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What part of too heavy for you was the problem ? Actual LAP use or just the carrying around.

I have no intentions of using on my lap. Todays laptops get too hot for that anyway. It is more of an in bag out of bag twice per day kind of thing for me so.

Power, Stability, durability... And saving about $500 over the sager. I'll deal with the broken back..... Is 5 pounds that much more..????

For the lucky guys with in home the 1712, can you do a simple fullpalette color test (for example using the program aida32) to view if exist banding/dithering in the screen ??

This request because I have read again the specification in the acer site and I have found a bad (maybe) info :

- in the 1700 series the display has 16.7 mil colours
- in the 1710 series the display has 16.2 mil colours

so, this is making in me the doubt that they do not use anymore the true 24bit lcd, but now use one of the lcd that have less color (262K ???) but that using dithering (and so little degradation and delay in response) to reach a simulated (for the eye) max of 16.2 mil colours.

Can someone try this to give to all of us a final word about 24bit lcd panel true or fake in the new 1710 family ???

Thanks.

I ran the fullpalette color test and noticed no banding and on acer.co.uk their specs say

17.0” SXGA TFT colour LCD, 1280×1024, 16.7M colours

I've had my 1712 for 2 weeks now and I'll give a brief review of my experience. Granted I am not as knowlegeable as alot of members here, I'll add my thoughts. This is my first notebook BTW.

First of all let me say that the CPU is upgradable. It is a ZIF socket. The system guide shows how to preform the upgrade.

The screen is very nice and bright. I have one dead blue pixel about 2 in. from the top and 2.5 in. from the right. It doesnt bother me though.

The keyboard is, from what I know, just your average notebook keyboard. One thing that perplexes me though is that it has two backslash keys on it! One above and below the "Enter" key. I don't know if this is normal but it seems to me like they had extra space so they decided "Why not throw in another backslash key!" Also the right "shift" key is less than half the normal size of one due to the fact that they cram in the arrow keys there. But none of that bothers me because I only use the left shift. (Bad typing habit) It is easy to get used to typing on it but I don't like using it to play video games on. So I went out and bought a 10 dollar keyboard just for that reason. Nothing beats the feel of a desktop keyboard. That is one thing I would like to see be changed on a notebook. The keys are just too flat and I like the indent feel of a regular keyboard.

Game playing: So far I have played 3 games: Warcraft 3, UT2k4, and FarCry.

War3 runs perfectly fine with the settings maxed. It is not a very graphic intensive game.

With the settings maxed in UT2k4 I get about 30-35 fps during heavy fighting. Not too bad...With the settings on medium there is an obious increase.

FarCry is a different story. I keep the settings on low and the resolution one setting below the 1280x1024 native. I tried playing with the settings on max but I only got about 4 FPS. It really is intended for high end desktop cards. Even with the settings on low the game is very playable and still is nice graphics-wise.

About heat: When I am playing and alt-tab out the GPU temp is around 80-85 celcius but within a minute it drops below 70. During just windows use it stays between 50-55 celcius.

Overall I am pleased with my purchase. I am anticipating the release of the new Bios to fix the power management issue.

I just have a couple of questions.

1) What third party program do you use to OC the GPU?
2) Is the firewall that comes with XP home good enough for my DSL connection or should I get some other software?
3) Adam says that the GPU is removable...Is it possible to purchase mobile GPUs and be able to swap it with the go5700? (not that I am interested in doing it now but in the future sometime when there is an advancement in technology)

thanks

80 to 85C are you sure ??? over 70 will fry a CPU.. 85 is pretty hot .

With the GPU clocked to 400 is Farcry playable on high settings at 1024x768 ?

The graphics card gets that hot not the CPU.
I would like to know what program I should use to OC the graphics card.

powerstrip ( for overclocking)
http://www.entechtaiwan.net/ps.htm

Does the 1712 have built in GPU temp monitoring ?

yes it does. Thanks for the link.

Heres a pic.

Just placed an order.. I am pretty much sold on this bad boy.....

what is the clock freq. setting that you are using for cpu and memory of 5700 ???

Farcry on low setting at 1024 ?? But Adam do not has utilized it well on his when wrote the review ??

What setting Adam had used ???

And for Adam, readed the 80-85 Celsius of the gpu of EightCounts , what do you think is a dangerous temp for the chip in gpu ???

I believe Adam had it at 400/650 stable

Several people here have had the setting of 400/580 and showed no artifacts after several ours of gaming. I don't have mine yet but those are the settings I am going to try.

You should see about a 15% speed improvement with those settings.

My GPU has never gotten over 50C. It sits at 45C when in windows and hovers around 50 after gaming. You may want to make sure your GPU fan is working properly. It may explain some of your low framerate issues as well.

And I certainly wouldn't overclock it if it is running that hot.

I noticed in my Microcenter flyer that they are advertising the Acer 1712. I went in and they didn't have it in as of yesterday during lunch.

I'm talking about the Microcenter in Virginia.

Just for you folks that are like me and have trouble visualizing this thing. It's going to be nice to see it in person.

Edit:

Oh and can someone please post the memory info using CPU-Z?

Now i am worried...The fan works when I turn it on. I don't think it would just stop during gaming. I don't know what temps are harmful for the graphics card itself. I just assumed since the default setting for the core slowdown threshold is 130 C that everything was fine below it, especially since the temp has never been within 40 degrees of it.

Sadly I tried playing UT2K4 with the GPU overclocked at 400/650 and the game pretty much locked up on me within about 15 seconds and I got the BSOD and it automatically restarted my computer.

It was probably a stupid idea but I tried it again only raising the settings to 365/600. This time it did not freeze but there was what looked to be like a small problem with the refreshing of the screen. I occaisionally saw horizontal lines. I only played with these settings for about 2 minutes before I quit and changed the settings back to default (350/580).

From now on I am just going to leave the settings as they are. Stupid me.

Heres the memory info:

CPU-Z version 1.22
Memory Modules Serial Presence Detect (SPD)

Module #1

General
Memory type DDR-SDRAM
Manufacturer (ID) Nanya Technology (7F7F7F0B00000000)
Size 512 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC2700 (166 MHz)
Part number NT512D64S8HB1G-6K

Attributes
Number of banks 2
Data width 64 bits
Correction None
Registered no
Buffered no

Timings table
Frequency (MHz) 133....... 166
CAS# 2.0........ 2.5
RAS# to CAS# delay 3........... 3
RAS# Precharge 3........... 3
TRAS# 6........... 7


Module #2

General
Memory type DDR-SDRAM
Manufacturer (ID) Nanya Technology (7F7F7F0B00000000)
Size 512 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC2700 (166 MHz)
Part number NT512D64S8HB1G-6K

Attributes
Number of banks 2
Data width 64 bits
Correction None
Registered no
Buffered no

Timings table
Frequency (MHz) 133....... 166
CAS# 2.0........ 2.5
RAS# to CAS# delay 3........... 3
RAS# Precharge 3........... 3
TRAS# 6........... 7