HUGE IN-DEPTH ACER TM4402 wlmi REVIEW!!! - Page 3

Success! I installed ePowerManager on 4402 and it definitely helps battery life management.

FYI, my X700 is reported as having 256mb local memory by 3Dmark05; hence F4005 should have no problem with hypermemory also. Cat 5.10 btw.

I am stuck in Korea on a business trip and Taiwan for another 2 weeks. Will try to do comparison review b/t 8104A vs. 4402 when I return to USA.

How would I set this up?? Also does it show up in adapter properties of just 3dmark

Download and intall Catalyst 5.10 from ATI, which is the manufacturer of X700.

Hypermemory is software managed, you cannot set it. Therefore, it only gives you the extra 128 when you need it. This works in the background so you won't be aware of it. 3Dmark is one of the few programs that can detect such, but gaming performance should improve where graphic memory becomes critical as well.

Read Anandtech's article on further explanation of how Hypermemory works:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2498

Can you even d/l Mobility drivers? I heard you have to hack the drivers with DHmodtool which those drivers do not work well with the Ferrari 4000

You can download ATI drivers...just go to the site. I believe it's nvidia drivers which must be "hacked."

I just use standard desktop 5.10 Cats and modded them. Read here:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33749227

Or download the newest mobility drivers directly from ATI's site here:

http://www.ati.com/online/mobilecatalyst

Good luck,
-Ransom

changed it over to ntfs

Did the deed... went well I think...
Did drive d: first... acercata... kept the partition name...xp pretty much made me,

then did C: which also remains called acer....had to reboot for that one to happen.

Only wierd thing...I have no command prompt in accesseries from programs etc.
had to go to RUN and type in cmd.
Maybe they dished me an older version???
Otherwise, installed by the book..
about a ten to 15 minute deal.

Now I intend to drop in thunderbird and firefox....
I hate outlook...
Hey... anyone know if I can jusat uninstall a whole bunch of MS stuff ???
Ant suggestions?
Thanks all.
PS... Acer really didn't put too much crap in this thind... though they had extra trash in the cd... at least that was a plus.
And keeping each partition at 45 or so... should I transfer size from one to another for any reason???
CU,
Stocky

Does the acer ePowermanager do a better job at battery life than the profile built into windows? I don't seem to find it on the setup CD, and the other two just have images on them. I notice acer has several Epowermanagers for download on their site, but none listed for the 4402. Am I missing something?

By the way, I love my 4402, except for one thing, the screen flat out SUCKS. It has maybe a 10degree view angle, if that, and has no punch. I am going to try to tweak it out as best I can though.

Just got my 4402 this week! So far I have been playing BF2 and Call of Duty with no lag. However, the Call of Duty demo will crash from time to time.

the problem with call of duty 2 demo was with the ati driver that downloaded from ati.com. i reinstalled the driver from acer europe and everything is fine. i bought the full version and have been using catalyst 5.11. somebody mention the crash only happens at a certain level. i guess i'll just play till it crash and then reinstall the stock driver.

Yes. EPowerManagement is great! I love the program and it does a brilliant job on my 8104.

Because I have 8104 as well, I just installed the proggy on my gf's 4402 and it has been working perfectly fine.

Acer Europe lists several versions of the epower program, which one is working for you ?

Just ordered me one last friday, came in yesterday. I'm a couple of hours away from home, but I'm going down to pick it up tomorrow. I'll have some first impressions posted soon. Hopefully, there won't be any significant issues with converting the hard drive to ntfs.

I am thinking of switching mine over to Windows 64, any of you guys running it on this laptop, and did you have any issues with the install? I notice ACER Europe site has all the drivers for XP64.

Got it, and it works fine. I'm using it right now. The widescreen is nice, though I'm not too picky. As with others who have purchased this system, the main hangup was the lack of a 128 meg video card. It seems to run fine without it. It might not be as functional on down the line, but that's offset by the 64 bit cpu.

Heat is a minor issue. It helps to get it up off the lap if possible. The cooling fan is neither too loud nor too quiet. Battery life varies greatly with use. Minimal apps can be sustained for over 3 hours, but gaming or multi-media type uses really cut into it if you're not wired up.

The case seems solid enough, and is quite attractive with the silver and black. It's hard to notice that the keyboard is curved during normal use. The touchpad is well built, but I prefer a different scroll setup to the one provided (4 way button). It's somewhat thinner and lighter than I expected. It's a good compromise size: good price/performance ratio, not immobile like the 17 inchers, though it's not tiny either. If it were any bigger, I'd need a different bag for it.

The speakers are not so good, though I haven't used many notebooks. It's fine with headphones.

It would be nice to have a usb port on the right side for a mouse, but I just use the one on the back. It also has the basic vga out for video, no dvi, but it does have s-video. The multi-card reader is quite cool, and nice to have.

I upgraded to a gig of ram, but I never really tried it with only 512, so I can't say how much the performance went up. Bought both from newegg, which is recommended.

Any questions, let me know.

Got to love this laptop

Hello everyone my first post of many to come . I got this laptop after months of research into different makes and models and picked this one. I have been using it for about 3 months and I'm still amazed at the speed and value. Since I purchased it three of my buddies from school have bought the same one once I wowed them with the speed and features of this laptop. Only downside is speakers; but then again I use a good pair of headphones made easy by the jack on the front. Screen is very bright compared to most other notebooks I see around campus.

I Have found various Acer utilities even newer drivers from other Acer laptop models which work great on this model much better than the default ones (took many restarts and installs to get all of them right), I have tweaked this laptop perfectly in my opinion with xp tweaks, bios tweaks, software/driver tweaks, the hard drive is partitioned at C: 20gig Fat / D: 20gig FAT / E: 50 gig NTFS but plan to make it all NTFS when moving to win64 some other time.

The keyboard is amazing more natural than my Logitech elite keyboard on my desktop, although I would love to find a keyboard guard similar to the ibook ones just to keep it clean for the next few years of university, if anyone knows about company that makes them for the curved Acer keyboards let me know I'm sure many people would love to know about it too.

Although I came up with one problem lately, my wireless card always disconnects me within minutes and I would have to disable and enable it again to get a few more minutes out of the connection, and no I did not mess with the drivers for it, I tested it on a clean format so it’s the hardware. I'm sending it in during the xmas break but for now I'll use an external card. Acer has it covered and should be done in 2 days since I know where the service depot is I would drop it off instead of shipping it, they just need to swap the wireless Broadcom card. I also compared it to my friends’ computer which is the exact same sitting next to it so I concluded it to be the Broadcom card which swaps out like ram.

One day when I got more time I'll post an entire list of the latest drivers compatible from other models here to help everyone out, and go farther into detail on some ideas for unleashing its true potential.

Also I'm looking for which ram to upgrade with, the factory installed ram is pc2700 infinion, and I’m just wondering if there are faster makes or timings for it. Would 3200 work? Which brand would you recommend at what speeds, should I go for a performance kit? I would just like to through it out there to see everyone’s experiences/thoughts on the matter.

I find it ironic why the source and the major retailers don't sell higher end Acers only the cheapest one at 799. Maybe it's because everyone would buy these, leaving little or no profit for these large retailers because of the huge value.

Cheers

Just a no brainer question guys! I have an Aspire 5500NWXCi and just wanted to know do you guys remove the stickers on the right side of the unit below the keyboard? The one that gives you the specs on the unit. Or does it look better to leave them on? A couple of my friends told me to take them off because if you leave them on too long they fade and when you take them off it leaves an ugly mark? Thanks for any opinions!

Yeah, if someone could put together a list of recommended driver updates, that would be wonderful. I could really stand to improve the stability of my system.