My faulty Travelmate 8104

First of all this is my 1st post on this forum but I have been reading the forums for some time now, and everyone seems to be quite helpful here.

EDIT 03/11/05: NOT REALLY A FAULTY POWER ADAPTER AS FIRST THOUGHT; because I didn't have time to test it with the battery unplugged and just the power adapter. Most probably a faulty piece of hardware in the laptop itself.

OVERVIEW: A brand new Travelmate 8104 was delivered to me with a 2" scatch and a suspected faulty power adapter which caused the backlight on the screen to flicker on the off constantly. I have wrote this overview to summarise the faults but to get the full picture, reading the whole post is recommended, which BTW took me quite a long time to write.

I had been looking for a lappy for months(college use) and then came across the Travelmate 8100 series, I thought I was dreaming when I first saw the specs on the 8104. The graphics card is the gem (IMO) on this notebook coupled with the 15.4" WSXGA+ TFT and sub 3kg weight and this means a lot to me because i'm very much a gaming freak. And the thought of superior gaming on such a well specified machine gives me goosebumps.

Anyways when I had finally ordered the Travelmate 8104 I couldn't believe I was finally getting this awesome machine. It came 6 days after ordering it because I chose the cheapest postage option. BUT it all went horribly wrong when I took outta the packaging.

Upon removing the black felt between the screen and the keyboard I noticed a 2" scratch on the plastic below the keyboard next to the specification sticker. medium depth, exposing the grey plastics underneath I was shattered, after all the waiting and anticipation I was so upset. I asked myself how this could of ever happened, I mean I was soo careful taking it out of the box and plastic bag, I even took off my ring thinking that would scatch it like it did to the metal at the back of my ipod.

Nevertheless I depressingly put the battery in it and turned it on, Windows didn't look like it ever been loaded so I went through the XP startup process. At this point nothing seemed wrong with the running of the machine it self. Once I got to the desktop for the 1st time I was prompted by the Acer backup, you can either backup on a 4 CD's or a DVD, so I backed it up on a DVD-R and once that was done I started using it normally, exploring it, installed various everyday progs like Winamp and firefox, I admit that the rest of the laptop lived to my expectations, it was stunning performace wise. After about 2 1/2 hours it was time to recharge and that when the main fault asose.

I plugged in the power adapter, the screen started flickering, although I know the screen wasn't flickering, it was the backlight turning on and off really quickly if you understand what i mean, I picked up the power brick and it was making humming noises simultaneously to the backlight flickering.The changes in brightness levels weren't comfortable to look at and lasted around 10mins before ceasing and normal charging seemed to start. The charging light turned from orange to green when it, it charged for an hour then suddenly the backlight started flickering again.

I was confused since this is my 1st laptop and I didn't know if this was normal so I googled it and loads of results came back but not for backlight flickering just faulty screens

I then tried charging the notebook while it was off and the charging light came on orange and then after precisely 18 seconds turned off for 3 seconds then turns for 18 seconds again. The cycle repeats itself continually until I took out the power cord and the light stayed unlit. I suspected a faulty adapter and by this point I was distraught Then I decided to turn on the laptop and loaded the Acer eManager program and put the adapter back into the lappy this showed that the power used by the lappy switched constantly from AC to DC causing the screen to goto full brightness while on AC then back to 80% when on DC. This concluded a faulty adapted as suspected.
I had it RMA back to the supplier after registering the fault with Acer Uk. Acer offered to send a new power adapter but I declined and decided to have it exchanged for a new one because of the unacceptable scatch and incase if it isn't just the faulty adapter causing the backlight to flicker.

BTW Welldone and congrats for reading it this far if you have!

Currently, i'm not a happy bunny, quite dissapointed in the experience, although not taking anything away from the actual laptop model. its actual performace is phenomenal for such a thin and light laptop, if you look at the benchmarks, and all the generous features speak for themselves, but use of such fragile light green shiny plastics on the all over the laptop, although they do look good, I suspect will be one the gripes with this laptop as it is bound to get damaged on normal use quicker than the older Travelmate 8000 series.

If you have had any similar problems with your 8100 series laptops could you please tell me about you experience with here.

Phew, I can't believe I just wrote all that.

Oh, I sure don't hope there isn't an issue with this new line from Acer. There seems to be a lot of people opting for the 8100 series and if a lot of them go wrong Acer will be in a big load of S***. Although it doesn't seem to be one particular problem with many 8100 owners posting problems. Judging from what i've read on the forums there are certain isolated problems owners are experiencing. So don't start packing up your laptop to send it back just yet!

I ordered my laptop from a online retailer from the UK called Easy Computers (www.laptopsdirect.co.uk)
Although i'm quite unhappy with the laptop they sent me, I don't feel cheated by Easy computers as the box was factory sealed when I opened it, the fault lies with Acer for ultimately building and shipping a faulty machine. The supplier (Easy Computers) were quick to take it back with no extra charge or hassle and are currently dealing with my replacement.

I'm sorry to hear that you're having such problems with you're WIFI connection, I didn't experience and inconsistancy in the few hours I did have with the laptop allowed me to use my wifi network to connect to the internet connection for an hour. I must say I was very pleased at how easy it was to set up and the connection was very stable with full strenght signals being reported even through 3 solid brick walls. I went downstairs to test the range out since my Netgear DG834G ADSL router is upstairs and to my surprise it was still at full strength,I think that SignalUp technology has something to do with the awesome range. I recommend some trouble shooting, if the problem gets any worse contact you're supplier or Acer technical support.

BTW thanks for the heads-up about PC Pro Magazine, i'll check them out to see if they can do a shout out for me.

No Blair I didn't opt for their pre-delivery inspection, I now know I should have, at the time of ordering I thought it was a waste of money and besides I knew how to put all the updates on it. I feel that the inspection would of definately picked up any faults with machine, I wasn't too worried about any dead pixels because it was such a large screen, so I wouldn't notice it if there were.

Their overall sevice has been good and they were quick to send out a courier to pick back up the faulty machine. The customer service was helpful and guided me through exactly what I needed to do. Although it did take a little waiting to get through. As I already said I don't have any gripes with Easy Computers, its Acer that I feel let me down.

After further research and reading through other posts and calling my supplier which say they have had a few returns with the same problem and they believe its not a faulty adapter, unfortunately I don't think it is a faulty adapter at fault aswell anymore, because I didn't test it without the battery and with just the power adapter in cos I had such a short amount of time with it. I am saying I think I was very wrong about the nature of the problem and that I fear its actually worse than previously thought.

I'd like to say I'm very sorry for misguiding people and creating false hopes, I suggest the best solution for this problem is a replacement. I'f you're supplier has a service like the pre-inspection service that www.laptopsdirect.co.uk does, I'd strongly recommend opting for it before ordering your 8100 to save a lot of pain and hassle. I'd wish I had done it now

Hey thanks for that useful insight epicure1, I've been trying to pinpoint the actual cause for the problem myself by reading the posts and asking Acer technical support. At first I thought it was the power adapter then I thought it was something faulty inside the laptop causing it, now you've expelled that by saying its the faulty batteries. I hope it is the battery that is causing it because that would be far easier to remedy than a hardware fault.