Inspecting gadgets

A Ferrari for all seasons

Ah, the power of marketing. In the parallel world of dull Atom netbooks, the Ferrari One you see before you is known as the Acer Aspire 1410 – hardly the stuff of which dreams are made. But give it a splash of Rosso Corsa paint, bung in an Athlon CPU and 4GB of RAM and decorate vigorously with some prancing horse ™ logos and hey presto! You’ve got yourself a premium-priced mobile device.

Ok, so I’m being a little cynical. But it’s hard not to be, considering Ferrari will happily provide its logo to anyone who can stump up its considerable licensing fees. As a result, you’ll find that famous logo on everything from coffee mugs to USB keys and the brand does feel more than a little bit ubiquitous.

If you can ignore the in-your-face marketing, the Ferrari One is actually a very decently-specced device.  With a 11.6-inch, 1366x768-resolution screen, it’s not as squint-inducing as the typical ultraportable, while the Radeon HD 3200 graphics subsystem ensure that you’ll be able to at least manage a game of World of Warcraft in between meetings. 

Otherwise, it’s kitted out and performs much as you’d expect, with 3G, Draft-N Wi-fi and 250GB hard drive all along for the ride. Battery life is quoted at a medium 4+ hours – not the best I’ve ever seen, but good enough for most people to get through a busy working day. Hopefully, they’ll also notice the one distinctive Ferrari touch: the  F10 key sports a tiny Maranello-branded F1 car icon and when combined with the Fn key, takes you to the Ferrari website. Perhaps they should have made it make V8 noises on startup instead.

There’s little to criticise about the Ferrari One, but there’s also precious little to recommend it – and at a listed retail price of $850, it’s one very, very pricey netbook. Sorry, Ferrari – this one sputters on the parade lap.