Acer has been rather quiet on the desktop computer front lately, but they're getting back in the game thanks to systems like their Aspire E380 series. These complete yet inexpensive systems are a great way to bring home a Windows Vista PC with excellent multimedia features.

At the core of the E380 systems is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor. This dual-core CPU has twin processing cores each operating at 2.2GHz. Acer pairs this swift processor with a full gigabyte of 533MHz DDR2 memory. The system will support up to 4GB of RAM and there are two DIMMs open, so you can double the memory easily without having to replace any of the current RAM. But even as is, this desktop computer has plenty of power for running Vista or any applications this side of major video editing.

Storing video and other multimedia files won't be a problem either, thanks to the E380's monstrous 320GB 7,200rpm hard drive. This drive offers almost a third of a terabyte of space, so you'll have plenty of room for application installs, file storage, and setting up multiple partitions.

The E380 ships with Windows Vista Home Premium edition, providing all the multimedia tools that were present in XP's Media Center edition as well as the new Aero interface with its translucent windows and animations. Vista Home Premium includes Windows Movie Maker and DVD maker, creating and burning regular or high-definition movies easily.

To that end, this desktop computer ships with a multimedia-ready DVD writer. In addition to burning audio CDs and video DVDs, the DVD drive supports dual-layer media. This lets you burn up to four hours of high-quality video or 8.5GB of data on a single disk, making it perfect for massive backups or lengthy home video archiving.

Transferring files from your PDA or digital camera is easy with the E380's to the 9-in-1 media card reader. This reader supports the most popular media card formats including CompactFlash, Secure Digital, MMC, and Memory Stick.

Acer includes a Firewire port on this desktop for connecting digital camcorders or other high-speed devices and a whopping eight USB 2.0 ports. Four of these ports are on the front of the silver tower, making it easy to connect multiple thumb drives or other USB peripherals without having to crawl behind the system.

The major drawback in these systems is the integrated graphics. It's at least NVIDIA's GeForce 6100 graphics, so it's better than a lot of integrated graphics options. But the system still has to share video memory with the main system RAM, so you'll see performance slowdowns when handling 3D video games. There is an available PCI Express slot, so users intent on gaming with these desktop computers can add a dedicated video card. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of expansion room inside the large tower, including two open PCI slots and six open bays, so there's plenty of space to add additional drives and components later.

Communications possibilities are provided by a modem and a gigabit Ethernet adapter. The former lets you connect to the Internet via a dial-up provider while the latter lets you connect to a broadband modem or hook your E380 up to a high-speed home network without any fear of bottlenecking. Input devices for these desktop computers including an optical mouse and a multimedia keyboard that puts the controls for playing media files right at your fingertips.

Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is all about integrating multimedia into your computing experience. Systems like those in the Acer Prestige E380 series let you bring that experience home for a reasonable price. They're not optimal gaming PCs out of the box, but they are powerful and well-rounded multimedia systems for home users.


Pros: Great multimedia performance, good components
Cons: Integrated graphics

Warranty
1-year limited