Due to the black and  silver colours, the Acer TravelMate 6592G's look is rather decent. The gently rounded corners of the case, and the clearly designed inside, let it, nevertheless, appear modern and business-like. Inside the noble and huge looking touch pad dominates the appearance. The appearance is broken up by a green track point (FineTrack) and also by identically green stripes on both of the FineTrack's buttons.

Considering the size of 36.0 cm x 27.7 cm x 4.0 cm the Acer TravelMate 6592G proves to be a typical 15.4 inch office notebook. Its weight of about 3 kilogramme is considering the generous equipment, the robust design, and the price category also alright. After all, the standard equipment of the 6592G includes a 8  cells battery with a weight of 400 gramme by default.

The design of the lid is good. Consisting of to hooks the central lock, keeps the display safely closed. Due to broad, solid, and powerful hinges, every position of the lid is easily supported. The lid, which is flexural rigid and only gives a little bit when applying moderate force, is stabilized by a magnesium aluminium  alloy. So, the picture did not change in any way, when applying force.

But also the case is based on a solid double vat made of modern materials. High-quality plastic compounds and insensitive surfaces, let the quality appear solid.  The  workmanship of the upper and the bottom shell is of high-quality and precise. The notebook hardly creaks. Also the upper and the bottom construction of the touch pad are solid.

The Acer TravelMate 6592G is generously equipped with interfaces and scores all  possible points in this aspect. Besides a DVD-D port for attaching external screens, the 6592G is also equipped with a serial interface - technicians in measurement technology will be pleased.

The MediaBay can either take up an optical drive or a second hard disk (HDD) or a 6 cells supplement battery with 3,800 mAh. Businessmen can due to the ezDock II/II+ port also attach the notebook to an optional docking station. So, it's not necessary to plug/remove all the cables.

The Acer TravelMate 6592G supports the increasing security awareness of businessmen by a fingerprint reader and built-in Trusted Platform Module (TPM). If this is still not enough, this notebook is also equipped with a SmartCard reader and the optional Acer PlatinumSecret software.

But that is not all, the Acer TravelMate 6592G is also equipped with all other useful interfaces. It even comes with two slots for expansion cards. It supports both ExpressCard/54 and PC Cards (type II). Furthermore, there are a Firewire port (IEEE 1394), a fast infra-red receiver (FIR), the usual audio ports, i.e. headphones, microphone, Line-In, S-Video out (NTSC/PAL), three USB-2.0 ports and a VGA port. The 5-in-1 card reader supporting MultiMediaCard (MMC), MemoryStick Standard and Pro (MS, MS Pro), SecureDigital (SD), and xD-Picture Card (xD) makes the interface equipment complete.

Those who travel a lot will surely appreciate the WLAN module WiFi Link 4965AGN by Intel. It makes a fast wireless communication with a transfer rate of up to 300 MBit/s possible. The wired communication is due to Gigabit-LAN with support for Intel's AMT 2.5 even faster. Also the obligate 56K modem for analogue dial-up is available.

A genuine business professional like the Acer TravelMate 6592G is able to bridge short distances and connect to mobile phones and peripherals like headsets via Bluetooth. But, also older mobile phones and PDAs are supported. Due to a fast infra-red receiver (FIR) it can also communicate with these.  Modern video conferences are supported by a web cam, which is located inside the upper LCD frame. Its picture quality is due to a number of available options comparably good.

Today you can't take this for granted: Acer delivers this business notebook with a recovery DVD for Vista Business and a recovery CD for XP Professional. Especially, busy businessmen will appreciate this kind of customer service. Furthermore, Acer's eRecovery Management tool makes system backup and restore easy.

A direct comparison to our reference screen - a high-quality 20 inch MVA-LCD Viewsonic VP2030b - occurs to our satisfaction, besides that there is a slightly blue tint. The colours of the skin appear to be rather cool and could be really  warmer. But, not only the screen of the 6592G has this flaw. Actually, it seems that there is in general a trend to a cold colour representation of notebook screens. Nevertheless, the colour representation, the brilliance and the intensity of the colours is considering the TravelMate 6592G is equipped with a matte display, in general alright.

The transfer rate of the big 250 GB SATA hard disk, a HTS542525K9SA00 by Hitachi, measured by HDTune was in average 45,7 MB/s with , which is quite fast. So, it belongs to the upper third of current 2.5 inch hard disk models with 5,400 rpm. Furthermore, this notebook is equipped with an optical drive, a GSA-T20N by LG, which is able to write the important DVD-RAM format with 5x speed.

Designed as powerful business notebook, a high gaming performance is not obligatory. Due to progress in technology, the Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT is, nevertheless, as powerful as former generation video cards like, e.g., an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. Although this means that 3D demanding games like the ego-shooter Crysis can only be run at low resolution and low details with smooth frame rates, the performance should be sufficient for older, less demanding games.

Loudness

Checking the noise emissions the Acer TravelMate 6592G proved to be user-friendly. We measured a maximum of 34.4 dB(A) in idle mode under Windows Vista and with an ambient temperature  of 20°C. The noise itself is thereby neither sharp nor high, but, due to its low frequency noise, similar to a gentle breeze. If the small fan does not work, the hard disk's (Hitachi HTS542525K9SA00) silent clicking is audible in quiet environments (32,8 dB(A)). Even under full load the measured maximum noise level of 39.9 dB(A) is still alright.

Temperature

Also the case temperature of the Acer TravelMate 6592G stays always alright. The top side gets only slightly warmer. We measured 33.1°C in average. At the bottom side only the parts covering the vent holes get slightly clearly warmer. We measured 44.3°C there. The other parts of the bottom side reach an average temperature of 32.0°C. Overall, the Acer TravelMate 6592G did also subjectively not seem to get hot. After we had done our editorial work lasting for hours with this notebook, the surface temperatures were still alright.