- Lots of Storage Space from Dual Drives
- Eight Gigabytes of Memory
- Low Noise Operation
- Included Recovery Discs Only Have 32-bit Software
- Small Case Interior Makes It Hard To Upgrade
- Lacks eSATA Port
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Quad Core Desktop Processor
- 8GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Memory
- Dual 640GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drives
- 20x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner
- NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Graphics Card with 512MB Memory
- Intel HDA 7.1 Audio with USB Powered Stereo Speakers
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Ten USB 2.0, Fire WireWire, 12-in-1 Card Reader
- Vista Home Premium 64-bit, Works, NTI Media Maker, McAfee Internet Security
Feb 3 2009 - Acer's Aspire Prestige 5621 is a very strong value for consumers if they are willing to overlook a few errors in the systems design and shipping. Performance is quite good thanks to the use of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 processor well suited for heavy multitasking or multithreaded applications. Added to this is the use of 8GB of PC2-6400 DDR2 memory that means the system is almost never going to have memory issues. It would have been nice to see DDR3 used to improve performance slightly but this helps keeps the costs down.
Rather than using a single hard drive, Acer has decided to use two high performance 640GB hard drives for the Aspire 5621. This gives it one of the better overall levels of storage space available in this price segment. The drives are not configured in a RAID for extra performance but it is possible to do by reinstalling the OS.
Graphics are strong but typical for a system in this price range. The GeForce 9800 GT may be a bit behind the new GeForce GTX 200 series but it still performs quite well with today's top end 3D games. It is possible to play games at resolutions up to 1920x1200 with the potential for filtering.
One issue that many are likely to encounter is the supplied recovery software. Due to an error, Acer has shipped 32-bit versions of Vista on the recovery DVDs. If you reinstall from these, the system will only recognized 4GB of memory. To get around this issue, users should use the supplied software to create 64-bit versions of the media from the recovery partition on the hard drive.
Users wanting to upgrade the Aspire 5621 should be warned that this can be quite difficult. The cases interior is on the smaller side making space tight for routing cards or even preventing some expansion cards from being installed.
