Hey everyone, I'm fairly new to the site and am incredibly greatful to all those who were able to provide some insight on this machine before I could get one. Thanks, and in return I figured I'd post a review and try to fill in all the holes that some haven't mentioned yet. I'm fairly low tech compared to many on here, but I hope I can be of some help. Here goes:
Build:
At first, I couldn't stop looking at this beauty. The keyboard sits fairly flush in the base and has a great feel, in addition to the rugged and firm build quality of the machine itself. Compared to my older Dell i8100 that I've had since freshman year of college (I'm now a senior) it's built like a truck, with a sturdy screen, barely any keyboard flex, and a great feeling touchpad. Considering the slight curve of the keyboard it takes a few days to get used to, but is very comfortable. It's also pretty quiet, I can bring mine to class and type much quieter than others that bring their notebooks as well.
After a few weeks, some problems have begun to arise: the fan is ALWAYS on. It's a quiet fan, MUCH quieter than my i8100, but when the sucker is plugged in to AC power it never shuts off under the normal power settings. I downloaded MobileMeter to see what was up, and it seems that CPU runs normally at around 51-55 degrees celsius. When I set the processor to the second highest speed setting (800Mhz apparently) it shuts off after a little bit, so at night you can leave it on without having the fan noise dig at your brain as you try to sleep. It's not that big of a deal, and if you have music playing or some ambient noise you won't notice it, but whatever you have sitting off to the left of the laptop is going to get pretty warm.
The good news is that when you unplug the machine, the fan shuts off and hardly ever returns. Running in medium battery save mode, it's practically silent. The hard drive is virtually silent as well.
Heat wise, people that say that the toucpad gets HOT are either liars or don't own the same machine. It gets warm, sure, but is never annoying. The bottom only ever gets lukewarm, and is never hot either. Under intense Half-Life 2 sessions the left side gets warm where the fan is, but I'm never worried it's going to fry or anything. Not a problem for me.
The buttons and inputs are a mix of good and bad. The LED bluetooth and wireless internet buttons on the front are pretty cool and provide easy access, but the audio out jack being in the front is just stupid. Again, it's not really a problem for I run the speaker jack under my desk and under to the back, but having it on the side wouldn't have been too difficult. Righties are in luck as the pc cardbus slot is on the left, as well as the LAN input. I only use one USB port (for my mouse, which will soon be bluetooh hehe) so I use the sole input on the left and run the cable around the back. I use 600 firewire for my portable hard drive, so I plug it into the cardbus. Adding to the fact that the fan is on the left, it's a great setup for righties as there is nothing on the right side aside from the power plug, which sits in the back right and protrudes out only a bit. For lefties, the good news is that there are three USB slots on the right, but with the fan constantly running it would bug the HELL out of me.
The screen is great, pure and simple. It's bright and clear, and the native 1680 x 1050 resolution is perfect for the 15.4" widescreen screen. In full resolution everything is crisp and never too small, but you'll need to fix the font settings because default is 125% of normal after the first boot up (125 dpi vs 96, I think...don't hold me to to that). It provides an interesting contrast to xbrite type screen in my opinion...xbrite and the like sure look clearer and brighter, but are horribly reflective and provide some difficult viewing angles in bright rooms. This screen is just fine, and is far less reflective while exhibiting adequate brightness. The launch manager buttons are easily programmable and reliable, and I have them set to gmail, iexplorer (in case a site doesn't work on firefox), epower management, and iTunes.
One more slight problem is that if you install new mouse drivers (like I have done for my intellimouse optical) it uninstalls the touchpad drivers. The touchpad is still useable and everything. but the scroll button ceases to function. I haven't done it yet, but I've read that if you install the touchpad drivers again off the Acer CD it works fine again without uninstalling the newer mouse drivers.
The laptop's external hardware recognition is fantastic, rivaling that of a Mac. On my i8100 it took about 40 seconds for the laptop to recognize a portable hard drive, camera, ipod, whatever, but it's almost instantaneous here. My ipod has never been happier, haha.
Performance:
The more I use this thing, the happier I am with it. The hard drive at 5400rpm presents a big improvement for me over my old machine, and I'm loving it. Multitasking is a breeze, and I rarely find myself waiting for a program to close/finish working while I try to open or use a new one. For instance, the first day I had it, I was getting the machine to recognize about 13,000 songs from my portable hard drive in iTunes, which is a pretty sluggish and memory whore program. I was able to run about 3 or 4 other programs simulaneously without so much as a hitch, including Norton Firewall (another whore program), 3 Firefox windows, and software installation all without any slowdown whatsoever. I was mightily impressed, to say the least. I also leave my computer on all the time, and don't really experience any lag after days of use either. I've only restarted when I had to as the result of installation/configuration, and have never had to for a lock up or sluggish performance.
The hard drive, as I'm sure you've read, comes stock in 2 useable partitions (C and D) in FAT32 with one hidden partition used for eRecovery. The FAT32 really pissed me off so I went ahead and converted them to NTFS, only to discover that eRecovery (and System Restore) won't work if the D drive is not FAT32. I'm going to have to reformat at some point to get everything working again, but in the meantime I've got everything backed up on my portable hard drive so I'm not worried. Just don't make the same mistake as me; it's OK to convert the C drive (and preferred if you need to save bigger files and want the added capability of NTFS) but not the D.
For gaming, this thing is ridiculous. I've been able to run anything I want on highest settings without much framerate sacrifice, and believe me it's impressive. I'm about 15+ hours into Half-Life 2 and have run the entire game on 1680 x 1050 resolution, highest texture and shadow settings, 2X anti-aliasing, and 4X anisotropic filtering and rarely see it go below 25fps. It mostly chugs along at 30fps, and find myself taking screen caps every session to brag to my friends, haha. I've downloaded demos of Far Cry, Halo, Call of Duty, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (which is crap, by the way) and experienced the same result. Just awesome.
The stock settings for the x700 seem to be fine as well. I also experimented with ATITool for overclocking and DNA drivers, with varying results. The overclocking works pretty well, but seems to increase the heat to around 65 degrees celsius consistantly and makes the machine noticeably warmer. I decided the small increase in graphics power isn't worth it, and am running without overclocking. The DNA drivers, on the other hand, screwed up my machine. I was able to get one good session with them (and a 3DMark2003 benchmark with overclocking to see how well I could do, which improved the score from about 5600 to 6100) before it destroyed my ability to play games. Any kind of explosion would lock up any game, from Half-Life 2 to one to even old games like Rebel Assault 2. I ended up stripping the computer of anything ATI related and installed the stock drivers from the Acer disk, and haven't had a problem since. I've heard mixed information about Omega drivers too, but for the meantime the stock drivers are more than adequate.
Sound:
As an audiophile, I was excited to hear the sound capabilities of this machine, but am satisfied if not blown away. The Realtek Sound stuff is alright, with the same useless EAX stuff Creative has always had. Does anyone really want to listen to sound that seems like its coming from a bathroom? Didn't think so. The EQ on the driver seems to have some problems in the mids and highs, so I leave it off. Surround sound works well however, and I've had no complaints really, aside from the Realtek crap being mostly a gimmick. Also, if you're running in iTunes, make sure you go to Quicktime settings and change the sound output from DirectSound to WaveOut, which is a common mistake for many and will improve your sound a great deal.
The laptop speakers are very tinny with a complete lack of bass, but exhibit impressive stereo and clarity. They're adequate for travel, but I'd recommend gettting yourself a nice speaker set for the main setup.
Video:
The DVD player works very well, plain and simple. So does the stock playback program, PowerDVD. I've run some DVDs to test out the color, stream quality, and clarity and would say it's the equivalent of an HD set playing back DVDs on DVI or HDMI out. Pretty awesome. If you sit back a bit (do you usually sit 2 feet from your TV?) the picture is brilliant. The only shortcoming I can think of is weak blacks, but that's to be expected from LCD. It's not a CRT afterall.
Service:
I bought the 3 year extended warantee (if you buy it from an Acer reseller store I find it to be much cheaper, it's about $280 through Acer and I got mine for about $169) and havne't had to use it yet. Every laptop purchase has the chance of being a dud, but judging from others who are early adopters like me they're not lemons, thats for sure. While Acer does have a really shitty dead pixel policy (won't exchange unless you have more than 9, compared to many other companies who are more like 5 or 6), I didn't have a single one. Hopefully most people experience similar results.
Accessories:
The bluetooth works fine (I don't see why it wouldn't) and have gotten mice to run perfectly without any kind of USB adapter. I'm most impressed with the wireless card, which seems to be SO much more powerful than any card I've ever seen. I was in class the other day picking up my friend's internet from across the street!! Impressive. The dock seems to have an express card slot as well, which should allow for graphics card upgrades.
Portability:
Extremely light for its size. Someone said in an earlier review that it's more suited for the occasional shuffling around and not for true portable use, but I beg to differ. I bought a cheap Targus bag and carry it to every class I have, and it's not too big to fit on a desk by any means. The battery is far better than I had heard, and I get over 4 hours on battery save mode!! When you first get it, make sure you run the battery's life completely a few times to maximize its future output and lifespan. It's also very nice on the eyes, and have gotten quite a few compliments over the past few weeks from friends and classmates. One friend even thinks it looks better than a Powerbook!
Well, that's my review, unless I think of more to add later. Overall I'm VERY impressed with it and am glad I finally buckled down and made the purchase. With Longhorn not coming out for a year at least 64 bit notebooks are not neccessary at the moment, so don't be afraid to go for the Sonoma chip. If you have any other questions just ask, for I'll check this thread regularly. I fully recommend the Acer Travelmate 8104, and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Build:
At first, I couldn't stop looking at this beauty. The keyboard sits fairly flush in the base and has a great feel, in addition to the rugged and firm build quality of the machine itself. Compared to my older Dell i8100 that I've had since freshman year of college (I'm now a senior) it's built like a truck, with a sturdy screen, barely any keyboard flex, and a great feeling touchpad. Considering the slight curve of the keyboard it takes a few days to get used to, but is very comfortable. It's also pretty quiet, I can bring mine to class and type much quieter than others that bring their notebooks as well.
After a few weeks, some problems have begun to arise: the fan is ALWAYS on. It's a quiet fan, MUCH quieter than my i8100, but when the sucker is plugged in to AC power it never shuts off under the normal power settings. I downloaded MobileMeter to see what was up, and it seems that CPU runs normally at around 51-55 degrees celsius. When I set the processor to the second highest speed setting (800Mhz apparently) it shuts off after a little bit, so at night you can leave it on without having the fan noise dig at your brain as you try to sleep. It's not that big of a deal, and if you have music playing or some ambient noise you won't notice it, but whatever you have sitting off to the left of the laptop is going to get pretty warm.
The good news is that when you unplug the machine, the fan shuts off and hardly ever returns. Running in medium battery save mode, it's practically silent. The hard drive is virtually silent as well.
Heat wise, people that say that the toucpad gets HOT are either liars or don't own the same machine. It gets warm, sure, but is never annoying. The bottom only ever gets lukewarm, and is never hot either. Under intense Half-Life 2 sessions the left side gets warm where the fan is, but I'm never worried it's going to fry or anything. Not a problem for me.
The buttons and inputs are a mix of good and bad. The LED bluetooth and wireless internet buttons on the front are pretty cool and provide easy access, but the audio out jack being in the front is just stupid. Again, it's not really a problem for I run the speaker jack under my desk and under to the back, but having it on the side wouldn't have been too difficult. Righties are in luck as the pc cardbus slot is on the left, as well as the LAN input. I only use one USB port (for my mouse, which will soon be bluetooh hehe) so I use the sole input on the left and run the cable around the back. I use 600 firewire for my portable hard drive, so I plug it into the cardbus. Adding to the fact that the fan is on the left, it's a great setup for righties as there is nothing on the right side aside from the power plug, which sits in the back right and protrudes out only a bit. For lefties, the good news is that there are three USB slots on the right, but with the fan constantly running it would bug the HELL out of me.
The screen is great, pure and simple. It's bright and clear, and the native 1680 x 1050 resolution is perfect for the 15.4" widescreen screen. In full resolution everything is crisp and never too small, but you'll need to fix the font settings because default is 125% of normal after the first boot up (125 dpi vs 96, I think...don't hold me to to that). It provides an interesting contrast to xbrite type screen in my opinion...xbrite and the like sure look clearer and brighter, but are horribly reflective and provide some difficult viewing angles in bright rooms. This screen is just fine, and is far less reflective while exhibiting adequate brightness. The launch manager buttons are easily programmable and reliable, and I have them set to gmail, iexplorer (in case a site doesn't work on firefox), epower management, and iTunes.
One more slight problem is that if you install new mouse drivers (like I have done for my intellimouse optical) it uninstalls the touchpad drivers. The touchpad is still useable and everything. but the scroll button ceases to function. I haven't done it yet, but I've read that if you install the touchpad drivers again off the Acer CD it works fine again without uninstalling the newer mouse drivers.
The laptop's external hardware recognition is fantastic, rivaling that of a Mac. On my i8100 it took about 40 seconds for the laptop to recognize a portable hard drive, camera, ipod, whatever, but it's almost instantaneous here. My ipod has never been happier, haha.
Performance:
The more I use this thing, the happier I am with it. The hard drive at 5400rpm presents a big improvement for me over my old machine, and I'm loving it. Multitasking is a breeze, and I rarely find myself waiting for a program to close/finish working while I try to open or use a new one. For instance, the first day I had it, I was getting the machine to recognize about 13,000 songs from my portable hard drive in iTunes, which is a pretty sluggish and memory whore program. I was able to run about 3 or 4 other programs simulaneously without so much as a hitch, including Norton Firewall (another whore program), 3 Firefox windows, and software installation all without any slowdown whatsoever. I was mightily impressed, to say the least. I also leave my computer on all the time, and don't really experience any lag after days of use either. I've only restarted when I had to as the result of installation/configuration, and have never had to for a lock up or sluggish performance.
The hard drive, as I'm sure you've read, comes stock in 2 useable partitions (C and D) in FAT32 with one hidden partition used for eRecovery. The FAT32 really pissed me off so I went ahead and converted them to NTFS, only to discover that eRecovery (and System Restore) won't work if the D drive is not FAT32. I'm going to have to reformat at some point to get everything working again, but in the meantime I've got everything backed up on my portable hard drive so I'm not worried. Just don't make the same mistake as me; it's OK to convert the C drive (and preferred if you need to save bigger files and want the added capability of NTFS) but not the D.
For gaming, this thing is ridiculous. I've been able to run anything I want on highest settings without much framerate sacrifice, and believe me it's impressive. I'm about 15+ hours into Half-Life 2 and have run the entire game on 1680 x 1050 resolution, highest texture and shadow settings, 2X anti-aliasing, and 4X anisotropic filtering and rarely see it go below 25fps. It mostly chugs along at 30fps, and find myself taking screen caps every session to brag to my friends, haha. I've downloaded demos of Far Cry, Halo, Call of Duty, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (which is crap, by the way) and experienced the same result. Just awesome.
The stock settings for the x700 seem to be fine as well. I also experimented with ATITool for overclocking and DNA drivers, with varying results. The overclocking works pretty well, but seems to increase the heat to around 65 degrees celsius consistantly and makes the machine noticeably warmer. I decided the small increase in graphics power isn't worth it, and am running without overclocking. The DNA drivers, on the other hand, screwed up my machine. I was able to get one good session with them (and a 3DMark2003 benchmark with overclocking to see how well I could do, which improved the score from about 5600 to 6100) before it destroyed my ability to play games. Any kind of explosion would lock up any game, from Half-Life 2 to one to even old games like Rebel Assault 2. I ended up stripping the computer of anything ATI related and installed the stock drivers from the Acer disk, and haven't had a problem since. I've heard mixed information about Omega drivers too, but for the meantime the stock drivers are more than adequate.
Sound:
As an audiophile, I was excited to hear the sound capabilities of this machine, but am satisfied if not blown away. The Realtek Sound stuff is alright, with the same useless EAX stuff Creative has always had. Does anyone really want to listen to sound that seems like its coming from a bathroom? Didn't think so. The EQ on the driver seems to have some problems in the mids and highs, so I leave it off. Surround sound works well however, and I've had no complaints really, aside from the Realtek crap being mostly a gimmick. Also, if you're running in iTunes, make sure you go to Quicktime settings and change the sound output from DirectSound to WaveOut, which is a common mistake for many and will improve your sound a great deal.
The laptop speakers are very tinny with a complete lack of bass, but exhibit impressive stereo and clarity. They're adequate for travel, but I'd recommend gettting yourself a nice speaker set for the main setup.
Video:
The DVD player works very well, plain and simple. So does the stock playback program, PowerDVD. I've run some DVDs to test out the color, stream quality, and clarity and would say it's the equivalent of an HD set playing back DVDs on DVI or HDMI out. Pretty awesome. If you sit back a bit (do you usually sit 2 feet from your TV?) the picture is brilliant. The only shortcoming I can think of is weak blacks, but that's to be expected from LCD. It's not a CRT afterall.
Service:
I bought the 3 year extended warantee (if you buy it from an Acer reseller store I find it to be much cheaper, it's about $280 through Acer and I got mine for about $169) and havne't had to use it yet. Every laptop purchase has the chance of being a dud, but judging from others who are early adopters like me they're not lemons, thats for sure. While Acer does have a really shitty dead pixel policy (won't exchange unless you have more than 9, compared to many other companies who are more like 5 or 6), I didn't have a single one. Hopefully most people experience similar results.
Accessories:
The bluetooth works fine (I don't see why it wouldn't) and have gotten mice to run perfectly without any kind of USB adapter. I'm most impressed with the wireless card, which seems to be SO much more powerful than any card I've ever seen. I was in class the other day picking up my friend's internet from across the street!! Impressive. The dock seems to have an express card slot as well, which should allow for graphics card upgrades.
Portability:
Extremely light for its size. Someone said in an earlier review that it's more suited for the occasional shuffling around and not for true portable use, but I beg to differ. I bought a cheap Targus bag and carry it to every class I have, and it's not too big to fit on a desk by any means. The battery is far better than I had heard, and I get over 4 hours on battery save mode!! When you first get it, make sure you run the battery's life completely a few times to maximize its future output and lifespan. It's also very nice on the eyes, and have gotten quite a few compliments over the past few weeks from friends and classmates. One friend even thinks it looks better than a Powerbook!
Well, that's my review, unless I think of more to add later. Overall I'm VERY impressed with it and am glad I finally buckled down and made the purchase. With Longhorn not coming out for a year at least 64 bit notebooks are not neccessary at the moment, so don't be afraid to go for the Sonoma chip. If you have any other questions just ask, for I'll check this thread regularly. I fully recommend the Acer Travelmate 8104, and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Hey Guys, Im new to this site. Im not a tecno freak and ive been reading some of your reviews and views. Yes im addicted. Im using the 8104 for work and probably will never use the power on offer. But I suppose its like having a powerfull car and only using the power when its really needed.
Thanks for the prompt reply. Today ive received my replacment (NEW) and its smelling gorgeous again. Anyway ive not installed any software yet and inserted the memory stick duo adapter into the card reader. No problems at first. It installed Ok and read the card. But guess what when I ejected the card it did a memory dump. I then resatred the machine without the card and it dosnt recognise card but and the only way I get it to recognise the card is when I do a resart with the card inserted. It loves the Sd card though. I think I can livew with that little niggle as long as nothing else crope up. Ive been using my old machine for the last few days whilst waitng for replacemnt and I dont really want to give it back.
