Acer's Aspire 5610 family of laptop computers are solid mainstream portables with good multimedia performance at a nice price. The processor may vary depending on the iteration of system that you get, but most laptop computers in the series ship with an Intel Centrino Core Duo CPU. These are fast processors featuring twin processing cores on one chip, although they're not 64-bit like a lot of current generation CPUs.

Acer includes up to 2GB of 533MHz DDR2 memory in these systems. It's not the fastest memory available, but it's still speedy and adequate enough to run the included Windows Vista Home Premium operating system. The Home Premium edition offers lots of multimedia tools including built-in DVD writing software.

Speaking of multimedia, these laptop computers feature multimedia controls so you can play, pause, and adjust the volume of your media files with the hot keys above the keyboard. The 120GB hard drive provides a large amount of storage space for audio and video files as well as application installs. If you start running out of room, you can always make large backups thanks to the dual layer DVD writer which lets your store up to 8.5GB of data on a DL disk.

The 15.4-inch widescreen display is great for watching DVD movies as well as having multiple windows open at once, but the integrated Intel graphics don't include any dedicated video memory, so these won't be great gaming laptop computers. With a 5-in-1 media card reader, you can easily transfer files or photos from your PDA or digital camera's Secure Digital, MMC, Memory Stick, or xD Picture card onto the 5610. These laptop computers don't include a Firewire port or Bluetooth, but there are four USB ports for connecting peripherals.

In addition to the integrated modem and network interface, these laptop computers also offer 802.11a/b/g wireless, so you can get online from almost anywhere. Some versions of the 5610 laptop computers feature an Acer OrbiCam integrated into the top of the display, which is handy for online chatting and videoconferencing and beats adding a secondary Webcam if you need one.

These laptop computers weigh 6.35 pounds, so they're not ultra-compact, but they're still easy enough to carry around if you have a laptop bag large enough for their wide screen. There's a fairly standard one-year warranty on this laptop computer line, and the 6-cell battery provides a modest 2.5 hours of battery life before needing recharged. Acer's Aspire 5610 laptop computers offer great multimedia performance thanks to their Core Duo processors, 2GB of RAM, and Vista Home Premium operating system.


Pro: Nicely priced, strong multimedia performance
Con: No Bluetooth, no dedicated video memory

Warranty
1-year limited