Acer Aspire 1710 Review - Page 3

The bios is EXTREMELY limiting. There isn't even a hard drive detection option.

Adam I was checking out review of this laptop, allthough I am not really interested in it, but I came accross your website where you listed new 800x series for preorder. I was wondering when do you expect to receive those notebooks? Also do you know if this is alloy or plastic shell they use?

Thanks Adam for the confirmation about hd and mem.
Now it remains only to resolve the problem that Ransaak have described : the spin down of the hd when not used.

Do you have some ideas ???

It's unfixable unless they do a new bios

They enabled "hard disk spin down" in the bios and there is no way to change it without a re-written bios. The problem boils down to this:

1) They used a desktop hard drive which is not ACPI compliant. Most hard drives aren't so no big mistake here.

2) They enabled ACPI in the BIOS. Also no big deal, 98% of the components and the OS are ACPI compliant. ACPI is a way for XP to control the power management features of components without having to use the BIOS. SOunds great and it is UNLESS the component isn't ACPI compliant as is the Seagate Hard drive. In this case, ONLY the BIOS can control all of the power management features of the device.

3) They enabled HARD DISK SPIN DOWN on the BIOS and then deleted the option in the Acer custom BIOS to change it. This is the big mistake. Now the hard drive is under the BIOS control for power management since it doesn't have ACPI support. They made the wrong choice in my opinion and gave us no way to fix it.


When I talked to them on the phone today they actually said "well this isn't a true desktop replacement notebook." WTF! Why in the hell would anyone want a 17lb notebook to do anything OTHER than replacea desktop.

I'm going to return mine. They made it pretty clear that they'd have to go to Taiwan and rewrite the BIOS and they dont foresee doing that. (They actually said that to me).

I'm going to throw another $500 bucks into my budget and get the 8790 or HP ZD7000.

Hey ransaak, perhaps you could find some sort of utility that periodically accesses the hard drive at a set interval (obviously an interval that is less than the spin down interval).

I would think that such a utility would use miniscule system resources and it would be something that you would startup everytime you boot Windows. The utility doesn't even have to be specifically meant for this task...just any small utility that, for some reason or other, needs to access the hard drive every set number of minutes.

Just a thought...can't think of anything specific at the moment, but may be worth looking into.

Wow...was a quite a shock to find out that PC Torque is now selling the Acer 1710 series!

I had ordered one some time ago from eCost and due to being extremely busy, never followed up with why it had not yet shipped...I just assumed the Acer 1712 was still in the works at Acer.

Man, was I wrong! But in a strange twist of mixed good and rotten luck, it all works out in the end! I returned to the ecost website to try and immediately cancel my order...I wanted instead to order from PC Torque. Well, lo and behold, it states that the order was already "cancelled by customer". WTF? I never cancelled my order! But hey, I'm not really giving a damn now! I immediately ordered from PC Torque (on Friday) instead...something I've always wanted to do, but could never find the right Sager to fit my needs!

Unbelievable that the very Acer I want is now available at PC Torque...and with a pixel policy to die for!

Here's hoping the Acer 1712 lives up to it's hype...so far, the reviews sound good to me, other than the spin down problem! Hopefully, with PC Torque and the forums on our side, this issue can be resolved!

Hey, I have found in internet 2 interesting sentences :


"... Exit programs when you're not using the computer, some programs may be accessing the drive even if you're not using them, and thus prevent the drive from spinning down. This goes for programs in your system tray as well. In particular, you may want to disable the RealPlayer startcenter, since it will prevent the C: drive from spinning down indefinitely. "

and

" ... I also found out why two of my hard drives weren't spinning down properly when I weren't using them. It turned out to the RealPlayer Startcenter that was accessing the disks at regular intervals. After disabling startcenter, two of my computers are at least more quiet when I'm not using them. "


What do you think about it ??

Can "RealPlayer startcenter" resolve our spin problem ??

That's a good idea GTS and good folowup Shaolin. I'll install it and try it out tonight. This laptop is soooooo close to being a great machine I'm frustratd as hell. I hope it works. I'll let you know tonight.

I heard a while back about a progam that was designed to keep an active cash, to help speed up the HD. Its major downfall was that the drive would never spinn down or even slow all the way down for very long. I wish i could remember what it was called. I saw this program while on my friends brand new pentium pro, to give a little time frame.

I'm also wondering if a new hard drive might stop the problem as well.

Got a program that accesses the harddrive

Here's a program me and a friend of mine had worked on for checking a directory for files and moving the files. As long as there are no files to move all this does is check a directory for files and the task manager doesn't even show a performance change. I'll take a look tonight and see if it has any unnecessary code in it, but it works fine on my 1712. It doesn't do anything visible and it only shows up in the taskmanager as "unshareall.exe" If you try it let me know if you have any problems with it.

Nice work jchimpo. So this worked on your 1712 and fixed the pausing problem?

Pausing problem

Yeah it works on mine. I left it alone awhile and tried it. Also tried it with just an open word doc running where it had been pausing and no pausing now. I also tried it with nothing open and clicked on my computer every few minutes to check for pause. I haven't heard the noise of the drive spinning up or down either. I'll keep checking it from time to time, but seems to work fine.

Sweet. Can't wait to get home now.

Sounds great, jchimpo and all who chipped in with suggested utilities.

Hopefully, any 1712 issues that we come across can be brainstormed in this matter here on the forums, and with PC Torque in our corner as well, we can learn to survive any deficincies in Acer's tech support

But regardless, I'll be calling Acer to voice my displeasure with the BIOS spin down problem...any way you slice it, they need to take these things seriously

Ooops...guess I posted within seconds after Adam....the news just keeps gettin' better with this thing

Pausing program problem

Well, it didn't mess up, then I rebooted and no luck with pausing. I'll take a look tonight and see what I can do to fix it.

Hi guys,

I am more than a month that I am observing your beast 1712/1714.
I am waiting the italian importation of Acer to buy your treasure, but Acer Italy say nothing about it yet ....

I am thinking to replace the 120GB hd with a much more beautiful Hitachi 400GB (that I have discover only in these days, before it I was in love with WD 250GB) that is ATA 100 and so usable in the 1712/1714.
And maybe 2GB 400Mhz instead one ....

But, no talking about me, can I know your personal opinions/reviews/problems/free words/images/photos/... about your monsters ??

Only Adam posted some photos about it, all of you nothing.
Please, if you have the hardware, give to us forced waiting person some pictures to dream on our future purchase.

And I like very much to read all your sincerely description about quality, performance, display, sound, interfaces, all about the 1712.

Please is there someone that want write a very big review on your super-machine described in all of the details possible ??

Thanks a lot, I hope to be in your elite as soon as possible, bastard Acer Italy my patience will win !!!

Alessandro.

P.S. - Some news about the possibility of swap the Nvidia card with a 9700 like the one in the 8790 ???