- Inexpensive
- Large High Performance Hard Drive
- Lots Of Peripheral Ports
- Dedicated Graphics Has Limited Performance
- Hard Drive Partitioning Could Cause Issues For Users
- Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 Dual Core Desktop Processor
- 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 Memory
- 640GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive
- 16x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner with LabelFlash
- NVIDIA G100 Graphic Card with 512MB Memory
- Integrated 7.1 Audio with USB Powered Stereo Speakers
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Nine USB 2.0, FireWire, eSATA, HDMI, 14-in-1 Card Reader
- 10.5" x 4" x 14.5"
- Vista Home Premium 64-bit, Works, NTI MediaMaker 8, McAfee Security Center
2/2/2009 - With a street price of under $500, the Acer Aspire AX1700-U3700A is a very attractive small form factor system. It uses all desktop components and uses a slim case configuration. The slightly larger dimensions allow Acer to pack the system with a good number of peripheral connectors for external devices that many small systems lack.
The system is driven by a budget Pentium Dual-Core E2200 desktop processor. While this isn't a very high end performer, it is able to handle most basic computing tasks without too much problem. Acer did include 4GB of DDR2 memory with the system to help prevent memory slowdowns due to Vista's memory intensive nature.
Storage is probably one of the best aspects of the Acer X1700. The 640GB hard drive provides it with a fair amount of storage and some very strong performance. The only downside to this is the partitioning the drive into an OS and data drive with each using half. Since Windows default saves items in the Documents directory of the OS drive, it effectively makes it more difficult to users to easily access the space. They should have just made it a single partition. The DVD burner is a full sized desktop drive that includes support for burning labels directly to Labelflash media.
One very interesting aspect of the Aspire X1700 is the dedicated graphics. Most computers in this price range rely on an integrated graphics solution. The GeForce G100 is actually a rebadged GeForce 9400 series desktop card. While it has 512MB of memory, it has limited performance that in testing was only able to play games at moderate resolutions with low graphics settings. It also was unable ot play a 60fps 720p high definition video without distracting frame drops.
