Acer Aspire T180 Desktop Review

The Aspire T180's single-core 2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor and 1GB of RAM hamper its performance right out of the box, keeping it from being even a passable fit with the Windows Vista Home Premium OS we've seen on other budget machines. (The Aspire ships with Vista Home Basic.) The 160GB hard drive is also on the small side, and the nVidia GeForce 6100/nForce 430 MCP integrated graphics are not exactly top-notch tech, either.

As you might guess from a PC with this mix of components, the Aspire T180 turned in scores that were lower than those of similarly priced desktops on all of our benchmark tests. Any sort of 3D gaming is out of the question, of course, but even for everyday productivity tasks, this system delivers basic functionality and not much else.

You do, however, get a few bonuses. The software selection includes a 90-day trial of Norton AntiVirus 2006, as well as CyberLink PowerDVD, NTI CD-Maker Gold, and Acer's own performance, recovery, and security tools. And the PC does offer good expandability. Two RAM slots are free, as are an external 5.25-inch drive bay, three internal hard drive bays, two PCI Express (PCIe) slots (one x1 and one x16), and one PCI 2.2 slot. (A modem occupies a second PCI slot.) So it's possible to bump up the Aspire T180's power a bit with some carefully chosen components.

What do we think we should get for $599.95, you might ask? More than this, frankly. The eMachines T5230 offers considerably more power for the same price (or a lower one, once you factor in its mail-in rebate), and the ZT Element 2005Xa comes with twice the RAM and a slew of extras that will make your computing experience more fun. The Aspire T180 is about as bare-bones as it gets, even down to its one-year warranty—you can take the machine to an authorized service provider or mail it back to Acer for repair, but that's about it.

Though hardware prices have dropped a lot in recent months, no one buying an under-$600 PC should expect the kind of performance or features found in a machine costing $1,000 or more. You do have the right, however, to expect a bit more than the Acer Aspire T180 provides.

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