Not bad on the outside
When it comes to form factor, finish and general feel the Matrix must be judged in two parts: the lid with the LCD monitor and the body. The latter looks and feels sturdy with a decent finish. The monitor lid, however, is a little bit of a let down. The plastic is not exactly premium and might make you think that its a little flimsy.

Actually it isn’t. It supports the LCD screen quite well. You don’t see any of those ghastly bursts on the screen when you press down on the lid.

Overall, in terms of packaging, the Matrix is not going to make Apple sweat but is more than adequate to get the job done.

Open it up shall we?
As we open it up and have a look around there are a few small but thoughtful adaptations/ modifications that are a treat. First of all there is a webcam built into the lid just on top of the LCD screen. It worked well in daylight and fluorescent lighting and is welcome in a value laptop.

All the four USB ports have been placed on the right side of the machine. This was something I liked. This keeps all your wires on one side and the other side clean to use the disc drive. The right side also had a monitor output, the LAN and telephone jacks and an S-Video output. (This means the rear only has a power jack and a jack for mating it with a cradle.)

The laptop comes with a SD/MMC/MS Card reader that is placed in front of the machine and just to the right of the touchpad. Nowadays with everything except the microwave coming with a memory card slot this is great for the photographer on the go or someone who loves to carry music on his cellphone. Stick it in, move things around and pull it out.

One little innovation I liked was the red LED light inside the headphone jack. This means even if your working with the laptop in a dark room its easy to find the jack and plug your phones in. Nice touch.

Giving it a go
The machine booted up in seconds and within minutes I was transferring files from a DVD to the laptop and then on to a Micro SD card. Everything seemed to work well with it taking less than ten minutes to copy 4.5 gigs of data on to the hard drive. The card reader needed a couple of attempts to start working but there were no issues after that.

To try out the graphics on the machine I loaded up ‘Hitman Contracts’. Contracts is by no means the most demanding of games but the Matrix is by no means a gaming PC. All I wanted to know was if it could get by when asked to render some decent graphics and game play. The Matrix came through with flying colours.

Next I went back to see if it could write a DVD well enough. No issues there either. The Nero software that comes with the package made light work of burning a full 4 GB plus DVD.

The Ugh Factor
There are a couple of things you should be aware of when checking out the Matrix. The volume on the speakers is a bit low.

Secondly the laptop gets a little cranky when the battery power falls low. The keypad and touchpad become a little unresponsive at low battery levels. But things return to normal immediately on reconnecting the power cord. (Of course this could be because of a power saver setting I could have changed but didn’t.)

But those minor cribs apart the Matrix impressed us with its no-nonsense performance. At a shade less than 40 grand it is well priced too.

Ideal for writers, students and other people looking for a budget machine that will help with basic data processing work, multimedia applications and will also handle most gaming challenges you can throw at it without sweating too much.

4/5 overall for the ACi Matrix

Price: Rs. 39990 plus taxes. Plus 4000 bucks for an NVidia GO 7300 256 MB graphics card.

Contact: ACi (Asia) Ltd.
501, Morya Estate,Lokhandwala, Andheri (West)
Mumbai, 400 053
e-mail: sales@aci-asia.com
Tel: (022) 4060 7000
SMS on: (0) 98195 44409