But at this price, the Aspire 5315 doesn’t really need to be.
Acer redefines affordability by bringing the 5315 in at the dirt-cheap price point of $749, and, regardless of the cost-cutting measures used, we think it’s well worth a look for bargain hunters, high school students and those looking for a secondary notebook for home.
For the money, we weren’t expecting much by way of performance, so we were pleasantly surprised after testing it. Like the Compaq, it doesn’t have enough firepower to run the 3DMark06 benchmark, and PCMark05 returned a predictably low score of 1,390; however, everyday usage tells a different story. A lacklustre 1.73GHz Intel Celeron chip and 512MB of RAM (running Windows Vista Home Basic) doesn’t give the Aspire 5315 much to work from, but it was surprisingly responsive for an underpowered system — even with multiple applications and web pages open simultaneously.
It may not use any fancy glosses or metals, but the Aspire 5315 nevertheless feels reassuringly sturdy. Nor does it skimp on any of the esssentials, with a DVD Super Multi drive, 802.11b/g wireless networking, 5-in-1 memory card reader, ExpressCard slot and four USB ports.