ACI Profile 2860

The ACI Profile 2860 is fairly well specified. A 1.13GHz Pentium III processor, 128 megs of SDRAM, on-board SIS 630 graphics card, an AC97 sound card, a 24X CD-ROM Drive, a 20GB HDD, a 1.44 Floppy Drive, dual USB ports, a 100 Mbps LAN card, a 56Kbps modem, and preinstalled Windows XP... whew! But how does it all add up? Is the performance up to scratch? Read on to find out...
Put to the test

We performed several tests on the laptop including overall system tests, graphics accelerator tests, and battery longevity tests. We used SiSoft Sandra for the overall system tests in the CPU Arithmetic Benchmark. This test shows how the CPU handles arithmetic and floating-point instructions in comparison to other systems.

The next test was the CPU Multi-Media Benchmark which shows how the CPU handles multimedia instructions and data in comparison to other systems. And next up was the memory bandwidth test The machine has 128MB 133 MHz SDRAM, which has 8 MB shared with the on-board AGP by default. The RAM performed slightly better than PC 100 SDRAM but was way behind PC 133 SDRAM, which was a bit disappointing.
There were more disappointments in store, when we tested the machine's 4200RPM 20GB IBM Travel Star Hard Drive. The performance was sub-par, to say the least. 5400 RPM drives are the standards nowadays when it comes to entry level laptops, whereas 7200 RPM drives are used in higher end machines.The CD-ROM is a Samsung 24X internal drive, and performance was just about at par with a regular 16X drive. Note that internal CD-ROM drives in Notebooks generally do perform slightly slower than equivalent PC drives because of noise and vibration constraints.

Step it up
With the overall system tests over, we moved on to the graphics accelerator tests. The motherboard is based on the SIS 630 integrated chipset, and the graphics accelerator shares the SDRAM for memory. This is set to 8MB by default, but can be increased through the BIOS - all the way up to 64 MB. We increased memory allocation from 8MB to 32MB for the tests.The first test we ran was 3DMark2001 SE, and unfortunately the test did not run because of insufficient RAM! The machine has 128MB RAM, out of which a minimum of 8MB is always shared, and the minimum RAM that a machine needs to run the test is 128MB.
So we moved on to the next test, which is Quake 3 Arena, where the ACI clocked a measly 7.5 frames per second. This was hardly playable, and this we suppose was primarily because of the slow SDRAM shared memory.For people who get most of their computing done on the run, the first question is, "how long can it last without the cord?"
Well, in this case, the ACI did last for a long time. For this test, we did a SiSoft Sandra Burn-in test, and ran it continuously till the battery went dead. It took exactly 2 hours and 5 minutes to go flat, and this is very good for any laptop battery.In retrospect
The ACI Profile comes with a lot of good features that include its long battery life, preinstalled Windows XP, small size, a comprehensive user manual, and at 3.25 kilos, light weight. The carry bag is rather low-rent, and will not handle long-term wear and tear. The 128 megs of SDRAM are also a bit disappointing, and XP feels happier with at least 256.Quality control seems to be poor! The machine we got for testing had a dead pixel in the LCD screen that should have been detected by QC chaps. (Each pixel on an LCD monitor is controlled by one transistor each, and when one transistor gets spoilt, we see a white (dead) pixel because it isn't receiving information on what colour it is suppose to display). Any LCD with this flaw is usually discarded, which is also one reason why LCD displays cost an arm and leg.
In the final verdict, we must say that the ACI Profile is not a good buy. The machine is slightly overpriced at Rs.84990, and suffers from suspect QC, and these are two strong reasons why you should be looking elsewhere to buy a Notebook...Test unit sourced from Allied Computer Industries Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai