ACi Eclipse review

If the two notebooks we've tested this month are anything to go by, the news for notebook buyers is generally good - they're getting faster, and they're looking better.

Unlike Carrera, ACi concentrates entirely on notebooks, and with the Eclipse it's gone a couple better than Carrera in some crucial areas.

Like the Explorer III, the Eclipse is based around a mobile Pentium 166MMX processor, with 16Mb RAM and a 1.5Gb hard disk to back this up. The screen is another bright, 800x600 resolution TFT model, which could happily display up to 24-bit colour. The design is more traditional, but the slightly raised rear lifts it above the norm. The design's good, but not as good as Carrera's ergonomic styling.

In speed terms, the Eclipse was a fraction faster than the Explorer, despite having a slower hard disk overall, which our Approach test highlights. Getting down to work with it didn't please me quite as much, however. Though the screen's very good, the keyboard has a slightly rough, loose feel to it, which I didn't take to immediately. To offset this, the keyboard layout is good - a decent sized spacebar and backspace, just two Windows 95 keys, cursor keys (slightly offset), as well as 12 function keys and the full document navigation keys.

Surprisingly, the review model's sole Ctrl key wasn't working, but hopefully this was just a one-off factory defect. The Eclipse's trackpad controlled the pointer well, but I just didn't get on with the buttons - I kept futilely pressing on the edge of the keyboard instead.

Taking a look at the exterior of the Eclipse, the first thing that strikes you is that everything's on board. Floppy drive, battery and CD-ROM are all within the casing, and the whole notebook' surprisingly light - just 3.22Kg. To have everything on-board at once is great, and quite a feat, so ACi deserve some credit. The left-hand side holds the floppy drive, the PC Card slots, which can attach Zoomed Video compatible video equipment, and the usual trio of audio ports - microphone, headphones and line in. Finally, there's a telephone jack to connect the optional internal modem to a wall socket (were it installed). At the rear two flaps conceal the main ports. Under one the docking station port is hidden. In between this and the main flap is the infrared port, which runs at the fast 4Mbps standard. The main flap covers six more ports - joystick, parallel, serial, VGA, PS/2 and TV out. Finally, the right-hand side holds the CD-ROM, DC power socket, and the battery catch, which when released causes the Lithium Ion battery to fall away from the notebook.

ACi doesn't go quite as much to town on its customisation as Carrera, as apart from the Windows 95 installation and some productivity software, there are no real extras. They do use Phoenix Power Panel for their power management, however, which is a useful utility. The Lithium Ion battery makes its presence felt, and I managed well over two hours on a full charge, although this would diminish if the CD-ROM drive were being used to any extent.

As mentioned, the Eclipse's performance was more impressive than the Explorer except in disk-intensive activities, but the difference is probably too small to notice without a stopwatch. The Eclipse definitely has the edge in portability, though, with everything inside and no extras to lug around apart from the AC adapter. Having no pre-installed software is slightly annoying, but you may not want SmartSuite 97 anyway.

Overall, and this is possibly the most important area, the ACi felt more professional than the Explorer. It's a marginal call, but I'd say the Eclipse is the better buy.