Acer Travelmate 8204wlmi review on cnet.com

I wonder if the battery life comment was due to the bug in winderz...

They have not been very intelligent of late with their reviews. She said it has a Carbon Fiber case when the lid is the only part that is Carbon Fiber. She also stated that it has a 3.1 MP camera and it's a 1.3. There are other mistakes she made. I know they're small but you'd think they would "proof read" their video reviews before they go live with them. In all if battery life and no multimedia controls are "The Bad" they found, I'll take it. Especially when I consider 3+ hours of battery life entirely acceptable and I really don't care about the multimedia controls (this is geared more towards high-end business users). I also think the 7.7 rating is bunk. Mostly because I've seen them list more bad in other products while giving them an 8+. I could get this 8204 later and hate it, but I think Cnet is being very inconsistent lately, and Ive always been a fan of Cnet.com (been visiting almost every day for several years).

Haven't read the review yet, but in all fairness I think 7.7 out of 10 isn't a bad review. According to cNet, this means:

7.0 to 7.9 (Very good):
While the strengths of a product scoring in this range certainly outweigh its weaknesses, it has some minor faults that certain users should be aware of.

I haven't actually used an 8204 yet, so I can't say if it's better than this. Note that I'm hoping to get mine soon and find that I agree that the review is completely bunk...

Very true. I suppose I shouldn't rush to judgement. It's a tad frustrating though when someone is saying something completely inaccurate when the've go tht product in hand and are suppose to be a trusted source. The specs in the written part of the review were corroect though, and you're right, 7.7 in not that bad, especially when you consider Cnet is often a point or so behind other reviews. I just wish I could say it was because they were being extra thurough. Few more hours and it hopefully won't matter, since I'll be able to formulate my own first had opinion. I just hope it's good cause I'm gonna be ripped if it's not.

SO i actully just read the article... they need to realize that not EVERY pc in the world has to be a media PC. This is a working notebook.. its going to get your work done , and fast... just because it lacks media controls and that wonderous media center version of the OS dosnt mean it sucks... come on now... if i wanted a dvd player id get a dell media center notebook...


gezzzzz

hehe

yah Cnet was kinda wrong in their assessment especially since I have been going nuts researching the crap out of the 8204.

One thing I'm not too clear on is the "high-end"business user which I could classify myself in, but I also do quite a bit of video editing, photoshop, rendering/encoding, DVD authoring and web development. I assume the 8204 can handle that, especially when it is compared to the macbookpro which is a final cut mobile machine.

I also want to play games on it, not too hard core, but enough to do beta testing etc and apply it to some of my work. I'm gaming way more on my psp anyhow, socom multiplayer anyone?!

The areas in which you said you will use it most is where the TravelMate 8204 really shines! I wouldn't worry about it one bit.

I needed it for intense database and app server stuff as well as vmware, not for movies and tv recording

If you test without a USB device that battery life jumps by another hour~1.5 hours according to THG, and most sites are reporting 3 hours and 40 minuts of life on the drain tests not 3 hours 20 minutes. I like how they dash the gaming performance by using the worst possible benchmark (Doom III which is known to be heavily Nvidia Biased and is a TWIMTBP title) and then compare it to a 17" laptop. If it had been a Dell, and I mean the same laptop they would have given it an 8.5 and raved about it.

I agree. Initially, I would say this is a 8.5-9 all day long. With the only thing keeping it from being a perfect 10 is the battery life not being 4 1/2 -5 hours and the screen. The screen is much better than I originally thought. I tweaked the Gamma, Brightness, and Contrast settings and it's just about perfect. It's also very crisp. I like it. The only downside to it is there seems to be a sweet spot with in an approximate 10 degree range. Not that it's not good in anyother position, it's just great when you're looking at it straight on. I'm use to being able to be at just about any angle with my M680 which is about as close to a Sony screen as I've ever seen on another brand. This just took a little getting use to. I'm totally ok with the battery the way it is. It's got about 3:35 minutes with the performance tunred down only 1 notch and the screen on 60% brightness which was still acceptable for my tastes.

Over all this thing is incredible. I was doing so many things at one time last night I started to ask myself "Is this even possible". But it was. I mean I was watching TV (WinTV PVR USB2), installing Macromedia Studio 8, running Outlook, a bunch of other misc. like MSN Messenger, I had several browsers going in the background, not to mention the million and one acer apps running in the back ground ( still have to see which I can kill), and I was starting Photoshop CS2 so I could activate when I found myself admiring how quick it opened. I am a HUGE miltitasker. I can tell right away I am going to love this machine. Worth noting in fareness. I had just wiped the drive on my M680 and had installed MS office for my brother (who bought it). Out of curiosity I clicked on Word on both laptops at the same time. It only opened about a second or so faster on the 8204. Which is what I would expect. The M680 is loaded with a 2.0 GHz P-M, 2 GIG's of RAM, ATI X700 card, and so on. It's evident that where the 8204 is going to shine is the processing in the apps and the actual mitlitasking itselft. I've only fired up F.E.A.R. so far and it was amazing. But with the update patch for Call of Duty 2 that optimizes it for dual core processors, I'm super excited at the prospects of gaminng with this all around super notebook. It's a solid build and incredibley fast. Well, I have to get back to work. More to come....

I have a basic question relative to Rastlin's point: do we know that the various benchmarks out there showing just 3+ hours battery life were conducted with some USB 2.0 device connected? I'm actually inclined to believe that they weren't. What USB 2.0 device would _you_ naturally connect if you were going to benchmark a system?

Personally, I think that the various battery benchmarks are very aggressive. I think they're actually more of a worst-case scenario. But, at the same time, they're standard across machines. So, while I expect to get 4 hours or so out of my 8204 (which I'm still waiting impatiently for), I do recognize that it's not going to provide the battery life of other notebooks that are closer to 5 hours, benchmarked.

Then again, those notebooks don't offer nearly the same capabilities. So, personally, I"m happy to trade some battery life for the performance...

And, czm2000, let me just say: phhhhhhhhhhht! I need to wait until Sam's Club is carrying the thing, and reviews like yours just kill me. "I've only fired up F.E.A.R. so far and it was amazing."

Double phhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht! ;-)

At the risk of sounding conceded, nana nana boo boo

;-)

Harsh... I don't know precisely the right emoticon to use in this case, so I'll just leave it at that.........

I don't think they make one yet. Forgive me, just having fun. I din't really mean it

Oh, sher. ;-) You can make it up by running some Halflife 2 benchmarks, and time some transcoding from MPEG-2 to Divx, and, well, whatever else you can think of to let us less fortunates live vicariously through you...

Well in my case I would say a Mouse, I find touchpads to be just about useless if your doing any real work with the laptop. Or possibly a USB2 hard drive with all the software preinstalled to make the testing process easier. I would assume that they were, based on exactly what was said in the THG report, and the fact that THG posted similar battery numbers for a Core Duo laptop and their standard test process involved a USB 2 device.

I suppose that's entirely possible. I suppose one of you lucky chaps with 8204's on-hand will have to run an equivalent test without anything plugged in, to see...

Like how I say that? "have to run"? ;-) It's a sort of responsibility, I think, that you owe to the rest of us unlucky saps...