Acer's Aspire TimelineX 1830T-3721 Is Sleek and Attractive, but Has Iffy Ergonomics

There's a lot to love about the Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T. At about $700, it's extremely affordable for an ultraportable, offers great workaday performance, has excellent high-def video playback, and runs for over 6 hours on its battery. However, the 1830T also suffers some ergonomic quirks that could irritate in the long run.

Outwardly, the TimelineX 1830T is physically identical to Acer's Aspire 721, a netbook that is nearly $300 cheaper, based on the AMD Athlon II Neo, and having the same 11.6-inch, 1366-by-768-resolution color display. But obviously, the 721 can't touch the 1830T and its Core i5-430UM's performance. With Intel's CPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 500GB, 5400-rpm hard drive on board, our test laptop scored a 76 on PCWorld Labs WordBench tests. Sadly, while the integrated Intel HD Graphics GPU did well with video, gaming frame rates--frames per second--were in the teens