Acer Ferrari One

Acer Ferrari One

The Ferrari name is associated with fast cars, speedy performance, and good looks. Apply that to the laptop world and you’d naturally expect a notebook bearing the Ferrari name to share these characteristics. Acer certainly turns heads with its Ferrari One notebook ($599 as tested), a sleek system that is to traditional ultraportables what the Ferrari F430 is to the Mitsubishi Eclipse. Packed with an AMD Athlon CPU (instead of an Intel ULV processor) and ATI Radeon graphics, Acer’s Ferrari One obviously wants to set itself apart from the crowd. But will it speed past the competition to the checkered flag or end up in a twisted wreck on the side of the track? The Ferrari One looks like the sportier bad-boy twin of the Acer Aspire 1410. The chassis is nearly identical, but the Ferrari One adds an extra cut to the front of the system for an aerodynamic look. The lid highlights the notebook’s sports car motif with its Ferrari racing red color and the company’s canary yellow emblem embossed into the plastic. Though it’s glossy and attracts a few smudges, the lid doesn’t show them off too badly. Just keep the Turtle Wax handy for public exhibitions.