Acer Aspire 2020

Battery life analysis written by CNET Labs assistant lab manager Eric Franklin.

To measure mobile application performance and battery life, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's MobileMark 2002. MobileMark measures both application performance and battery life concurrently using a number of popular applications (Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Netscape Communicator 6.0, WinZip Computing WinZip 8.0, McAfee VirusScan 5.13, Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, and Macromedia Flash 5.0).

System configurations

Acer Aspire 2020
Windows XP Professional; 1.8GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 80GN 80GB 4,200rpm

Dell Inspiron 8600
Windows XP Home; 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 60GB 7,200rpm

HP Pavilion zt3000
Windows XP Home; 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 64MB; Fujitsu MHT2080AT 80GB 4,200rpm

Acer backs the Aspire 2020 with a one-year warranty, standard for the industry. Upping the coverage to three years costs a reasonable $109, much less than equivalent upgrades with other vendors. Acer's Web site, a wonderful mix of information for novices and notebook geeks, offers a wide-ranging database of problems and solutions, guidebooks and specs, and downloads of firmware, drivers, and utilities. However, unlike HP, Dell, and others, there's no chat forum for discussing problems or quirks and no single place to go for everything having to do with your system.

Acer provides support for the machine for as long as you own it, with a direct e-mail link for service as well as a toll-free hotline that's open 24/7. When we gave Acer's tech support a call, a technician was on the line in just less than two minutes and correctly answered our test question.