***Acer Aspire 1690*** Please respond!

[Tech_Girl]

I went to The Source by circuit city today and have decided on a laptop...well, pretty much. It's the Acer Aspire 1690. For those who have this one, what are the pros/cons?

Also, is this a good deal?:

Pentium M 1.7
100 gb hard drive
1 GB ram
ATI Mobility Radeon X700
DVD rw, dual layer

I got it for $1499 cdn plus tax...It was the display model that had been out 5 days (Locked in a cabinet though). Also, when the guy at the store was shutting the cabinet door, he scratched the front of the laptop (not too big of a scratch) so he put it down to $1450. (I plan to touch this up)

Anyway, with a 3 year extended warranty from The Source it will cost $2000 flat (I talked him down from $2095 to $2000).

Is this a good deal? How do you like yours? Thanks a bunch! (Btw, I haven't bought it yet, it's on hold for a few days)

[jagb]

i have the acer aspire 1694, but it has a 2.0ghz P-M. everything else seems about the same: 100gb 5400rpm hard drive, 1gig of ram, 64mb X700, slot loading dual-layer dvd-burner, etc. i got it for $1650 plus tax, came to around $1900 total, with no extended warranty (just the 1year it comes with). so with the 1.7ghz P-M ur getting with it, the price of $1450 plus tax doesnt seem to be that much of a discount considering its a display model....hopefully some other people have more input on it, im not sure about the relative cost of processors. the extended warranty is nice tho

as for what i think of mine, ive had it for about a week and i dont really have many complaints about it, though it is the first laptop ive owned! :p i mainly got it so that i could play games once in a while, im not sure what u plan on using it for. so far ive played unreal tournament 2004, halflife 2, far cry, and battlefield 2 on it with no problems, games run quite well. battlefield 2 runs at around 40fps average with all medium settings, so its pretty good for a relatively small and portable laptop. the only complaint i have so far is that i find the fan whines a bit, no matter what the rpm, but i think im pretty picky in that department.

hope that helps, not sure what ur lookin for :scratch:

[Tech_Girl]

Hmm ok thanks for the response! Maybe I'm not getting a deal :S

[Tech_Girl]

bump. I have to decide on this very soon!

[YinYang]

Here you go Girl!

Acer Aspire 1690 Review (pics, specs, prices) (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2426)

You can get it for as cheap as $1037!

[Jacmert]

She's Canadian, YinYang. That's $1450 CDN, not USD :p

That being said, I thought the Canadian Acer 1690's only came with Intel GMA 900's, and the 1694's only came with the X600? I do know that the Australian and New Zealand... 1690's, I believe, do come with the X700.

Anyways, I originally wrote this thing about the Dalhousie campus computing store which sells iBooks, but I did some searching and found out that you probably turned away from the iBook idea because of the lack of widespread Mac support for CAD software. But one point I did raise is that you might want to consider taking a week or two (i.e. taking your time) after you first arrive in Souther Ontario to get your laptop, because I think you should be able to survive for your first couple weeks, easily, just relying on the campus computers (well, some ppl do it for four years :p thankfully, I've had a home desktop for my whole undergrad).

Anyways, I have a few questions about this strange 1690 that comes with the X700:

1) What's the screen size and resolution on it?

2) What's the weight?

3) What's the battery cell size / expected battery life for this particular unit/model? Because different Centrino/Pentium-M laptops can vary from like 2.5 hours to 5+ hours of battery life.

Also, they're going to charge you $550 CDN for a 3 year extended warranty? Unless you mean, after all the taxes, it would cost $2000 CDN flat with the extended warranty (meaning that they'd charge you a more reasonable $300 CDN for the 3 year extended warranty...), then that would be ridiculously expensive. I mean, that would be like 1/3rd of the laptop right there. Btw, does that cover accidental breakage/spillage like Dell's CompleteCare does? I think you did mention before that it DOESN'T cover screen cracks.

Btw, is screen resolution a consideration for you? Because if you're going to do a lot of interior design, the extra screen "real estate" that you'd get with a higher resolution display over the standard WXGA (1280x800) would probably be a big plus for you.

[Tech_Girl]

http://www.thesourcecc.com/estore/Product.aspx?language=en-CA&catalog=Online&category=Notebooks+Notebooks&product=2515682

Here's the link to the exact model. Funny, it does have an x600...on the sticker it said x700 though....I wonder why that would be? What's the difference between x600 and x700? Will CAD run on the x600?

And yes, $2000 is with everything: laptop, 3 yr warranty, and tax. I'm also hoping they'll throw in a laptop bag, but that might be pushing it.

Also, the resolution is 1280X800, so by the sounds of it, that's good!

The battery lasts from 3-4 hrs.

Anyway I think that's all...thanks for the help!

[Emotion]

CAD should work on X600, I heard it even worked on 200M lol.
Anyways the difference is that X700 has a 8Pipelines and 6VeX engines
while the other is 4Pipelines and 2VeX egines. But the X700 is for gamers :D, I have no idea if it's gonna help you out in CAD or not.

[Tech_Girl]

ok thanks for the info. Will new versions of CAD work on the X600? Also, how would the X600 compare with other video cards?

[jagb]

just to comment on the discrepancy between what the laptop specs say on the website and what the actual specs are: i got my aspire 1694wlmi from ncix in vancouver, and on the website it says it has a 1.83ghz P-M and x600, but I read on a bunch of forums that the canadian 1694wlmi has a 2ghz P-M and x700! so I went and took a look, and sure enough it had a 2.0ghz and x700!

i'm not sure why manufacturers do this, other than maybe getting rid of stock they have lying around since most gamers want a video card with 128mb of VRAM, not 64mb, so they'd have trouble getting rid of a 64mb x700.....anyway, its not a rare thing, and its a good way to find a good deal a lot of the time

[Tech_Girl]

Haha I was at www.notebookreview.com and someone said the same thing. I'll have to take a look at the spec in the device manager...hopefully they'll be the same as the sticker (or better).

[Tech_Girl]

bump

[Jacmert]

Hmm, not too bad a price overall. Especially considering that the X700 is substantially better than the X600. Do you plan on doing ANY gaming with this laptop? Btw, I think this Aspire might be comparable to the Dell Inspiron 6000d, even in price, although it DOES have a better video card (6000d has the X300). And it's about 0.5 lbs lighter.

My two concerns would be: is WXGA (1280x800) good enough for you? If you're used to working at 1024x768, then I guess it would be an improvement, but if you're doing a lot of interior design work for the next 4 years, that might be restrictive. Maybe you might want to check out some WXGA laptops and some WXGA+ 17" laptops (since it's hard to find WSXGA 15.4" laptops on display) @ Future Shop or something, to get a feel for the resolutions.

2nd concern: what's the warranty service like? Does it cover accidental breakage and/or spillage? (Although I guess that would be an unecessary plus) But more importantly, what's their turnaround time like? Would fixing your laptop take a few weeks or a few days?

Oh yeah, and do you plan on buying this before you leave for Southern Ontario? Because my inclination would be to advise you to take your time, and if you do choose to get this laptop before you head over, then fine, but if not, there's no real rush even when school starts. Then again, I DID take like 3 months from deciding on the i9300 to actually place my order with Dell Canada. And then I reconfigured and re-did my order a few days later, lol. I got a pretty good deal and specialized config, though.

[Tech_Girl]

Thanks for responding Jacmert

I won't be doing any gaming on the laptop...I wanted a good video card for CAD/graphic applications I'll probably have installed on my laptop for interior design. The GB ram I thought would also help with CAD, photoshop, etc. I wouldn't have bothered with a good vid. card or more than 512 mb ram but I've had some people say "you'll need a good video card" and some say "At least 1 GB ram"...so I thought it would be safe to get both...and may be something I'd want in the future.

About the resolution...I don't know much about it, except I saw the screen at The Source and thought the resolution was fine. Do you think it would be too small or too big?

About warranty...It doesn't include dropping the laptop, spilling stuff, etc. It includes manufacturers defects. I was told *everything* is covered, including the battery and dead pixels, except for screen cracks.

If the laptop would need to be serviced, it would take 2-3 weeks...which, I don't know...might be a lot. I guess I would just pray nothing happened to it! But where else could I get one that wouldn't take so long to be serviced? I thought Futureshop repaired laptops themselves, so it doesn't take long. I would definitely go with Futureshop, but they don't sell Acers! I plan on calling Staples tomorrow to see if they carry the model I want, to see how much it is, and what kind of warranty they have. I also plan on calling Acer to ask about their extended warranties.

[Tech_Girl]

Oh, also: I'd REALLY like to get the laptop before I go to Ontario....so I can play around with it, test everything, and get everything I need installed and ready to go.

[YinYang]

Oooh. Sorry, Jacmert! :$

[joeblo111]

Just wanted to let you know that I have a Acer 1692 and I absolutely love it. Great screen, great speed, great design. You can even safely overclock the cpu to 2 ghz with setfsb if you want. I highly recommend it. Only annoying thing is having to chuck a stick of ram if you want to upgrade to 1 gb.