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By Craig Simms, CNET.com.au
Feb 04, 2008

Ah, business laptops. The general look espouses reliability, ruggedness and above all functionality. But it does little for the imagination and seems to have avoided the "personalization" phase that the consumer market is going through--so there's little surprise here. The TravelMate 6292 is yet another of those trustworthy lugs, managing to fit a good whack of features into a 2kg frame.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com.au. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

This model is an update of the original TravelMate 6292 reviewed earlier with a faster processor and more memory. Once again, the air vent is on the left hand side, meaning left-handed users employing an external mouse will get hot air blown at their mitt--this would surely be more sensibly moved to the rear of the laptop.

The chassis around the screen is quite strong as is most of the construction, and there's a good chance the thing will survive a 1m drop--although we're not going to try this in a hurry! A Webcam sits at the top of the screen as do two stereo microphones--useful for video-conferencing, assuming the bandwidth exists wherever you're traveling.

Indicators near the lip show when the laptop is plugged into power, and when it is in standby mode or on. Other indicators at the top left show disk access, cap lock and numlock, while to the right a Wi-Fi detector flashes orange on the Wi-Fi activation button itself, the wireless supporting all the 802.11 standards right up to Draft-N. Beneath this is the Bluetooth activation button, Web browser, email and launch manager buttons. The latter allows customization of the above two, as well as Acer's "Empowering Technology" button which gives access to what we still consider to be one of the better vendor-supplied configuration tools on the market.

The always business-savvy fingerprint scanner is also included, nestled between the left and right mouse buttons. Scarily, you can't remove all the fingerprints entered into Acer's program, with the program demanding at least one fingerprint entry remains--unless you delete the user account altogether.

The cover for the docking port on the bottom is rubber but not attached to the chassis permanently--meaning if you take it out while docking, there's a good chance you'll lose the thing.

Features

On to the port circus! Down the left is a Gigabit Ethernet, USB and PC Card Type II port, the right side offering a modem port, two USB ports, SD/MS/xD-PictureCard reader and DVD+-RW drive. The front gets the now commonplace headphone/microphone/external speaker combo, although Acer offers FireWire and infrared here as well.

The rear is reserved purely for video-out, this time covered by VGA and S-Video, although the lack of digital video-out hurts. The power socket sits next to the video ports, handily out of the way of everything else.

Acer has chosen to preload the 6292 with Windows XP, and at first loading a popup appears asking you to backup your system--a nice way around OEMs not including Windows discs by default. The usual Norton AntiVirus setup screens and Yahoo toolbar also plague the installation, but it looks like they're not going to disappear anytime soon.

Performance And Battery Life

Of course, the Core 2 Duo T7500, Intel GMA X3100-powered laptop was always going to be good on the business side, and bad on the games side. So the score of 363 in 3DMark06 is expected, while the moderate showing of 3,703 in PCMark05 is surprising, making both scores lower than the nearly identically Fujitsu S6510 with similar specifications, the only notable difference being that the Fujitsu is running Vista.

Expanding the results showed the Acer lagging in the transparent windows test, which is unsurprising considering Vista's Aero advantage, although curiously a low multithreaded virus scan score was posted as well.

Even the previous 6292 outperformed it, though despite our best efforts we couldn't find what was slowing it down.

In terms of battery life, we turned off all the power-saving features and set the screen to maximum brightness, the TravelMate 6292 lasting a very respectable 2 hours 17 minutes.

All in, the Acer TravelMate 6292 passes muster and comes in at a great price. We just wish it looked a little nicer.

Service And Support

This notebook comes with an international one-year warranty from Acer. Recognizing that mobile computing has become a key activity for executives, the Taiwan company promises to fix any hardware issued within 2 hours, or it will deliver the unit to your preferred location free. However, this delivery service is only available in some regions so check with the local distributor if it applies to your country. Extended warranty can be purchased from the service center, with packages ranging from S$249 (US$183.09) to S$397 (US$291.91) depending on the degree of coverage and service required. For DIY troubleshooting, a toll-free telephone helpdesk is available for assistance. Acer support Web site offers downloads of updated drivers as well as an email for notebook issues. In the event that further technical assistance is required, the machine can be brought to any Acer service center worldwide for diagnosis.

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