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The Acer Travelmate 5530 is one of the five latest models in the Acer Travelmate series.  This laptop is touted to be extremely ideal for the thriving entrepreneur, which makes us wonder what it is exactly that the 5530 offers its potential buyers. Read through and find out.

 

SPECS:

	AVAILABLE OPTIONS (From Acer’s Website)
CPU	AMD Turion™ X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor RM-75(1MB L2 cache, 2.2GHz)AMD Athlon™ X2 Dual-Core Processor QL-65(1MB L2 cache, 2.1GHz) AMD Athlon™ X2 Dual-Core Processor QL-64 (1MB L2 cache, 2.1GHz)
RAM	Up to 4GB (2GB installed in one of two memory slots) DDR2 667 SDRAM
Screen size	15.4″ (1280 x 800) TFT LCD
Operating system	Genuine Windows 7 ProfessionalGenuine Windows Vista Business
Battery life	Up to 2.5 hours life depending on configuration and usage
Graphics	Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD

PROS:

The 5530’s strength lies in its powerful processor. A businessman can easily process one task after another or to multitask effectively with the Dual-Core technology from AMD Athlon, the direct competitor of the more popular Intel processors. Competing directly with each other, users can expect more or less similar power and performance from the AMD dual core processor that the 5530 uses. The 5530’s large memory capacity also complements its processor speed greatly, with up to 4 gigabytes allowed.

 

The 5530 is a very light laptop, and at first glance could be very ideal for the traveling businessman except for its battery life. The machine weighs less than 7 pounds, and it is also equipped with the proprietary Disc Anti-Shock Protection. This DASP, together with the anti-shock properties of the laptop’s chassis, prevents the hard drive from physical damage incurred during free-fall situations.

 

The DASP is also very essential for the business. Aside from providing protection from shock damage, it also prevents the impact from resulting to data loss. The DASP’s firmware also shuts down the hard drive before the laptop hits a hard surface, protecting files from damage.

 

The 5530 comes with a neat 15.4-inch liquid crystal display. The LCD is capable of a maximum resolution of 1280×800. Again, we could see how the 5530 is advantageous towards multitasking. The high resolution allows for opening different windows in minimized mode so that the user can easily look at one document and another without changing windows.

 

CONS:

The weakest point that one can find in the Acer 5530, however, is its battery time. Even with low usage, the laptop cannot be used continually for four hours. Manufacturer’s estimate is only at 2 and a half hours of usage. This is at optimal usage as well, with no power-consuming features turned on.

 

Though it wouldn’t matter to a businessman, the 5530’s integrated graphics card can also be seen as a disadvantage for the user. Integrated graphics card is not as powerful as specific graphic cards, which are capable of running 3D graphics. This is something that the 5530 cannot do, but like mentioned earlier, the laptop is designed for the business user who neither has the time nor the love for gaming.

 

CONCLUSION:

With a very powerful processor and large memory capacity, the 5530 has everything that one needs for the business. Its battery life may actually be the deciding factor for some potential customers to turn their backs on it. But this wouldn’t be an issue to those who intend to use the laptop as a replacement for the desktop PC. Business meetings conducted remotely probably won’t have the user relying on the batteries anyway.  For most people, 2 hours and a half is more than enough for accessing important data on the car on the way to a meeting.

 

To conclude, if you are thinking of using the 5530 for gaming and for more intense multimedia purposes, look somewhere else. But if it will be used for purely business matters, you certainly would not go wrong with the 5530.

Related posts:

1. Acer Travelmate 6293 – Review
2. Acer Travelmate 6593 – Review
3. Acer Travelmate 6493 – Review
4. Acer Travelmate 5730 – Review
5. Acer Aspire Timeline 3810TZ-4880 – Review

Tags: Acer, AMD Athlon, DASP, Dual-Core, Travelmate 5530

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 5:23 am and is filed under Acer, and is tagged with Acer, AMD Athlon, DASP, Dual-Core, Travelmate 5530. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.