We would be very interested to see how many Ferrari car owners actually own a Ferrari-branded PC. We would be willing to bet that it wouldn't be that many.
Acer's Ferrari 1000 must then be aimed at professionals with some money, but not the necessary cash to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a sports car. In that way it feels almost as desperate as a baseball cap with the familiar prancing pony motif emblazoned on it.
Either way, the Ferrari laptops have always been excellent examples of portable computing power, with the sort of strength you can't argue with no matter how you might feel about the ostentatious styling. It's a little disappointing, then, that Acer has opted to fill its ultra-light 12.1in Ferrari 1000 with a 2GHz AMD Turion 64 x2 ML-60 CPU when Intel's dual core chips are universally ruling the roost these days.
Unfortunately, AMD is now finding itself second best and the car company can't be feeling good about being left behind in any sphere. The SYSmark 2004 score of 203, though, proves that as a productivity machine on the go it can still hold its head up high. The impressive 2GB of DDR2 667MHz memory goes some way to helping out with this.
The 160GB hard drive means you can store all the media required for a long journey, but with an operating life of only one hour 54 minutes you're not going to be productive for very long. The Ferrari 1000 does come with a smaller spare battery, which makes it good for another hour, but the dual core AMD is a power-hungry beast and is the main culprit for chewing up battery life.
Poor display
The second placed processor isn't the only disappointment however, because the 12.1in widescreen panel is also a big let down. For the screen of a Ferrari to be unable to handle the corporate red of the pre-installed wallpaper and screensaver without breaking out in floating artefacts is totally unconscionable.
