Review: On the Desktop, Acer Keeps It Small, Sleek

The Acer America unit of the global PC giant is now touting its Acer Veriton X270 desktop for the reseller channel, providing the latest in a line of smaller-than-traditional units with some flourishes -- not to mention nice power consumption readings.

The Test Center examined a Veriton X270 review unit, and, like previous Veritons, we found its size to be impressive. Built with a form factor of 13 inches by 10.5 inches by 4 inches (weighing 11 pounds, 7 ounces on our scale), the Veriton X270 came to the lab with an Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 at 2.80 GHz, 2 GB of RAM and loaded with Windows Vista Business.

Of note: the PC, booting, idling or doing routine work never consumed more than 60 watts of power. It only ran slightly above room temperature in our lab, and, on Primate Labs' Geekbench 2.1 benchmarking software, the PC ran up a score of 2873 -- on the higher end of the scale for PCs in that class.

On the downside, the PC came preloaded with an earlier version of McAfee's antivirus software. When we upgraded the PC from Windows Vista Business to Windows 7 RC (a simple process on this PC, which didn't have many apps installed), the earlier McAfee software didn't work with the newer OS.

Our suggestion: Just stop preloading applications for which VARs don't specifically ask. Problem solved.

After Windows 7 RC installed, a second run of Geekbench 2.1 found a slightly higher score: 2920. McAfee software aside, it appears the Acer PCs are friendly toward Windows 7.

The Veriton X270 is street-priced at between $450 and $480.

The Test Center gives this desktop 4 out of 5 technical stars (the McAfee software cost it a point), and 4 out of 5 channel stars (the price is a little on the higher end of the scale for the amount of memory that's standard).