Acer Ferrari 3200 review (just a few pics/couple benches) - Page 29

It's also my understanding that all Acer service in the US goes through their repair center in Temple, TX. Happily for me, that's only a little more than a hundred miles from my home.

Fed-Ex picked up the Ferrari early this afternoon. We'll see if it's back by Friday.

Bootz

HI I'm having trouble playing doom3, playing for a few minutes, the game just hangs, so I'm forced to either do a CTRL/ALT/DELETE or restart, does anyone have a fix? or have the same problem? I have the latest drivers too, and direct X

So then I assume its a good idea to get the extended warranty through Acer directly? What length does everyone get? 1, 2, 3 years?

I've played Doom 3 for several hours straight without any problems, and it runs very smooth here too

Doom 3 Time Demo1: 39.0 FPS

(800x600 medium quality with Omega Drivers v2.5.58)

Acer has just informed my by e-mail that my Ferrari 3200 is on its way back. Didn't say what was wrong or what they did.

If it doesn't work out of the rebox, I'll try to follow up.

Bootz

I have a question. Is it advisable to ebay my old Toshiba 80gb 4200rpm hard drive that came with my Ferrari 3200? When I bought it I also bought the Hitachi 60gb 7200 rpm and swaped it out as soon as the laptop came. So technically, it's still brand new. Will I need this thing again in the future for my warranty? Also, is the hard drive itself warrentied so when I sell it I'm not ripping people off? Thanks alot.

Here's a review of the Ferrari 3200 from The Register. More benchmarks on page two of the review.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08..._ferrari_3200/

Bootz

I have a question to you all Ferrari owners.
I´ve read that the case becomes very easy scratched.
http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/2...ri3200-05.html
Is that true?

Yeah, I would say it scratches pretty easily. I noticed some teeny, tiny ones on my lid that I could only attribute to cat claws. (Yes, I have a cat that likes to hang out with notebooks.)

But the issue, in theory at least, is what is it that's really scratched? It looks like it might be the upper or outer layer of wax, varnish or plastic or whatever it is that gives the lid its shine. If that's the case, you could probably compound and wax it just like you would a car's paint job.

I'll take a closer look when mine gets back from the shop.

Personally, though, I like the used look. Looks like it's been driven.

Bootz

PS: Anyone had any experience with a freeware antivirus program called GRISOFT?

So far I've been bringing it back and forth from work several days a week the last month and I haven't seen a scratch. I handle all my things with care, and did also apply some car wax to protect its paint and I always pack it in the sleeve that comes included. I even dropped a CD cover on top of the lid once by mistake and it didn't leave a scratch. If you handle it with care you have nothing to worry about

Got the Ferrari 3200 back today. The only thing the enclosed work sheet said was "Hard disk drive was wiped and reloaded, unable to duplicate errors mentioned."

Guess it's up to me to try to replicate them!

Bootz

I wonder how they test your laptop. "Lets install windows again, oh ok he is starting up, I can get in windows XP. This laptop is healthy nothing wrong with it. Send it back to the customer"

I worked years ago for Gateway as a technical support in Ireland and every week we took one PC out of the line and check if everything is ok. Man if you know what we sometimes discover, or in this not discover in the way of it should be in there you would be crying. They (people who are putting every PC's together) forgot to put in some additional HDD or missing cables, etc, terrible. One thing I know for sure is that the laptops where testing very well if they came back from a customer. Testing the laptops for a week to see what is wrong with it. But that was about 7 years ago. I wonder how it is now

What is with acer technicians? They offered to replace the hardrive on my ferrari, when knowledge base Article - 329284 states the possible causes as System bus errors,Memory errors that may include parity or Error Correction Code (ECC) problems Cache errors in the processor or hardware
Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLB) errors in the processor or
other CPU-vendor specific detected hardware problems. Not exactly sure what all that means, but no mention of hardrive problems. Anyway after 4 missed deliveries i got my self a refund and i am going to buy from a different reseller.

Drivers/Utilities

Just purchased this great laptop, and was just wondering if anyone has compiled a list of drivers and important utilities for the 3200 as I'm currently in the process of updating and configuring it. As many links as possible pls! Thanks!

linux support ?

anyone knows about linux support on Acer Ferrari 3200 ? especially the modem ?

can someone teach me about omega drivers u guys talk about? how much difference does it make and how to install it?
i also intestested to know what's the best way to maximize the power without needing to do dangerous stuff like overclocking...

Has anyone run the Coutner-Strike: Source Beta on the Ferrari 3200? What kind of performance should be expected (FPS)?

sorry to go off-topic, but is that CS:Source beta still open if you buy CZ now?

Opened the Ferrari 3200 this morning and found the screen frozen with the Machine Check Exception error again.

Whatever the problem is, it doesn't look like wiping the hard drive is the fix.

Here we go again...

Bootz

Newest drivers and useful utilities

Sure thing

Drivers

VIA Hyperion Pro chipset drivers:
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx...D=1&CatID=1070

AMD Mobile Athlon 64 processor driver (AMD Turion 64 Driver):
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/..._13349,00.html

ATI (AMD) Mobility Catalyst display driver:
http://ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst/
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati/win2k_xp.php

Realtek AC97 audio driver:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...&Software=True

Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet (BCM57xx) driver:
http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethe...me_desktop.php

Broadcom 802.11g WLAN (BCM43xx) driver:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...oad/22715.html
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/broadcom.htm

Agere Systems (LSI) Generic Modem driver:
http://www.lsi.com/cm/License.do?url...iver&locale=EN

Synaptics Touchpad driver:
http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm

WIDCOMM Bluetooth driver:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread...850#post691850

Matshita DVD-RAM driver:
http://panasonic.co.jp/psec/support/...9573drvxp.html


Utilities

Ultimate Boot CD:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

AMD PowerNow! Dashboard:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/...%5E964,00.html
http://www.amd.com/images/PowerNowDashboard_setup.zip

AMD Dashboard:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/..._12474,00.html

AMD Power Monitor:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/..._12474,00.html

ThrottleWatch:
http://www.panopsys.com/Downloads.html

MobileMeter:
http://dssc3031.ece.cmu.edu/~tamaru/...erreadme-e.htm
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/8259/

SpeedFan:
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

HDD Temperature:
http://www.hddtemp.com/home/index.html

Battery Eater Pro:
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/bepro_e.html
http://www.mobilepc.ru/be/eng/

Battery Doubler:
http://www.dachshundsoftware.com/bdoubler/index.html

Battery Monitor.NET:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.ph...entry584484786
http://users.skynet.be/bk265512/Batt...tor_dotNET.exe

PassMark BatteryMon:
http://www.passmark.com/products/batmon.htm

PassMark BurnInTest:
http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm

Central Brain Identifier:
http://cbid.amdclub.ru

CPU-Z:
http://www.cpuid.org/cpuz.php

CPU-Z Overclockers' Edition:
http://www.vr-zone.com/ocdb/cpuz-vrzone.zip

Memtest86+:
http://www.memtest.org/

Dead Pixel Tester:
http://www.dps.uk.com/freeware_DTP.htm

Dead Pixel Buddy:
http://laptopshowcase.co.uk/downloads.php?id=1

PowerStrip:
http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

ATITool:
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

RightMark CPU Clock Utility (RMClock):
http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml

CrystalCPUID:
http://crystalmark.info/soft/CrystalCPUID4.html

ClockGen (CG-ICS950405):
http://www.cpuid.org/clockgen.php

AMD64 Clock Utility (AMD64CLK):
http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/amd64clk.shtml

A64 Tweaker:
http://www.akiba-pc.com/download.php?view.40
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...345#post505345

DVDInfoPro:
http://www.dvdinfopro.com/

Nero CD-DVD Speed:
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/

CD Bremse:
http://www.cd-bremse.de
http://cdbremse.dyndns.org/cdbremse.htm

DVDIdle:
http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-idle.htm

DVD Shrink:
http://www.dvdshrink.org

WinFlash:
http://support.acerpanam.com/synapse...nflash&pupv=pu
https://www.synapsenow.com/synapse/d...s/WINFLASH.zip

AirSnort:
http://airsnort.shmoo.com/

NetStumbler:
http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

SMAC:
http://www.klcconsulting.net/smac/

StatBar:
http://www.statbar.nl/

Spybot-S&D:
http://beam.to/spybotsd

Trojan Remover:
http://www.simplysup.com/

Firefox:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Thunderbird:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

Spamihilator:
http://www.spamihilator.com/


Miscellaneous

Windows XP Start Windows Ferrari sound:
http://rasmus.uib.no/~stud1393/FERRARI.WAV

Acer Ferrari LaunchManager:
ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/note...er/launmgr.zip

Acer Ferrari Wallpaper calendar update until June 2007:
http://stkts.sertek.com.tw/notebook....0?OpenDocument

Acer Ferrari Wallpaper calendar update until March 2006:
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/for...errari&pupv=pu

Acer Ferrari Wallpaper calendar update for 2005:
http://rasmus.uib.no/~stud1393/Ferrari2005.zip

Modded BCM Tray Icons for Acer Ferrari 3000/3200/3400:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread...647#post312647


For official drivers & utilities from Acer see here:
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers...rrari3200.html
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers...rrari3400.html
http://csd.acer.com.tw/SI%5CDownload...okWeb?OpenView

For 64-bit drivers for Windows XP x64 see my post here:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread...381#post620381

See also kej's Ferrari 3400 (3200): Windows XP 32-/64-bit AND Vista Drivers thread:
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread113201.html

I hope this helps