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CL56 vs Acer Aspire 2012wlmi - Power vs Looks

post #1 of 29
6/28/04 at 2:37am
Thread Starter 
Tomorrow hopefully I will make my choice between the CL56 and the Acer Aspire 2012wlmi. Both has its own pros and cons, which is making it very difficult for me to choose.

With the CL56 I am concerned with the screen viewing angles, its exterior styling, and its speakers.

With the Acer Aspire 2012 I am concerned with only having a radeon 9700 w/ 64mb of vram. I am also concerned that unlike the cl56, this does not use a dothan processer.

InternetIshop - Compal Cl56

Pentium M Banias 1.6ghz (2mb l2 cache)
60gb 5400rm hd
Radeon 9700 128mb
512mb ram
Dvd +/- rw
Infrared
(Not-too-great exterior styling) (Or are the pictures I see online making me feel this way?)
Weak speakers
Screen with potential to have issues


NewEgg -Acer Aspire 2012wlmi

Pentium M Banias 1.5ghz (1mb l2 cache)
60gb (4200)rpm
Radeon 9700 64mb
512mb ram
Dvd +/- rw
Infrared
(Attractive interior and exterior styling. For pictures: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...115-116&DEPA=0)
Decent speakers
Widescreen


Both are in the $1500 range, and both have similar dimensions, weight and battery life.

Help me decide between them please!!

Is having the extra 64mb vram worth compromising the awesome looks of the Acer, and the security of knowing that the laptop is from a well-known company (Acer is known worldwide for its motherboards). Also is the performance difference between the 1.5 banias and 1.6 dothan worth going with the cl56? Will 1mb extra l2 cache make a world of a difference?

PS. Please respond quickly with advice because I plan on purchasing one of these two today.
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post #2 of 29
6/28/04 at 2:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by superzingy
Is having the extra 64mb vram worth compromising the awesome looks of the Acer...
It is really up to you... but I would take the extra power over the looks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by superzingy
Is having the security of knowing that the laptop is from a well-known company (Acer is known worldwide for its motherboards).
What makes you think that Asus is any better of a company than Compal? Compal has been around for quite a while, making notebooks for many of the big brand names, just like Asus has.

Quote:
Originally Posted by superzingy
Also is the performance difference between the 1.5 banias and 1.6 dothan worth going with the cl56?
Nope... 100mhz of difference woildnt be a deal maker/breaker for me, when deciding between two laptops.

Quote:
Originally Posted by superzingy
Will 1mb extra l2 cache make a world of a difference?
No. It will only make some difference when doing video encoding or similar things.
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post #3 of 29
6/28/04 at 3:11am
CL56 has that crappy lcd. ACER display is likely to be superior.
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post #4 of 29
6/28/04 at 3:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by TechAnimal
CL56 has that crappy lcd. ACER display is likely to be superior.
What good will the "superior" lcd of the acer do, if ithe higher end games (such as FarCry, HL2, Doom3) have to be dumbed down because of the lack of vram?
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post #5 of 29
6/28/04 at 3:50am
Thread Starter 
I know the cl56 screens aren't the best, but specifically what about them (besides the limited viewing angles) make them not-so-great?
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post #6 of 29
6/28/04 at 3:57am
I own one, and can tell you that besides the limited viewing angles I see nothing wrong with the screen.
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post #7 of 29
6/28/04 at 3:58am
Thread Starter 
Does the "quality" of the construction of the cl56 look better in real-life, than it does in the pictures?
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post #8 of 29
6/28/04 at 4:02am
Thread Starter 
Also, since i am not a repeat customer, I am not able to get the 3% off coupon code from internetishop. Any chance someone who has already purchased a laptop from there could give me a coupon code if i decide to buy the cl56?
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post #9 of 29
6/28/04 at 4:02am
If you can afford it go for the 2025/6 with 128mb of vram
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post #10 of 29
6/28/04 at 4:08am
I don't know if this matters to you or not but the Acer comes with sealed Windows XP Pro. You're likely to own your own copy and these sell day and night for 100 on ebay.
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post #11 of 29
6/28/04 at 4:11am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevhuynh
I don't know if this matters to you or not but the Acer comes with sealed Windows XP Pro. You're likely to own your own copy and these sell day and night for 100 on ebay.
By sealed do you mean its in the retail blue box? Or that the actual cd and certificate come sealed ?
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post #12 of 29
6/28/04 at 4:32am
From what I understand it's a sealed CD/certificate. An OEM version. I'll verify for sure in a day or so....although I'm certain a 2012 owner is going to come along and set us straight...
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post #13 of 29
6/28/04 at 11:52am
I got a look at that Acer 2012 over the weekend. It's a very cool machine. Too bad it only has a WXGA screen, but otherwise it's a hella-notebook!!
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post #14 of 29
6/28/04 at 12:42pm
i agree the acer trumps the cl56 in looks, but only very marginally (and only due to the fact that i like flat black more)





it definitely doesn't make up for the fact that the cl56 has a 9700/128 Mb, imo.
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post #15 of 29
6/28/04 at 2:04pm
Thread Starter 
The cl56 only seems to have one place for ventilation. If the radeon 9700 gets overclocked would it overheat the system - especially considering the size of the laptop.

The viewing angle thing is still somewhat concerning me - anyone care to roughly estimate the angles of horizontal viewing?

I also called internetishop and asked if they check for dead pixels before shipping it out. They told me that they do a 48 hour run and check the screen before shipping it out and told me that they will only send it if its "perfect".

Trustworthy info?
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post #16 of 29
6/28/04 at 2:08pm
take it for what it's worth
it's still a lot better than them saying "you get what we stick in there"
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post #17 of 29
6/29/04 at 12:12am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aikeo
take it for what it's worth
it's still a lot better than them saying "you get what we stick in there"
Would overclocking the memory of the radeon 9700 in theAcer Aspire 2012 sorta a little bit make up for the lack of vram?

I have heard that the acer screens are pretty good compared to the cl56 (although, its only wxga). Is this true?

For the cl56 can someone approximate the horizontal and vertical viewing angles. Just some numbers so I can mentally imagine what the viewing angle range would be like.
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post #18 of 29
6/29/04 at 11:15am
depends on what you're talking about. OCing the 64Mb card might get you higher 3dmark scores and correspondingly better FPS, but the card would still suffer in a high-res, large-texture environment. simply because of the fact that the CL56 has more space in which to dump crap onto the VRAM (very bad explanation of what's going on, but ehh). for example the 64 Mb is still going to suffer at 1280x1024+ run of FarCry, while the 128Mb card will probably be better off.

the acer screens are definitely better than the cl56, but only because all wxga screens are generally better than sxga+ screens right now. i really have not heard someone say yet "this sxga+ is the best lcd i've ever seen..."

search for rincewind's pics of the cl56 screen. they give a pretty good indication of how it looks, even at horizontal angles. it's not bad at all, imo. the vertical angles aren't very good, but it's been my experience that most lcd screens have this inherent problem-- some are better than others at combating the problem, but it still exists.
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post #19 of 29
6/29/04 at 12:58pm
Maybe I can answer a few of your questions (I have the 2012WLMi): - Please note that I have not seen or tried a Compal C56

I doubt there is much difference between a 64mb and 128mb Radeon 9700 performance-wise, obviously the 128mb is better if you want to play games at really high resolutions.

May I say this though, the 2012WLMi's lcd resolution is 1280x800, so unless you're connecting to an external monitor to game on, the 64mb will be fine for a while yet, and even if you do, the core's peformance will probably suffer at higher resolutions anyway.

The screen quality of the Acer seems very good, no dead pixels at all. There's a little bit of ghosting, but nothing really too bad. Let me put it this way, I've seen much worse, and not yet seen too many better.

Now, as for the Windows XP 'rumour', I bought the 2012WLMi model with XP Home (I didn't have a choice of XP Pro anyway), and it does not have an oem sealed XP cd, it comes with 5 recovery cds which basically just copy a total system image onto the hard drive. I think that some people may have been thrown by the fact that there is a sealed XP license 'pack' in the box, and I thought it had the oem cd in it too, but it's just a few bits of paper with some cardboard.

I'm very happy with my choice of the 2012WLMi, although I didn't have a choice of getting one of the higher spec 2020 series models.

I upgraded the ram to 1 Gb (2x 512mb) of Kingston and the bottom line is that overall performance is very good.

Oh, and I think that the Acer is actually made by Compal - the radeon 9700 driver info box on the stock drivers mentions that the 9700 packaging version is "Compal", so I'm pretty sure the laptop's oem is Compal.

- Odie
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post #20 of 29
6/29/04 at 2:22pm
I thought Acer was it's own ODM.
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