X-bit labs

Acer TravelMate 6463WLMi Notebook: Performance and Security

Category: Mobile

by Alexander Britvin

[ 05/28/2007 | 07:37 PM ]

We would like to introduce to you a notebook that is meant to serve as a handy work tool, portable when needed. What is important, it will keep your confidential work-related information as secure from unauthorized access as possible.

Table of contents:

• Package and Accessories
  
• Design and Ergonomics
  
• Configuration
  
• Testing Methodology
  
• Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

The notebook industry is currently offering a variety of machines for everyone. There are notebooks for gamers and for people who watch movies. There are notebooks for users whose computer is supposed to be a full-featured workplace you can always carry about with you.

But game data and movies are not very precious information after all whereas a businessman’s laptop may store highly valuable, often confidential, data. This data needs some better protection than simple passwords and ordinary security measures.

One solution to this problem comes from Acer. The company’s engineers focused on making a notebook that would keep your data as secure and safe as possible and they came up with the TravelMate 6463WLMi. Fortunately, the notebook’s extra features don’t come at the expense of its main functional subunits. The hardware configuration of this machine is up to its positioning – you don’t need a super-fast CPU and an advanced graphics subsystem to perform everyday office tasks on a computer.

As a result of this development approach, the price of the notebook is very reasonable while its performance is high enough for common business applications. To be specific, the TravelMate 6463WLMi has an Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 processor with a clock rate of 1.66GHz (the first digit 5 in the CPU name indicates a 2MB L2 cache). Being an implementation of the Refresh Napa platform, the notebook features the Intel Calistoga i945PM chipset. Added to that are an ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 graphics core (with 128 megabytes of dedicated memory) and a 15.4” screen (the display is wide, following the current fashion).

The higher data security is achieved by means of two devices. First, it is a fingerprint scanner that is controlled with the Acer Protector Suite QL software using a Trusted Platform Module chip installed on the mainboard. Second, the notebook features Acer’s traditional SmartCard slot for smart cards that can additionally protect your data on different notebook boot-up stages. This feature is controlled with appropriate software, too.

Now let’s run through these feature once again, at more length. After that, we will also test the TravelMate 6463WLMi in typical applications in comparison with a Sony VAIO VGN-FE31HR, which is not so obsessed with security, but features similar hardware configuration with minor variations concerning the graphics card and amount of system memory.