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Based purely on specs and pricing alone, the Acer Aspire L310 looks like it should knock the CNET Editor's Choice-winning HP Pavilion Slimline s7600e from its small-form-factor throneAt $850, the Aspire L310 is $125 less than the HP system we reviewed, and Acer's system even came in a little faster on our benchmark testsBut when you look under the Acer's hood, you'll find it lacks one of the Slimline's major advantages, upgradeabilityDespite the Aspire L310's current promise, that limitation hurts its long-term outlook

If you have no intention of upgrading to Windows Vista and simply want a small computer for playing standard-definition video and maybe even serving up some music across a network, the Aspire L310 is a compelling dealIts Core 2 Duo E6300 processor is fast enough to ensure smooth performance, but also affordable enough to keep the L310's price downThat processor would also be fine for Vista, but where you'll likely hit a bottleneck, at least if you intend on running Vista Home Premium, is with the Aspire L310's memory and its graphics chipIt only comes with 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 memoryThat's fine today, but pair that with an integrated Intel GMA 3000 graphics chip and you can pretty much forget about running Windows Vista with the Aero effects enabled

Acer does give you an option for improving the Aspire L310's future, but you'll have to work for it and spend a little moreIts potential is not as robust as the HP Slimline'sIf you're willing to ditch the two 512MB memory sticks the Aspire L310 comes with, you can upgrade to two 1GB sticks, which should give you a better Vista experienceIt uses laptop memory, so the upgrade will be more expensive than traditional desktop memory sticks, and you'll have to be comfortable taking the unit apart yourselfAnd if DIY upgrading isn't intimidating enough for some people, the Aspire L310's memory slots are hidden under a hard-to-remove drive cage

We won't fault the Aspire L310 for its efficient interior design, it helps keep the footprint small, and indeed, at 10 inches wide, 2.25 inches thick, and 7.75 inches deep, it takes up much less volume than the Slimline (9.7x4.4x13.1 inches, respectively)That makes the Aspire L310 closer to WinBook's Jiv Mini, Shuttle's XPC X100, and Apple's Mac Mini Core Duo, all systems we reviewed earlier this yearAlthough the HP is larger than all of those, it's still relatively small, and its extra size gives it a crucial advantage in that it has room for a PCI expansion cardThat means you can stick a low-end, discrete PCI graphics card in the Slimline, which will help you with Vista, video, and even some light 3D gamingThe Aspire L310 and those other superslim boxes don't have a spare expansion slot, so their video performance suffers dramaticallyAcer's system wouldn't even post a playable frame rate on our least demanding Quake 4 test