Configuration:
Acer TravelMate 8006Lmi
Pentium M 2.0 GHz (2MB L2 cache, 400 MHz FSB)
Intel 855GME chipset
1024 (2x512) Mb DDR333 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (M11) w. 128 Mb
Hitachi HDD 60 Gb on 7200 rpm
Full technical specs here.
The look:
On my table with all the accessories:
Total price: a bit above 21000 Kuna’s (Croatian currency) or 3400 US $.
First of all I would like to add that here in Croatia (Eastern Europe) we pay 22% tax on almost everything, computer hardware too, thus making the prices a lot higher than in other countries. So the base price would be around 2800 US $. Thank God that I bought the laptop through my company so I’ll get the 600 $ of tax back at the end of the year. Enough whining lets move on.
My reseller was so kind and gave me the possibility to upgrade the RAM and the HDD. I was very surprised when I saw that upgrading my HDD actually meant downgrading in the price, since 80 Gb HDD's are seriously overpriced here. A kickass deal for me.
Initially I had some problems with the upgraded RAM so my reseller had to replace it. They gave me a free notebook backpack for the inconvenience (a Case Logic backpack).
First impressions:
WOW. This baby kicks ass. It’s thinner than I originally expected, and better looking too (pictures don’t do justice to it). First thing I did was install all my programs, and after 6 long hours of installation and configuring the disk wasn’t hot but warm, and the fans didn’t even kicked in. And I did some heavy installing. Anyone who has ever installed Visual Studio knows what I mean (it takes an hour to install minimum), and it’s a pretty heavy task for the DVD drive and the HDD. I used mobile meter and I have never seen CPU temp went over 60 C. The fans kick in at 66 C I think.
Ergonomics and looks:
Its weight is 2.8 kg, which makes this notebook rather easy to carry around on a daily basis. The keyboard is quite good; I even like the fact that it's a bit oval. The notebook looks thin and lighter than it really is. The plastic casing is high quality, I heard no noise when I applied pressure to different parts of the notebook's casing. The notebook itself feels very solid and firm, although I won't be throwing it around to test it
.
Pictures:
Keyboard
from the side closed:
from the side closed, compared to a Dell Inspiron 8600:
from the side opened:
bird perspective, closed, compared to a Dell Inspiron 8600:
Now for some benchmarking:
- All benchmarking will be done at default settings
- I am using the newest Omega drivers based on 4.8 catalyst drivers from ATI.
- RAD linker says that the frequency of the core is 391.50 and memory 202.50
and when on battery core: 104.63 memory: 104.63
- when on power the processor is on 2.0 GHz and when on battery 600 MHz.
..........................on power..............on battery
PC MARK 2002:
CPU score:...............6787.................2015
RAM score:..............12117................4467
HDD score:...............902...................698
3D MARK 2001:.........10895...............3704
3D MARK 2003:..........3020................1011
3D MARK 2005:..........1108
i am pretty satisfied with these results.
i am not very keen on overclocking, so I won't do it. This machine is strong enough like this to put up with my usual gaming (Warcraft 3, Americas Army and Unreal Tournament GOTY).
Now to try out other aspects of the notebook:
CONNECTIVITY:
I have to say that this notebook has it all in terms of connectivity. Compared to my Dad’s Dell Inspiron 8600 in terms of connectivity it’s on a complete new level. WIFI, Infrared, PCMCIA slot and USB are standard equipment on notebooks like this, but a serious plus is the internal Bluetooth, a DVI connector (I use it to connect my 19’ Sony LCD) and the number and the placement of USB slots (already mentioned Dell 8600 has only 2 that are placed one on top of the other, thus making it difficult to connect 2 devices at once). The 4-in-1 reader is a big bonus for me because I use Sony's Memory Sticks for my mobile phone and Smart Media cards for my voice recorder.
Bluetooth:
Tested with my Sony Ericsson P900 mobile phone and its software. Works fine. Almost at full potential (700 kbps) at close range (my mobile phone placed right next to the notebook). The blue led looks rather cool blinking, so i keep it on always when on power.
Infrared:
Also tested with Sony Ericsson P900 mobile phone and its software. Works fine too. Don’t know the exact transfer rate, but since the lappy has Bluetooth I doubt I will be using this feature anymore. But still a good add-on.
WIFI: (Intel PRO/Wireless 2200bg)
Since I don’t have an Access Point at home I’ve made an ad hoc connection between my Acer and my Dad’s Dell Inspiron 8600. Works perfectly. I played some Americas Army, Warcraft 3 and UT2k4 and experienced no lag whatsoever.
PCMCIA slot:
I use it with my Gericom ISDN modem card. Works fine.
USB connectors:
All of them work fine, and are placed very good, lots of space between them. When I am at home I have 3 of them occupied with external hardware: mouse, external sound card (Hercules Muse 5.1) and a TV / radio tuner (Hauppauge WinTV USB).
DVI:
Works fine with my 19’ Sony LCD. A very good and a useful add on to a notebook. When I bought the notebook i haven't realized that it had DVI, so it came as a nice surprise to me.
4-in-1 reader:
A very good add-on to the notebook. I find it very useful because I use different cards with different devices, so I really needed the reader. This one supports 4 different memory cards: Secure Digital (SD), Smart Media, MultiMedia Card and Memory stick. I used an external one with my desktop till now, and so far I can not see any difference in speed between this one and the exteral one. When inserting a card in the reader you hear the sound that you usually hear when you plug a USB device in the computer.
SCREEN:
No dead pixels. moving on
When I was researching what notebook to buy for myself normal aspect ratio was “a must have”. Max resolution is good (1400 x1050), refresh rate is ok too. Nothing spectacular in this section. The viewing angles COULD be better, but since I don’t the need to look at the screen from the side I don’t mind this.
pictures of the screen:
this one is up-close for more detail
Acer TravelMate 8006Lmi
Pentium M 2.0 GHz (2MB L2 cache, 400 MHz FSB)
Intel 855GME chipset
1024 (2x512) Mb DDR333 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (M11) w. 128 Mb
Hitachi HDD 60 Gb on 7200 rpm
Full technical specs here.
The look:
On my table with all the accessories:
Total price: a bit above 21000 Kuna’s (Croatian currency) or 3400 US $.
First of all I would like to add that here in Croatia (Eastern Europe) we pay 22% tax on almost everything, computer hardware too, thus making the prices a lot higher than in other countries. So the base price would be around 2800 US $. Thank God that I bought the laptop through my company so I’ll get the 600 $ of tax back at the end of the year. Enough whining lets move on.
My reseller was so kind and gave me the possibility to upgrade the RAM and the HDD. I was very surprised when I saw that upgrading my HDD actually meant downgrading in the price, since 80 Gb HDD's are seriously overpriced here. A kickass deal for me.
Initially I had some problems with the upgraded RAM so my reseller had to replace it. They gave me a free notebook backpack for the inconvenience (a Case Logic backpack).
First impressions:
WOW. This baby kicks ass. It’s thinner than I originally expected, and better looking too (pictures don’t do justice to it). First thing I did was install all my programs, and after 6 long hours of installation and configuring the disk wasn’t hot but warm, and the fans didn’t even kicked in. And I did some heavy installing. Anyone who has ever installed Visual Studio knows what I mean (it takes an hour to install minimum), and it’s a pretty heavy task for the DVD drive and the HDD. I used mobile meter and I have never seen CPU temp went over 60 C. The fans kick in at 66 C I think.
Ergonomics and looks:
Its weight is 2.8 kg, which makes this notebook rather easy to carry around on a daily basis. The keyboard is quite good; I even like the fact that it's a bit oval. The notebook looks thin and lighter than it really is. The plastic casing is high quality, I heard no noise when I applied pressure to different parts of the notebook's casing. The notebook itself feels very solid and firm, although I won't be throwing it around to test it
.Pictures:
Keyboard
from the side closed:
from the side closed, compared to a Dell Inspiron 8600:
from the side opened:
bird perspective, closed, compared to a Dell Inspiron 8600:
Now for some benchmarking:
- All benchmarking will be done at default settings
- I am using the newest Omega drivers based on 4.8 catalyst drivers from ATI.
- RAD linker says that the frequency of the core is 391.50 and memory 202.50
and when on battery core: 104.63 memory: 104.63
- when on power the processor is on 2.0 GHz and when on battery 600 MHz.
..........................on power..............on battery
PC MARK 2002:
CPU score:...............6787.................2015
RAM score:..............12117................4467
HDD score:...............902...................698
3D MARK 2001:.........10895...............3704
3D MARK 2003:..........3020................1011
3D MARK 2005:..........1108
i am pretty satisfied with these results.
i am not very keen on overclocking, so I won't do it. This machine is strong enough like this to put up with my usual gaming (Warcraft 3, Americas Army and Unreal Tournament GOTY).
Now to try out other aspects of the notebook:
CONNECTIVITY:
I have to say that this notebook has it all in terms of connectivity. Compared to my Dad’s Dell Inspiron 8600 in terms of connectivity it’s on a complete new level. WIFI, Infrared, PCMCIA slot and USB are standard equipment on notebooks like this, but a serious plus is the internal Bluetooth, a DVI connector (I use it to connect my 19’ Sony LCD) and the number and the placement of USB slots (already mentioned Dell 8600 has only 2 that are placed one on top of the other, thus making it difficult to connect 2 devices at once). The 4-in-1 reader is a big bonus for me because I use Sony's Memory Sticks for my mobile phone and Smart Media cards for my voice recorder.
Bluetooth:
Tested with my Sony Ericsson P900 mobile phone and its software. Works fine. Almost at full potential (700 kbps) at close range (my mobile phone placed right next to the notebook). The blue led looks rather cool blinking, so i keep it on always when on power.
Infrared:
Also tested with Sony Ericsson P900 mobile phone and its software. Works fine too. Don’t know the exact transfer rate, but since the lappy has Bluetooth I doubt I will be using this feature anymore. But still a good add-on.
WIFI: (Intel PRO/Wireless 2200bg)
Since I don’t have an Access Point at home I’ve made an ad hoc connection between my Acer and my Dad’s Dell Inspiron 8600. Works perfectly. I played some Americas Army, Warcraft 3 and UT2k4 and experienced no lag whatsoever.
PCMCIA slot:
I use it with my Gericom ISDN modem card. Works fine.
USB connectors:
All of them work fine, and are placed very good, lots of space between them. When I am at home I have 3 of them occupied with external hardware: mouse, external sound card (Hercules Muse 5.1) and a TV / radio tuner (Hauppauge WinTV USB).
DVI:
Works fine with my 19’ Sony LCD. A very good and a useful add on to a notebook. When I bought the notebook i haven't realized that it had DVI, so it came as a nice surprise to me.
4-in-1 reader:
A very good add-on to the notebook. I find it very useful because I use different cards with different devices, so I really needed the reader. This one supports 4 different memory cards: Secure Digital (SD), Smart Media, MultiMedia Card and Memory stick. I used an external one with my desktop till now, and so far I can not see any difference in speed between this one and the exteral one. When inserting a card in the reader you hear the sound that you usually hear when you plug a USB device in the computer.
SCREEN:
No dead pixels.
moving on When I was researching what notebook to buy for myself normal aspect ratio was “a must have”. Max resolution is good (1400 x1050), refresh rate is ok too. Nothing spectacular in this section. The viewing angles COULD be better, but since I don’t the need to look at the screen from the side I don’t mind this.
pictures of the screen:
this one is up-close for more detail
