Acer TravelMate 8100!!! - Page 74

Fantastic, that's good news. Of course, I'm getting 54Mbps right now, so I'm in no hurry to buy another router.

I am at 7% after about 15-20 charges and five weeks of operation.

3 questions:

(1) Everybody say its 100GB when its only around 95GB. Am I wrong here?

(2) I took out all the partitions (including the hidden one), re-partitioned, formatted NTFS, installed XP (had to use serial number that came with that CD - the one underneath didnt work with my XP CD), installed all the drivers from my original backup (created during first installation).

I did not install eManagerr and ePowerManager as suggested by someone here before. But, the windows power management settings has no where near features of the ACER ePM, so why not install that?

(3) When I turn on the mic volume, i hear lot of feedback and the mic doesnt work, is it a problem or am i using it wrong u think?

(1) It's 100 billion BYTES. Open Windows Explorer, right-click on the drive(s), click Properties, the Capacity (added together if multiple partitions) should be about 100,000,000,000.
(2) Personal preference.
(3) Dunno. You have to be more specific. Is anything plugged into the headphone port at the time? How do you turn on the mike and know it's working? Perhaps some audiophiles will reply.

Is it possible to get the Acer 8104 in any store and buy it? Like Best Buy or something like that? Preferably in NY.

Or are they just available through internet sites?

What I mean is that the screen freezes for a millisecond and really screws up your orientation. It might be a program I run such as my antivirus or my spyware protection I dunno quite yet.

I know I said earlier that my WiFi card was trouble free but now after a slightly longer then normal session downloading a file at full DSL speed (1.5 MBps) for 2 h 30 min my card too conked out and I got no connection until I rebooted. That is very irritating and since others have experienced it I know that this is probably not something that relates only too me. My router is a D-Link 521 (or something close to that). Also, when I inserted a movie dvd (specifically "Underworld") I got an error message telling me that "This movie is designed to play on a non-modified region 1 player." WTF? I got a hold of DVD Region Free to circumvent that but quite honestly it should not be necessary for me to purchase such a program to legally play dvd movies I own. I have no longer anything positive to say about this laptop. In fact if I can return it I will provided that there is an equally powerful option out there because I’m fed up with all these strange small things that keeps randomly appearing. Oh yeah, for those interested: my wear level on the battery is 5% but I have only charged it 3 times since I'm on AC most of the time.

Mine says 3% , bought it 2-4-2005 and have charged it at least once a day since

In most cases connection problems are due to the router or your Wi-Fi card drivers. Some routers just give up under stress. You won't notice any problems until you really stress the router. "stress" also means that a specific combination of events occurs that router cannot handle. This is hard to reproduce intentionally and can only be achieved "in the long run."
There are cases where particular applications stress the router. Some P2P programs are known to really shut down/restart routers (a typical issue discussed on router support forums). World of Warcraft, in my experience, is behaving like it's making DoS (Denial of Service) attacks when the server lag occurs. Some routers just can't stand that and I lose connection.

Regadring DVD play, you realize, of course, that it's a DVD drive "issue", not necessarily laptop. What's the region code you have set on DVD drive?
Could be a problem that specific DVD title refuses to play in some DVD drives. I hear that some newer DVD will not play in any DVD recorder, you have to get pure DVD-ROM drive to play them.
Buying a different laptop may not help you at all in this area.

Finally, the battery wear is like dead pixels - you either have it from the factory or you don't. Unlike dead pixels, battery wear is not annoying. It does affect you maximum time on battery. My TM8003 had battery wear 6% from the get go. It still has it at 6% a year later. If it really bothers you, talk to Acer and replace the battery. You should be able to as it is technically a defective one.

Battery Wear?

DarthAcer: would you mind explaining how to check for battery wear. I must admit that in all my years of owning laptops I've never known there is a way to test it.

Thanks

Download mobilemeter from www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/8259/

Mine is at 2% now, it had been at 3%

I know I was kinda exaggerating my last post but I had been tackling a load of windows problems on top of the laptop stuff so I was in a bad mood. I do not have any p2p appz installed and I am not going to install anything of that sort because in my experience that is the same as asking for technical trouble with windows. Usually it adds worse registry settings then most spyware. In fact, I made sure to install web-filtering software so that I would not touch on any websites even remotely related to that kind of stuff. And I do not have wow since 1) I don’t have the time to invest in it and 2) don’t like paying subscription fees for online games when there are other equally good free options. And honestly utilizing 1.5 MBps of a total of 54 MBps available could hardly be qualified as stress. Furthermore I don’t see how a specific line of events could have lead to the connection loss after that amount of time because I simply initiated the download and then left for a while not touching anything therefore no further events should have occurred. I returned to the laptop after that time and it was still going for about five minutes after my return. I did not access the internet in any other way during those five minutes or during the other part of the time for that matter. Also there was not other machines on the network accessing the net eather.

I don’t think the dvd is a burner issue cause my brother has a desktop with a burner in it and underworld plays fine on his. As for region on the dvd I never set it to anything. My old asus automatically set the right region on the first run so I didn’t bother too look at that. I know that this is not an asus and that you can’t always expect technology to move forward. And anyway the dvd drive is still part of the laptop. Kinda.

The buying a different laptop notion was simply something I added because now that I am staring to see benchmarks from the TM 8100’s competitors there are a slight performance gain. Nothing phenomenal but you know, every little bit helps.

The only reason I brought up battery wear was because someone else had mentioned it earlier. I couldn’t care less about that.

DarthAcer


I will state this because two days straight i was doing some testing with two different routers and two different laptops.. and two different network adapters seperate from the intergrated ones on the laptop.

I do belive that the intel wireless that acer has put on there laptop is trouble, and not bug free. i state this because when it loses wireless connection My router is nto the problem.. becauseeeeeeeeeee.. i can still surf from my other pcs that are wireless and wired. and this happens both with the dlink 714p and the smc 2804wbrpg-ca

though THIS only happens when using the intel chipset lan .. even my compaq 3440CA with a broadcom wireless it doens't drop as often but still drops. though when i use my lynksis g pcmcia card, or my dlink card. none of the laptops drop connection..

i have monitored to router settings etc, and it has not rebooted itself once in two days though the LAPTOPS loses wireless connection, which this can be solved for me at least by tunring of the wireless and back on again which again brings me to the point that IF it was the router it would not find it right away after the shut on and off.

The problem is with the intel cards. they should get some new drivers or something i believe

IT'S NOT THE ROUTERs then the whole thing in general would not work, it would reboot, freeze or something and not usuable from other wireless pc.s

hi,

just got my tm8103....I've been reading this forum for quite some time now but have not seen the following problem that I have ...

Started it up for the first time....I tried streaming audio from a website that supports both realplayer and Windows media player and i find that the pitch of the vocal and the instrumental parts of the song are changed .

i can hear the instruments clearly but the voices are kinda muted in a low pitch. i then tried playing an mp3 from my CD on mediaplayer and realplayer and it did the same thing.....then i streamed audio from another site and it plays the song properly but the sound was low even when all the settings are high.

wud really appreciate any suggestions/remedies from the forums...wanna get this going as soon as i can!

vgo

Check the Sound Effects Manager in Control Panel for the "muted voice" problem. I found at least one of their pre-set effects will do that. The total volume is known to be "low". Very low direct from the laptop speakers, and you'll never damage your ears through headphones or other. The Audigy Zs card has been suggested by many if you're interested in better quality.

Maybe it's drivers, maybe it's your particular card. My TM8104 uses Microsoft default/builtin Wi-Fi/drivers, and wireless connection drops between laptop and D-Link DI-624 are extremely rare. I did try to install Intel ProSET 9 and it sucked. So I removed it completely and not going to install it again unless I don't have a choice.

BTW, if I remember correctly, Intel cards use Broadcom chipset with a standard design, i.e. they are technically a rebranded Broadcom. Have this changed with the recent a/b/g card?

not sure if they have changed or not. it's annoying at times,
though if this has changed hmm maybe it would say broadcom under device manager like it does on the compaq? not sure

though using an non intergrated card has solved my issues. i had spend the money already back in the day so why not make use of it right?? and my internet connection is only 3mbps not like we would benefits from the 54g speed in this case unless doing file transfers

Got it...thanks BadMo!

X700 driver

I know several people are using the DNA drivers for the x700 based on catalyst 5.1 (3.6.5.1). I finally have some time to start tweaking my 8104 and noticed that DNA 3.7.5.2 based on catalyst 5.2 is out. Anyone know for sure if this version is compatiable with the mobility 700? if so has anyone used them and what are the results?
Thanks

I never used DNA drivers as I've heard bad things about them. Most people use Omega (does not support X700 last I checked) or self-modded (with Mobility Modder application) generic Catalyst. The latter is pretty cool since you can use the latest (5.3) in Catalyst. They improved OpenGL a lot according to release notes. I'm running that version right now.