Acer TravelMate 8100!!! - Page 84

HERE is an old link.

Nobody painted their 8100 yet? Looks like I'll be pioneering. My 8100 is schedualed to be painted in mid august.

thanks!

not yet but assuming it doesnt void the warrenty i plan on painting it when i get mine

http://spiike.shadowdragon.net/laptop%20painting.htm

It will void the warranty and throw it out the window.

I decided on the TM 8104 over the Asus W3V. It was $100 more, but offers a bigger screen and hard drive as well as much better graphics. It should arrive tomorrow. I can't wait to get it.

yeah thats kind of what i figured... but still.... it would look so much better in a different color.......

Tm8104

Hey everyone I'm new to the forum...I read a decent amount of this thread but didn't get through all of it yet. I'm going off to college and I'm looking into the TM 8104 but I have a few questions (I appologize in advance because i'm sure they've already been answered in the thread).

First I was wondering about the whole Fat32 hard drive vs the NTfs hard drive..whats the advantage of the NTfs and if it's so much better why does the Acer come with the Fat32? Is it worth converting? If so, both C and D or just one maybe?

Also with the partitioned hard drive, if you get a virus lets say from something stored on your C drive and it crashes your computer, is the D drive also affected? (I.E. using one drive for downloads and one for essays and whatever)

I was wondering if anyone had any input about the Acer's warranty (good or bad experiences, anything) and input about extending the warranty.

Right now I'm between an IBM T43 and the Acer TM 8100... anyone have any input?

Thanks alot!

My understanding is that the reason Acer ships the drive formatted with NTFS is because their backup recovery software doesnt support NTFS so they used FAT32. I am going to reformat to NTFS and not bother with ACERs backup software and just use other methods. As far as getting a virus on your C drive and if it will affect the D drive, it could but would probably be unlikely. If you are paranoid about this type of thing just keep it formatted with FAT32 and use ACERs recovery/backup software. You will not be able to notice any performance difference between FAT32 or NTFS.

Does anyone have any recommendations for the best extenal monitor for the 8104WLMi with a native 1680x1050 resoliution?

Looking briefly, there appear to be three options (although I am sure there are more) - Acer's own 20" Widescreen 1680X1050, Dell's 2005FPW and the Apple Cinema. In the UK, the Dell is about £170 cheaper than the Acer and I wondered if there is a straightforward reason for this. I have read of some backlight bleedng issues with the Dell.

Any input gratefully received!

I've been using the Dell 2005FPW with my 8100 for awhile now, connected through the DVI port. Works excellent, no problems at all. I only paid $389 for the 2005 a few months ago with coupons, so it was a good deal for me at the time. If you can get one for a good price, then go for it.

Has anyone tried this with a Dell 2405FPW external lcd?
I want to buy this laptop but I also want to make sure it will work with my 24"!

I have it up at 1920x1200 on my 2405 and a Sceptre 37" at 1920x1080 thru DVI with no problem

i use the acer AL2032wm. mostly due to its style - even chose it over the aple cinema display. connect it throug dvi - no porlbem. also have an external tv decoder connected to it via vga - works flawless as well.

The Acer 2032, nice as it is cannot come close to a 2405.

Thanks once again to the famous poor college student. I found the 2005 FPW for $408 after discounts and what a beautiful monitor. Quite a nice surprise to find the equal of a Cinema for so much less. No dead pixels and so bright and crystal clear. I'm also using the DVI connection which works perfectly. Now I just have to figure out how to make it come on after rebooting as it always defaults to the 8104 screen. But that's just part of the fun.

Battery Problem :(

Not sure if anyone has posted anything similar yet (forum search doesn't seem to work), but I was wondering if anyone has had any problems with their battery in their Acer Travelmate 8100.

My problem arose several weeks ago, seemingly out of the blue. I noticed my battery light (the one on the right) was blinking green one day, which I believe means discharging (not sure if that’s correct as I almost always have my laptop running off A/C and don’t see the battery light change a lot), except the A/C power cord was connected. When I pulled the cord out the laptop immediately went into hibernation. I plugged it back in, turned the laptop back on and repeated unplugging the A/C power cord and the same thing happened. The laptop never shuts immediately off, it always goes into hibernation successfully.

If I pull the battery out and reinsert/reseat it (with laptop on and A/C power cord attached), usually nothing changes and I get the same blinking green light. However, sometimes the battery light turns solid orange. Every time it turns orange it will eventually go back to blinking green after what seems a random amount of time somewhere less than 45 minutes. During the time the battery light is solid orange I can use the computer without the A/C power cord connected.

Other observations are: the battery pack never seems to heat up as I would believe a charging battery does (I don't remember how hot a known good battery normally gets), making me wonder (somewhat dismally) if it's not the battery but the power charging/switching circuitry that is faulty. No battery monitoring tools (I've tried a handful, including those linked to on this forum) can report any status of the battery, including Acer's ePowerManagement and Windows Power, other than the battery status being "Unknown" or at 0% charge, regardless if the batter is inside the laptop or not.

This is the first laptop I've owned and I've had it since May 2005, and like I said this problem only arose 3-4 weeks ago. Is this a known problem with this battery/Acer/laptop batteries in general? I’m debating on whether to call Acer technical support or just go out and bite the bullet on a new battery pack (assuming that’s [hopefully] the cause/solution to my problem).

Any input on this would be appreciated!

Well, I would normally suggest writing about this in the support part of the Acer section, but I will tell you what I can. If I were you, I would call Acer tech support and ask them to send you a new battery. It's not your charger that is the problem, in my opinion, it's your battery. And luckily that is the easiest thing to replace. If it were your charger, your e-powermanagement utility would still be working correctly on reading your battery life and such.

Everything you've said points to a bad battery.

If replacing your battery doesn't work, I'll be surprised. Let me know if that doesn't work.

Ransom