Acer Ferrari 5000: High-speed laptop

Life sucks if you're a tech-head. You can't afford a fast car because you're spending all your money on gadgets, and you probably aren't as successful with the opposite sex as you'd like. We say: take a leaf out of Crave's book and get yourself the new Ferrari 5000 laptop from Acer.

After taking delivery of this go-faster striped bad boy, our lives have definitely changed for the better. Now we can barely walk down the streets without people chatting us up. We've been unable to keep up with our romantic successes, so we've started using the online service myblackbook.org and considered joining a monastery.

Okay, so none of this has actually happened, but we think the Ferrari 5000 could at least serve as a conversation piece to get you rolling on the road to romance. The 5000 ditches the dominant red livery of the original Acer Ferrari range in favour of a more socially acceptable black. The lid also has a nice carbon-fibre effect and the Ferrari prancing horse logo, which will appeal to petrol-heads.

Specs-wise, the 5000 ships with a pacey AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 processor and 1GB of RAM. It also comes with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 XT graphics card for decent gaming possibilities. We know it has a lovely 17-inch display from our previous dealings with it, but the backlight on our review sample packed up, so we had to run it through an external monitor. This wasn't a bad thing, as we got to test the HDMI port -- a nice addition.

We reckon the Acer Ferrari 5000 is a great laptop. It's a tad pricey at £1,699, but that's not bad for a premium brand. Check back for a full review, and a potential head-to-head comparison with the Asus Lamborghini VX1 laptop in the near future. -RR