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Am I missing something?

post #1 of 9
9/18/04 at 12:28am
Thread Starter 
It seems like there are alot of folks looking for a notebook with good graphics, widescreen, 4+ hr battery life, and a slim design. With the following specs I would expect more converstaion

15.4 WXGA
9700 128mb
4+ hr battery life
Dothan up to 2.0
1.5 inches thick

These are the specs for the Acer Aspire 2020 series. Is the hard drive killing this thing? Isn't that upgradeable?
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post #2 of 9
9/18/04 at 9:23am
the slow hard drive and 2 256mb Dimms are killing it. The laptop is allready over $2000, but if you want a faster hard drive and ram, you're looking up to an additional $400 in upgrades.
The mitac 8050 has everything the asus has (it's even 1.2" inches thick [I think]) It only has 3.5 hr battery life compared to the acer but that's not that bad.
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post #3 of 9
9/19/04 at 1:22am
I have the Aspire 2025 with 1.8 Dothan and loved it. Weither you have to replace the HD depends on what you do. Most game work fine, the load time might be a bit long but that's no big deal. However if the game you play like to load new graphics and stuff from the HD during gameplay. You might have a problem. The only game that I have ran into that really react badly to the 4200 rpm drive is &C Generals: Zero hour. This game load new graphic and effect from the HD on demand (doesn't matter how much RAM and VRAM you have). Even Farcry run fine on the 4200rpm most of the time.

As far as RAM goes, 512 is enough for most game except Zero hour and City of heroes, both of which likes to go above the 512MB mark.

I did replace the HD with a 60GB 7200rpm ($177) but you can get a 80GB 5400rpm for slight less. And replacing one of the SODIMM with a 512MB PC3200 cost me about $110.
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post #4 of 9
9/19/04 at 3:53am
I did the upgrade initially to a 7200Rpm but yesterday I went back to the original 80GB 4200Rpm disk and I must admit I "FEEL" 0% difference.

If you would ask my advice today I would say to spend the extra cash on some other upgrades instead of a 7K60 disk, more ram, Audigy2 NX, etc... all nice upgrades.

For now my 7K60 is going to be sold.

I say "feel" because some will come up with benchmarks showing the 7200rpm being faster.
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post #5 of 9
9/19/04 at 4:07am


http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage...ddisks-05.html

just to complete your post
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post #6 of 9
9/19/04 at 7:33am
I know, that are the numbers, but I honestly don't feel being slowed down now.

If I was I would put the 7K60 right back in the machine, it is laying next to me

It is getting sold, maybe I'll put in here in the clasifieds, and I'm gonna upgrade to 1GB ram, I'll get more benefit out of that (I think).

To be 100% I'm gonna try some video editing now, maybe I'll "feel" a slowdown there.

Again, I know the numbers, I bought the disk based on them, but I'm talking about a feeling, and that's personal I guess.
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post #7 of 9
9/19/04 at 8:37am
low resolution kills it for many
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post #8 of 9
9/19/04 at 8:44am
True, it can have some personal preference but don't forget, a hdd has nothing to do with overall speed of your computer, it has to do with how quickly it can access your data. You can't tell me that your 4200 drive loads data as fast as the 7200. If that is the case, you have a bad drive.
I notice the drive has major advantages in my start-up (12 seconds) and my shut down (6 seconds). Another major advantage is in disk defrag as well as disk clean-up, they both occur very fast. Also, if you work with videos and you are constantly calling them up, this drive rocks for it.
The drive will not help load web pages faster, that is definitely a ram upgrade. I have 512 and have no stagger in load pages at all. My desktop I have 1 gig for gaming purposes.
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post #9 of 9
9/19/04 at 9:53am
I guess you're right, I'm might just be difficult for my myself

This is always the same quest, finding the perfect system to suit your needs, and I guess this quest will be endless for me
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