(,") Review Comparison: ASUS W1N (1.6 Dothan) vs. ACER Ferrari 4005 WLMi (",)

Hi I Just bought an Acer Ferrari 4005 WLMi Today, and i wanna know how good it is by comparing it to my 4 months old ASUS W1N before i give it away to my girlfriend.

First the Spec:

+ASUS W1N: (price when i bought it is about US$2500)
-1.6G Centrino Dothan
-ATi Radeon 9600 64 MB
-1 G Ram DDR333 PC2700
-100 G HDD Seagate Mommentus 5400 rpm
-15'4" WXGA
-DVD/CD-RW Combo drive
-Built in TV Tuner,Sub-Woofer,Remote Control.
-Full Brushed Magnesium Alloy Casing
(All Stock driver and not overcloked)

+ACER FERRARI 4005 WLMi: (price when I bought it is US$2550)
-2.0G AMD Turion ML37 64 Bit
-ATiRadeon X700 128 MB
-1 G Ram DDR333 PC2700
-100G HDD Seagate Momentus 5400 rpm
-15'4" WSXGA+
-DVD/DVDRW Dual Layer
-Full Carbon Fibre lid
(All Stock Driver and not overclocked)

Okay i can't finish it today cause still formating the HD on the ferrari, anyway what i want to review is the build quality, material use, performance, user satisfaction, reliabillity, and some other important stuff, so that who ever who read this can see which Brand or which notebook is better.

Anyway just a quick preview, the first impression after opening the box of the ferrari earlier today, is not so good,
While the cabon fibre looks stunning (3D Effects) , the other material , especially the red plastic that runs on both side of the Ferrari didn't impressed me much, it looks like cheap plastic, and for me that is not the "right" material tobe used on ACER's top end model which cost so much.

In the other hand, the material on the ASUS W1N is just out standing, the plastic is very good quality, the magnesium alloy is not only looks good, but also very strong, there are no flexing at all!
one bad thing though sometimes the casing electrocute me a little bit, it's ok but a little bit anooying especially when in the morning , when u just got up from the bed and getting electrocuted is not very nice

DESIGN
The W1N is the Winner here, but that;s really a personal taste, cause i like more minimalist style compared to acer Ferrari bold style, so it's really a personal taste.

one thing bad about the Ferrari design, there are few bolts on the backside near the battery which for me is really bothering , cause for such an expenxive model, they should at least covered it up with somerubber or use a better bolt , cause the original bolt is just your normal "door hinge" phillips bolt
and it certainly doesn't look and Feel "expensive
The Asus is very clean, there are no bolt visibe , only on the below part which are anyway flush inside the mounting hole below the notebook.

One more thing to take note is that when i fisrt time boot up my Ferrari i noticed that the fan is very loud, i repeat VERY LOUD for a notebook , i think is about the same as my desktop

I Dont know if people say it's not that loud or quite silent, but believe me , when my ASUS W1N is under heavy load (Extensive Gaming) , i noticed that the fan does makes noise, but it's still tolerable for me , and it did'nt disturb me at all, but on the Ferrari, with no load, already giving me such a noise that
quite bother me , I wonder what noise it will produce when it's being use for extenxive gaming

That's all For Today, gonna take a nap first :P
there will be next episode for this review comparison.

I must agree with wombatten here, the fan does "disturb" u a bit if u use it in your bedroom or office like i do, cause it makes a little headache for me . Anyway now is the 2nd day with me and my ferrari.
I just finished charging the Ferrari for the whole night, and quite busy today , so after back from work, i just want to complete the battery cycle of my Ferrari for the fisrt time before chargin it up again.

So i just bought this silly teen movies "road Trip" on the road side (in my country nobody's buying original DVD's) cause there's a lot of pirated oneand it only cost you less than US$1 per DVD but the quality is random, sometimes u get good ones and sometimes u dont.
Anyway i just slot in the DVD In my ferrari, and first notice is that the Drive making a loud Seeking sound, i thought, ok, it's just normal for the DVD romto squeeks a little when a DVD is put in for the fewfirst second, I hit the play button on the supplied power DVD and the movie started, but, i noticed that even the drive sound is quiter by now, still it makes a noticably loud noise , definetly louder than my ASUS.
And the vibration is very high, if u put your palm on the notebook, u can actually feel the vibration that's abnormally stronger than any other notebook taht i've ever used before. It's not as high as your mobile phone's vibration mode but definetly very veery noticable!
But i think it's ok, may be just the pirated DVD media that have a bad quality. So i take out that DVD and put it in my W1N , it's quite here and no vibration at all, so i just hit the play button on the power dvd on my W1N,the movie won't Start!!! So i guess it's the media that's bad, cause i've some experience that i can't play most of pirated movie,CD's,games/software etc on my ASUS , if its a original DVD it's ok on the ASUS, so i take the original DVD and put it in my Ferrari, now it play the original DVD with much less vibration and noise even though not as quite as the ASUS but still tolerable.
So i made the decision that Acer has put a better media drive on the Ferrari than the ASUS on W1N (actually from quite sometimes that only complained about the ASUS W1N that I have is the media drive, it's just bad! even original DVD/CD that have a little scracht on it won't be read by the drive)
So Hands up for the Ferrari here :P

But wait after the full charge on the Ferrari for about 10 Hours, i can't get a decent battery life, i set it to home/office profile and with 100% volume and 100% brightness, from full charge i can't even finished 1 single movie!!! it only last for like 1:20 minute
maybe it need 2nd and 3rd charging cycle to unleash it's power, i'll cacth up on this later.
Another info for those who are curious, the speaker on the ferrari is quite ok for a note book, i can easilly listenedto the movie dialouge with no problem at all, even though i always set it up in 100% , In my asus i only need about 60-80% but it's no match cause asus W1N is built for entertaintment it has 2 surround speakers and a subwoofer, yes a Subwoofer on a notebook!!
But the acer speakers is also above average, not like someone on this forum that mentioned that the speakers volume is very low. If it's ok for me , i think is should be ok to others :P hehehe.
But the earphone line out is sucked!! i use 3 different ear-head phone (low quality and high qualitty ones) and i get low volume for all that
I compared that to my W1N it's like 60% on my W1N is the same fo 100% on my Ferrari. Quite a problem for me though, so i guess i should buy yhe creative audigy to improve it

One more thing i noticed today is that the LCD on the Ferrari have some light bleeding on the central lower part and central upper part, it's quite noticable when u just boot up your notebook right before the windows starting, when the screen is all black.
The Asus is better here with no slight light bleeding at all!
(i set both notebook to 100% brightness)

Also i noticed in my dim room, that the Ferrari's screen couldn't show black colour very well, it's not black, but very dark grey with some light bleeding. If u see it u may not noticed it but when i compared it to my W1N side by side , you'll definetlly noticed it.
Also the colour is less vivid on the Ferrari, and the White is a little bit yellowish if compared to my W1N, but i love the high resolution though :P
So for LCD i should say that Asus W1N is better for me. The Ferari's not bad but not the best either, the asus i think is one of the best that i've ever seen (both of my notebook is matte but the asus have 15'4" WXGA while the Ferrari is 15'4" WSXGA+)

I got one question though how come my W1N LCD is wider but shorter than my Ferrari LCD ??
I thought all widescreen notebook of the same size would have the same screen size/aspect ratio ??

Will continue tommorow as my Ferrari is beeing charged for the second time now :P