Review of Acer Aspire TimelineX 3820T-5246

I purchased my Timeline recently after searching furiously for a budget-minded notebook that wouldn't break the bank. The Timeline X AS3820T-5246 embodies the following features:

• Processor speed: dual core Intel i3-350M with 4 logical cores (2.26GHz, hyper-threading)
• Memory speed & quantity: 4gb DDR3 at 1066MHz
• Hard drives speed & capacity: 320GB with Intel Rapid Storage Technology
• Ultra-mobility: at about 1" thick, less than 4lbs, and 8 hour battery!

I was skeptical of performance and battery life at first. I am a budget-minded shopper, and I was in the market for a notebook that can handle some virtualization and development, and perhaps a game or two as well :-)  Netbeans, Eclipse, and Visual Studio 2010 all seem to work just fine. No slowdowns were experiencing when several Chrome tabs, Word 2010, and a 2gb ram version of Windows 7 in VirtualBox were running.

The battery (surprisingly) does hold up for 8 hours of light use - word processing, web browsing, and basic programming. The processor slows itself down to about 900MHz when heavy lifting isn't needed. I get about 4-5 hours of more intense computing, with the screen brightness down a couple notches - not bad at all.

The bluetooth 2.1 is great for syncing with a wireless mouse (without a usb notch transmitter waiting to be ripped in half on accident) or other peripheral devices such as printers or cell phones. Wireless N is very quick. It seems faster than my previous laptops when connected to wireless G as well.

Only downside - no optical drive. However who really needs one these days? Don't you already have a decent flash drive for moving files (a good flash drive is faster than a CD or DVD) and a digital music player?

The TimelineX is a winner - with more power than the ASUS Thin and Light notebooks and similar battery life, it's the best laptop in class.

**Update: I added a 64gb S599 SSD (by ADATA). This thing made an already quick computer INSANELY fast. I couldn't be happier. Everything task is instant...I don't even hibernate or standby anymore because it takes less than 30 seconds to boot into 7.