NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Acer Forums › Acer Notebooks › Finally bought a ACER TM 4402 WLMi (Turion)
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Finally bought a ACER TM 4402 WLMi (Turion)

post #1 of 29
7/23/05 at 1:38pm
Thread Starter 
After waiting for months finally bought a ACER TM 4402 WLMi (Turion) laptop.

I stuck to my point...

Why buy a 32 bit lappy when you can get a 64 bit lappy for less and with best configuration available for same money !!!

And certainly I like it better than my older Thinkpad T40 (P-M) and my friends HP DV1000(Centrino) & Gateway 7426 (Athlon 64) performances.

I was waiting for HP or Gateway to launch a Turion lappy with X700. All the HP had low end 200m. Kept waiting for MSI 1029 at XMELD. I saw the price going higher with MSI 1029 config.Also their delivery date kept postponing. Finally made the plunge at the ACER TM4402 (Best Value for money) from
PCnation (although not the cheapest ..but very fast delivery).

My Reviews:
*********
#Working on this for last 4 days...I am happy that I bought this

#Excellent features.

#Smooth Performance even with some light games I have.Will try more power hungry games in future.

#It is very thin and Screen of 15.4 (feels like 17"). Since this is for my home ..I am comfortable with extra big screen and laptop weight of 6.6 pounds. If I were to carry it everyday I would go for a 4 pound lappy which will have 12" screen (or the small turion lappy from HP or Averatec with ATI 200ms.)

#4 hours 10 mins battery life with normal office applications and internet

#While gaming I had to hook to power as the lappy automatically lowers its
performance for long battery life...and boost itself up( full speed) when
connected to power again.

#Certainly my experience comes from years of using Intels in Thinkpads and HP DV1000. My friend has the same laptop and has installed Linux OS (Sus) (on half ; i.e 45 GB of HDD) for some of his applications. Based on his reviews I bought this Acer lappy.

#Excited by the unique slightly curved (5% degree) Keyboard. They say its full size but wish it was still bigger as I feel their was space on the surface.

#The lappy comes loaded with only licensed softwares (Windows XP Prof and lots of other utilities).No trials (Antivirus, MS Office or other junk) are provided which will require you to delete later on. Its a no- nonsense pack.

#3 CDs (system image) with system restore (Factory image) and 1 Norton Antivirus (1 CD; 3 months trial--not pre-installed) is provided. (Total 4 CD). The system on opening asks you to make another factory image which I did in a single DVD.

#Was worried about not having an WSXGA screen (which I read in some review) but after actually seeing it ....I see no problem and is happy with WXGA resolution. I actually liked the feature of extending partial screen to 2 montors.Another good feature is ACER GRIDVista wherein I can make partitions upto 4 screens to accomodate different programs or different browser windows for good screen management.

Overall ..Very clean powerful lappy with no-nonsense bundle.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 29
7/23/05 at 2:09pm
Nice review and congratulations with your new lappy
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 29
7/23/05 at 6:06pm
Wow, I'm surprised that ML CPU actually gave you very good battery life! Battery rating must be insane no?
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 29
7/23/05 at 10:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by chuck232
Wow, I'm surprised that ML CPU actually gave you very good battery life! Battery rating must be insane no?
4+ hours on an ML, would an MT make it at least an hour longer? if so that's pretty crazy
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 29
7/23/05 at 11:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nosun27
4+ hours on an ML, would an MT make it at least an hour longer? if so that's pretty crazy

Makes me think the powersaving features on that platform are set pretty well. The MT may or may not fare better once the CPU is throttled down.
Most of the information available now about mobiles processors seem to be about maximum power consumption or thermal dissipation. Hardly any information about power consumption at their lowest active states.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 29
8/6/05 at 9:06am

Upgrading the CPU

Do you think it will be possible to upgrade the CPU in this Laptop? Like further down the line do you think it'd be possible to put a dual-core turion or just an MT.

The manual for it doesn't list the MT in the "Platform" section but I'm not sure if that just means that its not available for sale with that configuration.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 29
8/6/05 at 9:05pm
awesome news!

nice cpu that is apparently equivalent to power to the pentium m 2.0 ghz

can you post some benchmarks and comment on the screen? thanks!
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 29
8/6/05 at 10:55pm
how is the dvd playback on movies?
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 29
8/7/05 at 1:28am
Yes when I configure the MSI MS-1029 it always comes out more. Have to remember the 4402wlmi comes preloaded with Microsoft XP Pro, that is a $144 value. The MS-1029 don't have dual layer burner either (booo...!!) as far as I know. 100GB 5400rpm segate momentus doesn't come cheap either. All in all the 4402wlmi is value notebook #1. I'm thinking I'm going with the Ferrari 4005wlmi though since I can afford it and due to DVI port, WSXGA+ screen, 128MB X700 (w/ fastest factory clock). That's probably the main reasons. We shall see... I'm never sure what I will end up getting untill I press the submit order button. LOL!
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 29
8/10/05 at 3:30am
How is the gaming on it. I thought it was a good system but i'm reluctant to get it due to the x700 only having 64MB video ram. I wish that Acer would release the 5020 series in the US. Then I wouldn't have any problems and the Ferrari is just way too much. I am considering the MSI 1029 but still kinda pricy for me.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 29
8/10/05 at 4:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by efree58
How is the gaming on it. I thought it was a good system but i'm reluctant to get it due to the x700 only having 64MB video ram.
My thoughts exactly. Can anyone comment on this?

Battlefield 2 "requires" a 128 MB graphics card, but I have a feeling this card would suffice. All the same, I'd hate to buy it and find out otherwise.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 29
8/17/05 at 7:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Covert
My thoughts exactly. Can anyone comment on this?

Battlefield 2 "requires" a 128 MB graphics card, but I have a feeling this card would suffice. All the same, I'd hate to buy it and find out otherwise.
i would like to third this request. I want to find a 15" under 7 pound lappy that can play bf2...is this one the one?
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 29
8/17/05 at 8:07pm
Does the 4402WLMi get hypermemory activated with the newest catalyst drivers? If it did I would buy it as it would have 192MB VRAM.
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 29
8/21/05 at 3:15pm

video card curse:D

Hi.
I am considering to buy this turion laptop but the graphics seems like a serious drawback...I`ve seen some benchmark results at eu webpage (doom3=42fps; Half Life 2=45fps) which isn`t bad but what the heck is the resolution??? Nobody says there...
But as I am trying to think out of a box here, why just do not add more VRAM??? I doubt that the manufacturer used different board...They simply pulled out the memory banks. Does anyone has some clue? Is there a place to buy these banks?

Tnx for reply,
REGARDS, -LtR-
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 29
8/21/05 at 5:49pm
It seems that not enough people around here have the laptop to be able to comment about its gaming performance.
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 29
8/21/05 at 11:15pm
in response to whether the x700 64mb can play bf2, it can! i have an aspire 1694 with a 2.0ghz P-M, 1gb RAM, and 64mb x700, and I play battlefield 2 at an average of about 40fps on medium settings at 1024x768....in other words, its easily playable. half-life 2 runs even better since its optimized for ATI cards, though I don't know the exact fps...but it's easily playable as well at 1024x768.
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 29
8/22/05 at 1:25am
Well that makes me even more seriously consider this notebook, although your Aspire is generally more powerful due to the more advanced processor and RAM anyway. Have you tried the game on high settings at all, even at lower resolutions?

Thanks for the reply.
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 29
8/22/05 at 6:36pm
its playable with one setting at high, for example textures set to high, and the rest at medium....but at ALL high settings at 1024x768 its bruuutal, sooo much stuttering. not sure if its due to the huge RAM requirements or that its overwhelming the video card (and possibly VRAM), but i've read that at all high settings hardly any cards can do it other than the x800 or geforce 6800 level cards.

besides, to tell you the truth, you can't tell much of a difference between medium and high settings, so its not worth the trouble of setting to high....though i understand you're trying to get an understanding of the power of the card, u gotta remember bf2 is a pretty buggy game too (and optimized for nvidia i suspect). in essence, i think this card is fine for bf2 if you want to play on a mobile laptop (eg. not a desktop replacement), and definitely good for halflife 2 and other games.
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 29
8/22/05 at 7:38pm
Thanks - I didn't suspect it would be possible, but I was just curious. My desktop (256 MB Radeon 9800 Pro) can only handle about half of the settings on high, so this probably wouldn't be much different.

It's true that the game isn't nearly as optimized as it could be. Perhaps the general performance will improve with the 1.3 patch (whenever that may be).
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 29
8/22/05 at 10:42pm
I actually think less VRAM (64MB) only shows up in theoretical benchmarks, real gaming and X700 64MB seams to perform just fine. I think this is what anandtech stated as well about 3DMark even though it supposed to use "real" games.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Acer Notebooks
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Acer Forums › Acer Notebooks › Finally bought a ACER TM 4402 WLMi (Turion)