comes with Acer's Audio DJ feature, which lets you play CDs and MP3s without booting the system and starting the fan.

Acer's 1710 is much easier to upgrade than most laptops. A single removable panel on the bottom of the unit gives you access to the system components and makes swapping out the the memory, or the processorn simple.

The right edge of the Acer Aspire 1710 contains two FireWire and two USB 2.0 ports, as well as a pair of audio minijacks. A combo DVD+RW/CD-RW drive graces the unit's left side, along with a generous array of expansion-card slots for PC Card, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and SD. The rear panel houses a serial mouse connector, a parallel port for a printer, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a modem port, an S-Video port for connecting the 1710 to a TV, and two additional USB 2.0 ports, bringing the total number of USB ports on the unit to four.

The Acer Aspire 1710 with is available with either Windows XP Home Edition or XP Pro.

Your Comments/Opinions

what a piece of kit.Love this machine;although it seams to have a small issue regarding the media slots. Whenever i insert any removeable media, mainly flash card the 1710 recognises it ok, however when you click on the safely remove hardware icon it clos

gerard haningan

I love my baby.

Nikki Jefferson-beck

Other than the weight it is an amazing computer! My friends make fun of my laptops size but it can outdue their tiny carrying machines anyday. I store movies on mine and they barely take up space compared to others who will have sometimes a slower application run. This desktop replacement as I see it is a pretty great deal

McGuire

Couldn't agree more. This is one pregnant water-buffalo triple decker of a beast. Heavier than a blackhole but damn does it perform well. It's taken all the huge software i've thrown at it and barely skips a beat. This thing eats nails for breakfast and asks for seconds. Moreso than a laptop, its a damn workstation that's been compressed. Even the architecture could be argued to be so similar! If you can get over the weight and bulk issue then this animal will bring you happy days. Ample keyboard (god bless) a colossal screen, great res and overall very tough performance. Impressive. All hail the Aspire 1710.

adam_l

My partner has one of these and it's fantastic...the only down fall I have found is that the CD Drive sometimes stops working, we have had it replaced twice but it still happens and then suddenly it will start working again. Strange - but other than that it's great!

Kelly Borkertas

its a beast and plays call of duty and counterstrike very well for an older machine now, highly recommended, only dated thing is the ram

kyle