Inspecting the interior we noted that
both optical drive bays are full, and the drives are held in place by small levers that slide to lock the drive into place or to free it.
The four
optical drive bays don't receive this treatment, but they too are easily accessed once both side doors are removed.
An optional three - cell battery ($ 120) slides into
the optical drive bay to provide approximately 3.2 hours of extra juice.
Only
the optical drive bay, a typical weak point for large laptops, flexes when abused.
This storage is supplemented by a 2.5 - inch, 5,400 RPM, 1 TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue mechanical hard drive in
the optical drive bay.
Not exact matches
Then again, we also miss having an
optical drive and / or a second hard
drive in a swappable
bay like in the way chunkier T - series models of yore, so we're clearly showing our age.
My dream MacBook would also have a removable device expansion
bay, even two, like The Wall Street G3 PowerBooks did (the Wall Street supported batteries as well as 3.5 ″ removable devices like
optical drives or hard
drives in its left
bay, and both 3.5 ″ and 5.25 ″ devices in its right
bay).
There's no SSD, to handle cache or anything else, and I noticed what appears to be an empty
bay where an
optical drive might go.
Additionally, there's an
optical bay drive for those who wish to install a Blu - Ray or DVD
drive.
A Talon can't accommodate gobs of hard
drives like a Mach V or an Origin Genesis, but it does have room for up to seven if you use adapters to convert the 5.25 inch
optical bays.
Gaming systems from boutique manufacturers like Falcon Northwest and Origin routinely come with several free
drive bays, room for additional
optical drives, and a second PCI Express slot.
Acer does provide a hot - swap
drive bay below the
optical drive to off - set this problem, but that
bay accepts a single hard
drive.
Only the
optical bays and the motherboard's RAM slots are completely full, but since Acer ships the system with 32 GB of memory and a Blu - ray
drive, there's not a lot of room for improvement in either area.