Acer Aspire 5517

The Acer Aspire 5517 is a 15.6 inch notebook from Acer’s Aspire 5 series of budget notebooks. It features an AMD Athlon 64 processor, integrated ATI graphics and DVD/ RW drive. The Acer Aspire 5517 spots a design that features a black faux snake skin lid with a silver Acer badge. Its lid and frame is made out of plastic but the chassis provides a solid feel is it also incorporates heavy duty lid hinges. On the inside, the Acer Aspire 5517 spots a black keyboard that is surrounded by a wrist rest that is in gunmetal gray for a smudge-free and comfortable typing experience.
Specifications
The Acer Aspire 5517 measures 1.5 in x 14.4 in x 10.8 in (H x W x D) in dimension and weighs approximately 6 lbs including its battery. It comes under a 1 year limited warranty. The Acer Aspire 5517 operates on a Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. Input devices consist of a keyboard and a touchpad. Interface connections consist of audio line in (1/8 inch mini), audio line out (1/8 inch mini), Ethernet RJ45 port, Universal Serial Bus 2.0 ports and VGA port. There is also a memory card slot that is compatible with memory Stick, MultiMedia Card (MMC), SD Card, and xD-Picture Card. Besides that, the Acer Aspire 5517 also spots an LCD display with glossy screen that measures 15.6 inches diagonally and has an aspect ratio of 16:9. The screen has a maximum WXGA resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and can support up to 16.7 million colours. In terms of video features, the Acer Aspire 5517 incorporates an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 chipset with up to 256 MB of dedicated video memory. As for graphic features, the Acer Aspire 5517 incorporates an integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 1200 graphics card. Besides that, the Acer Aspire 5517 also has support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 as well as support for simultaneous display on notebook LCD and external monitor. In terms of storage, the Acer Aspire 5517 also has a built-in DVD +/- RW DL optical drive. It also has an internal Serial ATA hard disk drive that has a capacity of 250 GB. In terms of communications, the Acer Aspire 5517 has Ethernet 10/ 100 Mbps capabilities, as well as Wireless Ethernet IEEE 802.11 b/ IEEE 802.11 g capabilities. The Acer Aspire 5517 operates on an AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile processor that has a speed of 1.2 GHz. Besides that, it also has a cache size of 512 KB with a data bus speed of 800 MHz. In terms of its main memory, the Acer Aspire 5517 comes with an installed DDR2 SDRAM memory of 3 GB. However, it has the ability to support up to 4 GB of installed memory. There is also a dedicated number pad and its touchpad is lightly textured. There are also two wide mouse buttons right below the touchpad. For added conveniences, the Acer Aspire 5517 also has a built-in 5-in-1 card reader that is compatible with MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO or xD-picture card. There are also two USB 2.0 ports situated on the side of its body. The Acer Aspire 5517 comes pre-installed with software including Acer eRecovery management, Acer GameZone, Acer GridVista, Acer Launch Manager, Adobe Acrobat Reader, McAfee Internet Security Suite (trial version), Microsoft Works 8.5 (full version), Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (60 day trial) and NTI Media Maker. The Acer Aspire 5517 is powered by a six-cell lithium-ion battery that can provide up to 2.5 hours of battery life. Alternatively, it can also be powered via a 65 watt AC adapter.
Reviews

“With the Acer Aspire 5517-1643, you get what you pay for, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You don’t get much in the way of computing power or features, but for $450 you do get a solid 15-inch notebook that is capable of handling your basic everyday tasks. If you require more horsepower and a more robust feature set, the Dell Studio 1555 is your best bet.” (PCMag, 2009)