Acer Veriton FP2: A Compact PC

The Veriton FP2 is another self-contained PC like the IBM NetVista. Unlike the NetVista, though, here you can clearly distinguish between the PC and LCD panel.

Design

This compact PC, for high-end business and corporate users, has been designed such that it takes up minimal space on your desk–the LCD display is mounted on the machine’s chassis itself. Though the screen can be tilted along the horizontal plane, it is of little use because its initial mount point is high enough for easy viewing.

With its unique hot-swappable slim drives (Hot-IDE), you can swap drives even while the machine is powered up. The machine we reviewed contained a 3.5” floppy and DVD-ROM drive, which could be exchanged with a CD-RW, CD drive or even a second HDD. A small panel behind the base station can be pried out from where you can see the hard disk. It can be easily pulled out from here by removing the screws and cables.

All frequently accessible ports, such as microphone, headphones, and two USB, are conveniently situated on the PC’s front panel. The ports for line-in and line-out are located on the left side, which is again very convenient for connecting speakers or other audio equipment without interfering with other connectors. Other ports are regular serial and parallel ports on the side. There is a DVI port for connecting the flat-panel monitor, and a regular VGA connector in case you want to use a regular CRT monitor, and two more USB ports on the side. A cover fits over the side panel hiding the jumble of wires under it.

The PC has an AC’97 audio codec chip sound controller, which gives good quality sound. The volume, though not very loud, should be enough for corporate customers. The scroll mouse and the keyboard use up two of the four USB ports. The keyboard is multifunctional and includes programmable keys.

A built-in V 90 modem and a 10/100 Ethernet card provide for network connectivity or broadband access.

The PC has an option of preloaded Windows 2000 Professional/Me. A restore CD is also provided for the same. Bundled software includes PC-Cillin Antivirus and PC-Doctor for system maintenance. We would have preferred a preloaded MS Office as that would have made the PC’s deployment even more ‘ready-to-use’.

Performance

The machine we received had a PIII/933 MHz with 128 MB SDRAM (expandable to 512 MB), a 30 GB hard drive, and a 15” flat panel TFT screen. The PC’s motherboard was based on an Intel 815E chipset. Given the PC’s internal design, adding a standard display card doesn’t appear possible. Acer will have cards based on nVIDIA GeForce 2 MX or ATI Tadeon available soon.

We tested the machine in productivity and graphics applications used in offices. It scored 26.7 in Business Winstone 2001 and 31 in Content Creation Winstone 2001, which are only average scores.

Ashish Sharma