Acer laptop offers built-in fingerprint recognition

Acer's TravelMate 740 notebook, unveiled on Thursday, offers an integrated fingerprint-recognition security system in order to restrict access to sensitive data.

The TravelMate 740 has a fingerprint sensor built into the notebook's palm rest, and can be configured so that a valid fingerprint is required to boot the machine or decrypt files.

The laptop weighs 3.2 kilograms and includes a 1.2GHz Pentium III processor, 128MB or 256MB of RAM, a 15-inch TFT LCD (thin film transistor liquid crystal display) supporting 1400 by 1050 pixel resolution, a Radeon M6-S graphics controller with 16MB of DDR SDRAM (double data rate synchronous DRAM), an audio system with internal flat-panel speakers, built-in 10/100Mbps Ethernet connectivity, and a 56Kbps modem. It also includes a battery that lasts for up to four hours and an optional Acer InviLink IEEE802.11b wireless LAN PC Card.

It offers support for a DVD/CD-RW combination drive, a DVD-ROM drive, a CD-ROM drive, or a second hard disk drive, and allows hot swapping so users can switch drives at any time.

The TravelMate 740 will be available in the US during the first week of October. Pricing in the US begins at $US2200.