Ferrari 3200 - Page 3

I just got my Ferrari 3200 and wanted to post a few remarks.
First of all, someone mentioned something about whether the carbon fiber strip was true carbon fiber. It is but it is pasted on to a plastic peace and is only about 3/4 mm thick so it is not really functional. I have been using a Titanium Powerbook before this, so it is my main comparison.
Design and Build: I absolutely love the desing of this laptop. Everything is where it should be in my opinion and I have not found any problems with usability. It is much more portable than I had expected. Strictly by feel alone, I think it is just as easy to carry and transport as the powerbook. In fact, I like it better because the widescreen makes the powerbook overly wide IMO. The unit is very solid, especially if you are used to Dells of the past two years. I have seen $3000 Dells that have loose battery packs and flex everywhere you touch them. The Ferrari is very well assembled and feels high quality. The only slightly questionable aspect is that the dvd drive has a strip of plastic right below the slot area that is not very solid. However, this is not enough to bother me.
Keyboard: Again, I am used to the powerbook's keyboard and I happen to hate that keyboard, mainly because of the layout and the key size. The cursor keys and funcion keys were too small and not very usable. I am happy to say that the cursor keys on the Ferrari are much more to my liking and have been good for gaming. The overall layout is extremely good fo me and I have not made any mistake input as a result of the keyboard.
Touchpad and mouse:
The included Ferrari mini optical mouse is one of the best features of the laptop (not really, but its awesome). I love the size and functionality of the mouse and its great that I didnt have to go buy a mouse when I got the comp. The touchpad takes a little getting used to. It seems to be a little less smooth than I would like at first but it has gotten better and is perfectly acceptable. The cursor button in between the mouse buttons is a welcome feature and it does its job.
Screen: Again, I am used to the Powerbook screen which is a widescreen that is pretty nice and has decent viewing angles. I prefer the Ferraris screen and think it is easier to see outside. No dead pixels either. I agree with the other people saying the screen is nothing to be complaining about. I love how many steps there are on the dimmer.(Good for increasing batt. life)
Performance:
I have not done any benchmarks yet but I can tell you this thing is fast. My desktop is a 2.5 ghz P4 with 1 gig of ram and a 64 mb Geforce card. I find this laptop to be faster. Multitasking is great. I can play Ut2004 in a window while talking on Instant messenger and on the web. I was pretty impressed by that. As far as the 4200 rpm HD affecting performance: lets put it this way, I cant imagine how fast this would be with a 7200 rpm HD. UT2004 levels load slightly slower than my desktop but gameplay difference is negligible. Also, im sure startup would be slightly faster with a new HD.
Wireless:
I use the built in wireless to connect to my home 802.11B router and it works flawlessly and took about 30 seconds to set up. Signal strength is adequite. My house is bad for wireless transmission. Its great to have the button to turn off wireless right on the front and it also stays lit to tell you its on.
DVD Watching:
I watched Romeo Must Die which has a lot of fast paced action and did not notice any ghosting or anything like that. The playback quality was good and definately better than those portable dedicated DVD players with the little 7 inch screens. Also, the speakers are lightyears better than the powerbooks which I had trouble hearing.
Battery life: So far I have managed to get a maximum of close to 3 hours with web browsing, IM, and other light work. I watched Lord of the Rings for 2:08 minutes before the low battery warning came on. I am pretty pleased with the battery life so far seeing as the new powerbooks get about an 1 and a half at most.

Everyone wondering about hard drive formats:
The HD comes with two partitions, one holding the Acer restore data and the other is for your storage. Both are formatted as Fat32. It is very easy to convert to NTFS from the command promt. You can find out how by googling for "Convert FAT32 to NTFS". I would only convert the storage partition as the acer data partition might need to be in FAT32.

Overall, I love this laptop and reccomend it to anyone who doesnt mind battery life that is an hour or so less than most Pentium-M Centrino solutions. I am happy I spent my $1971 with cash discount from PC Torque on this machine.

great review

I beg to differ. Dothan is nothing more than a slightly modified P6 core (read: P3-M) adding a P4 bus controller and 2MB cache, while the Low Power Mobile Athlon 64 is based on the all new K8 core with 64-bits support. The future is 64-bits, and Dothan is not in my opinion

Yeh probably right.

Ill amend it. Dothan is the winner for the next 2 years IN A LAPTOP until 64bit os and software is widely available and they manage to sort out the battery life of the athlon 64 mobile.

Dekka, You were right. The Pentium-M is far more advanced than the P4 based on the aging NetBurst architecture. It is based on the superior P3-M, with many extra optimizations including being able to switch off all the CPU and L2 cache leaving just 1/32th running. This increases battery life a lot!! Bear in mind that a pentium 3 1.2ghz could out run a Pentium 4 1.6ghz, and with these optimizations it's no wonder hte Centrino based laptops out pace even some of the best P4-M solutions. Dothan will be the king for the next year in every aspect, except one thing. Gaming is the Mobile Athlon 64's advantage by far.

This however may all change in 2005. Intel will be going to full 64bit support (not just the minumum extra extensions needed for IA64, which was planned for the doomed Tejas core). Intel will also introduce Hyper-threading, which actually works, and a newer 133mhz BUS (533hmz for u n00bs out there) instead of the aging 100mhz (Most recent Pentium 3s had 133mhz). Finally, Pentium-M may well actually move to the desktop in a dual core as well, and be sold along side dual core P4 Es (Prescotts). However this is a sever issue for Intel, as the prescott currently produces 100W TDP, and 2 of them would be disastrous. That is why intel has been pushing the BTX format, which is stupid, unless you want SFF PCs, as it reduces heat issues.

Neway, Mobile Athlon 64s at present are not very advanced when compared to the DTRs when considering Battery Life. They are virtually the same, at same namings. However, you should bear in mind that the 2800 Mobile runs at the 3000 DTR speed, but with only 512kb cache. The offer the same battery life as the P4-M but are much faster. They easily outpace the old Banias, especially at lower speeds, but the newer Dothan is a killer. The Mobile A64 can only out pace it in Games, among a few other minor things.

However I must say, the Dothans are extreemly expensive, and the Mobile 64s seem a much better choice. But as of August prices will rapidly fall in all Intel products, and expect the amazing Azalia audio, DDr2, and PCI Express (AXIOM ati or MXM nvidia upgardable grafix) to come out in Q3 and Q4 2004. AMD are gonna have to find someone to support them otherwise Dothan is gonna kill em off, except fo us dedicated AMD enthusiasts. VIA currently has Envy 8 channel, but its not up to the task, and there's no DDR2 or PCI Express, although DD2 is not advantages as of yet cus of the mere 100mhz Clock speeds and high latencies.

What interests me is that intel are not giving up on the doomed Netburst, and will carry it thru with Prescott. Surely the Pentium-M is much more of a viable dual core solution on Desktops and Notebooks. AMD dusn't have a dual core for notebooks as of ye, but it has an Athlon XP-M replacement - the AMD Mobile Sempron is the same as A64 but with only 32 bit and 256kb cache.

When are AMD going to the 90nm process? Is their Fab 32 in dresden for this ready? I hope they can get a smooth transition, unlike Intel, so that AMD can kick some Intel ass.

Finally, drekka, are u pleased with ur Travel Mate? cus there is a similar spec Aspire 2020 that has a 15.4" screen instead. i'm considering that, the Aspire 2010, the TM 8006, or the Ferrari 3200!!! But i don't kno which. BTW is acer support as gud as dell's (i kno the actual laptops are better than dell's by a long shot, but dell support is amazing). i was considering both Collect and return or On-site warranties

PC assembly races at the olympics...that would be sooo sad....I see a lot of case cuts...

Oooh! Still in the morning I was going to buy ferrari 3200 on monday. But today I have read many topics concerning it.

As I understand it´s better to buy aspire 2023 wlmi because it has centrino -> long life battery. Am I right? The performances with these two are quite same. Am i right?

What about the screens. Ferrari´s SXGA+ versus 2023´s widescreen WXGA?

All opinions concerning 3200 / 2023 / 2025 / 2026 / TM 8000+ are wellcome!

Take care :>

As I understand it´s better to buy aspire 2023 wlmi because it has centrino -> long life battery. Am I right? The performances with these two are quite same. Am i right?

yep. the ferrari gets 2 hours dvd watching 3 hours general use

yep. the athlon64 is a better performing cpu, but what this translates to in real time performance is very marginal, you wont notice it...to be fair the athlon64 is a 64-bit cpu so u will be more future proof since centrino systems are 32-bit (64 bit cannot be taken advantage of yet as there is no 64-bit os/drivers/software/applications... unless u run 64-bit linux)

just wonderin if the 2023 is the same as the 2025? or is the 2023 avaible in north america?
S

Noob,

Yes I very pleased with the TM8006 (There is a thread in here with my mini review and benchmarking).

I had a 15.4" Widescreen Dell before the 8006 but decided to change to non widescreen as I personally went off them - they are nice and clear and everything but since i do a lot of gaming having black borders down the side when you do not play in native res just annoyed me (Unless u stretch to fill the screen which makes the game to distorted).

Also I like the 6.5lb weight of the machine as well which is a refreshing change from the heavy dell 8.2lb.

Performance wise its pretty amazing and i would say in the current top 4 performing laptops available just now.

Rince,

I do not see any benchmarks that put the athlon64 performing better than a dothan processor - The 2.0ghz Dothan shows better CPU scores in both 3dmark03 and Aquamark.

Agreed it is 64bit and may come into its own shortly but at the moment as far as i can tell performance wise and battery wise it is second place to dothans.

The Low Power Mobile Athlon 64 processor with a 35W maximum thermal design power (TDPmax) is definately a step in the right direction with regards to increased battery life, and I wouldn't be very surprised if AMD introduces a 90nm Ultra Low Power version later with an even lower TDP. AMD actually makes an 130nm Opteron EE for blade servers with 30W TDP today so further improvements of the power requirements to the Mobile Athlon 64 series are definately possible

Edit: Low Power Mobile processors with a 25W TDP will come from AMD in Q3 this year according to VR-Zone:
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=895&s=1

Also remember that all AMD64 processors have an integrated memory controller and a HyperTransport northbridge on-chip, and coupled with NX-bit (for enhanced virus protection in hardware supported by Windows XP SP2) and 64-bit support these are features I wouldn't be without in 2005. Both Windows XP SP2 & Windows XP 64-Bit will be shipping in Q3 this year, and software utilizing 64-bit will be rapid available (especially CPU and memory intensive stuff like games at first)

In contrast Dothan haven't any interesting new features, except for higher clock frequencies and a larger cache, to offer I think. The Low Power Mobile Athlon 64 is really a great buy for most consumers, but unfortunately AMD dosen't have the means to compete with Intel Centrino's $300M annual FUD marketing budget...

I'm interested in the acer ferrari 3200 and the compal 56. I am going into graphic design so I wanna know how well the ferrari handles Maya out of the box. I would also like to know if their are any graphic benchmarchs for both of these machines.

Hey one fast question. Does TravelMate 8000 and Ferrari 3200 use same displays? I once heard that yes they do, but but..

Acer says at their website like this:

TravelMate 8000 : 15" SXGA+ 200-nit high-brightness TFT LCD
Ferrari 3200 : 15.0" SXGA+ TFT LCD

Hmm.. Is there a big diffrence, thanks!

anyone know or have a guess as to whether or not a new lower power athlon would work in the ferrari 3200 when the processor comes out?

That would be a nice addition. And probably would sell me on the ferrari. Someone said that the a64 is better for games and minor things. What are these minor things? If they are better rendering and more advanced graphical effects it would mean a world of difference. I want this laptop for gaming and maya work.

Anyone have a picture of the power supply adapter of the Ferrari? I'm interested in how heavy and big it is, especially compared to the one on the Acer TM 8000.

The Ferrari is better at games due to having the Athlon64 / 9700 combo.
The other minor things are minor. The only one worth mentionning is faster compile times for you programmers / Linux users...

I don't have a picture with me, since I'm at work, but I was surprised at how small it was compared to the Sager 5690 I returned. I can take a picture when I get home if you need it.

Merlin

the brick is pretty small and light - its the length of a CD and less than half the width.. has a bit of weight but not much really