Review: Acer's Predator is relatively toothless

Acer got a few things right and a number of things wrong with the Predator (specifically, Predator model AG3620-UR12). On the “right” side of the ledger, it has one of Intel’s better processors—a 3.4GHz Core i7-3770—and 32GB of DDR3/1600 memory. With those components, the asking price of $1299 is very reasonable.

On the “wrong” side of the ledger, the Predator has an AMD Radeon HD 8760 video card (the OEM version of the milquetoast Radeon HD 7770), a chintzy custom motherboard with just one PCIe x16 slot (occupied), and a miniscule 16GB SSD that serves as a cache to the 2TB, 7200-rpm mechanical hard drive.

Don't buy the Predator if you plan to do much in the way of upgrading down the road. There's just not much room inside the case. 

The all-steel case is wrapped in painted satin black, with glossy black accents on top. Three doors in its face flip down to reveal 5.25-inch drive bays. Of these, one is occupied by a 16x DVD burner, and a second has a slide-out tray with SATA power and data connectors in the rear of the bay. Though this isn’t a hot-swappable drive bay, it does provide an opportunity for data backup that you can remove to an offsite location.

This slide-out drive tray is a cool idea. While not a hot-swappable bay, it has SATA data and power connectors at its back.

Also included are two empty 3.5-inch drive bays (accessible only from inside the case), but you’ll need to supply your own SATA cables and Molex-to-SATA power adapters if you decide to populate them (leads from the 500-watt power supply are available).

The top of the case has a media-card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 ports. You’ll find two more USB 3.0 ports and four more USB 2.0 ports in back. The video card has three connectors, one each for DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort (full-size), and I was surprised to see antennas for a wireless network adapter card (802.11b/g/n, plus Bluetooth 4.0 support) sticking out from the back. That’s a nice touch, although I imagine having the antennas near the floor must really cut the adapter’s range.

Acer pitched this machine as a “take no prisoners” gaming rig, but the benchmark results belie that claim. While the Predator did produce a Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score of 227, the system we use to establish our 100-point baseline is an unassuming all-in-one desktop PC powered by an Intel Core i5-3230M, with integrated graphics and 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory.

The Predator can deliver Crysis 3 at 60 frames per second, but only if you’re willing to reduce the game’s resolution to 1024 by 768 pixels and clamp its image quality at low. When we tried playing the game at the native resolution of a typical 23- or 24-inch consumer monitor—1920 by 1080 pixels—and boosted image quality to Ultra, the Predator delivered a slideshow-like performance of just 6 frames per second. We had a better experience with Civilization 5 and DiRT Showdown (the latter at Ultra quality level), achieving 28.2 and 31.6 frames per second respectively at a resolution of 1920 by 1080.

The Predator is a better-than-average family PC, but hard-core gamers will find it to be weak tea.

A lapsed musician, Michael is passionate about home and personal audio. He uses his home as a real-world test lab for evaluating consumer electronics and home control technology.
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Acclivity AccountEdge Pro 2012 for Windows: A Friendly Accounting Program for Relatively Inexperienced Business Users

AccountEdge Pro keeps things simple. You can get a single-user edition of AccountEdge Pro for $299, and each additional user for an existing installation costs $149. The upgrade price for existing customers is $159.

That makes AccountEdge Pro somewhat cheaper than Sage 50 Complete Accounting 2013 (for individuals, at least), but more expensive than QuickBooks Pro 2012--and, at this early August writing (a couple of months before Intuit's annual refresh), you can even find the higher-end QuickBooks Premier 2012 for less. However, QuickBooks' price advantage evaporates if you want to add users: You pay the same for each new QuickBooks Pro license as for the initial license, and extra Premier licenses are more expensive than the current discounted price. Also, while AccountEdge supports up to 15 simultaneous users, QuickBooks Pro and Premier support only 5.

QuickBooks gets a lot pricier with its payroll service, too. That service costs $42 a month or $504 a year, whereas Acclivity's equivalent service runs about $350, and you can save even more by opting for a basic service that does the payroll math but doesn't e-file forms.

In terms of usability, AccountEdge Pro 2012 sharply reduces the intimidation factor in setup by letting you tackle it in chunks. To create a new company file, you walk through half a dozen screens that cover entering basic company info (name, tax ID, address, and so on), making a few basic accounting choices (defining fiscal year, setting the date for your first transaction entries, specifying the number of accounting periods), creating a list of accounts (AccountEdge offers suggestions based on common business types), and specifying the location for the data file.

AccountEdge Pro's Easy Setup Assistant screen uses a wizard approach to help you get started.After that, AccountEdge Pro presents you with the Easy Setup Assistant screen, whose wizards address options in five categories: Accounts (to edit the list of accounts and enter details on starting balances), Sales (including customer and pricing information), Purchases (for vendor and expenditure data), Payroll (for employee and payroll tax numbers), and a Customization section (for miscellaneous options relating to data entry, reminders, and more). The program explains these features clearly and identifies common choices instructively, with additional details on a well-organized and thorough Help Center.

Once setup is complete, AccountEdge's newly redesigned interface presents a fairly standard lineup of sections (which it calls Command Centers) in tabular form, with bright blue rectangular buttons instead of plain text links leading to ledgers and forms. On the right, a new sidebar holds links to recently accessed features, features that you've designated as favorites, and a full array of help resources.

AccountEdge Pro reduces the intimidation factor by allowing you to handle accounting tasks in chunks. The program's redesign includes additional navigation aides at the bottom of each command center in the form of buttons for a to-do list, searching transactions, reports, analyses, syncing data, and lists. Other new features in 2012 include support for mileage tracking and multiple blling rates.

Businesses that send employees into the field will appreciate AccountEdge Pro's free iPhone/iPad app--something other packages don't offer--for entering sales, expenses, activity slips (to record time billing while in the field), and contact info, and then syncing it all with the desktop software. To encourage adoption, Acclivity also offers to give a customer's accountant a free copy of AccountEdge Pro.

Overall, AccountEdge Pro 2012 is an attractive, full-featured package that neatly balances ease of use and exposition of (and instruction for) its accounting underpinnings. It's also a bargain for businesses that want support for multiple simultaneous users.

This review is part of a roundup of accounting software. You can read the introduction to the story and find links to the other products we reviewed here.

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