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Acer is offering improved security in the company's latest laptop computer. The TravelMate 740 notebook, unveiled 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 machine will be available during the first week of October, with an expected starting retail price of $2200.

The laptop weighs 7 pounds and includes a 1.2-GHz Pentium III processor and 128MB or 256MB of memory. It also features a 15" TFT LCD (thin film transistor liquid crystal display) supporting 1400 by 1050 pixel resolution, and a Radeon M6-S graphics controller with 16 MB of DDR SDRAM (double data rate synchronous DRAM).

Also included is an audio system with internal flat-panel speakers, built-in 10/100 megabits per second Ethernet connectivity, and a 56 kilobits per second modem. The TravelMate 740 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 is expected to be available in Europe by the end of October.

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