Acer is attempting to broaden the appeal of its laptops by launching a host of Aspire ranges, with the 9410 one of the latest.

Powered by an Intel Core Duo processor, the 9410 performed well in our benchmarking tests. It achieved a Sysmark 2004 SE score of 207 and a PCmark05 score of 3,144, placing it at the top end of our laptop performance chart.

Although its speed is impressive, the mobile version of the Core 2 Duo processor (codenamed Merom) is due to launch in August. So if it's performance you're after, we'd recommend holding on to your cash for a few more weeks.

You shouldn't be short of space with the 120GB hard disk; above average for notebooks. Should you feel the 1GB of Ram isn't enough, you can upgrade it to a maximum of 4GB.

The laptop looks good and is well designed but it is very heavy, weighing 3.7kg, so you won't want to carry it around for extended periods.

A minor annoyance, however, is that the audio jacks are located at the front. For a laptop that's likely to be left in situ this could be a problem, with wires dangling underneath your wrists and/or legs.

Battery life isn't bad for such a large laptop and it will keep going for two hours, 42 minutes when you're watching a DVD. In our reader test, which simulates reasonably light usage, it managed three hours, 12 minutes.

The 17in WXGA Crystalbrite TFT display performs well and can support a screen resolution of up to 1,440x900. Beyond regular Windows usage, it comes into its own when you're watching a DVD movie or browsing through a slideshow of photos.

Playing games with this monitor is a real treat. As far as graphics are concerned, the 9410 can play Far Cry at a comfortable frame rate of 31fps (frames per second).

While this won't impress ardent gaming enthusiasts, it's more than adequate for casual gamers. We recorded a decent 3Dmark05 score of 1,659, though this falls well short of what dedicated gaming laptops have managed in our labs.

The laptop has a number of welcome extras, such as an unobtrusive built-in webcam and a 5-in-1 memory card reader.

The 1.3megapixel webcam is perfect for video calls or streaming to the web, but quality is not much better than a steadily held camera phone.

A dual-layer DVD burner is included, but despite reading/writing all current media with Blu-ray and HD-DVD just around the corner, it's hardly future-proof.

The Aspire 9410 from Acer performs well and has a relatively low price. Core 2 Duo notebooks are just round the corner, but they're also likely to cost a fair bit more than this model.

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