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Hello all.....

I know some of you were considering purchasing this laptop so i figured this review might help you out.

Specs

1.8ghz Dothan
128mb ATI Radeon Mobility 9700
512mb RAM
80gig HD (4200rpm i assume)
15.4" WXGA
Super Multi DVD Drive
B/G WIFI
Bluetooth
4-in-1 Card Reader
XP Pro
6.6lbs

Total Cost: $2400
Planned Additions: Extra AC Adapter: $70
3yr Warranty: $200

Build/Appearance
Great build quality: metal LCD cover, very strong case (I think the palm rest area is aluminum, but i could be wrong.) No keyboard flexing.
Of all the laptops I've had, this is by far the best looking one of the bunch. Nice silver/black scheme and thin/wide design. Not too heavy either.

Screen
Awesome screen. Very brigt and uniform backlighting. Really nice viewing angles (both vertical and horizontal - see pics). Oh yeah, and no dead pixels

Features
The Aspire front buttons are useful, especially volume control. The little LCD tells you the time and the battery life. They don't interfere with keyboard use. There are four programmable buttons, with a flashing email light, which is kind of cool. I really like the WIFI button on the front (glows orange when on) and the Bluetooth button (glows blue)

The slot load DVD+/-R drive is really convenient, but a bit loud.
The unit also has a 4-in-1 card reader which i haven't tried out yet
With general use, i get about 3.5-4 hours of battery life

Keyboard and Touchpad
Keyboard has no flexing and pretty good response. The touchpad is standard, but the scroll button is useful. The buttons are a bit loud/stiff.

Sound
Its a laptop so you can't expect too much, but they're not bad. Loud enough for personal use and the built in subwoofer defintely helps out a lot.

Performance
Installed Omega Drivers: Numbers using default clock 390/202

3dmark03: 2,950
3dmark01SE: 10,500
Aquamark3: 23,090
UT2k3 Demo Flybys: 2 ran at about 120fps, 1 ran at 190fps

Overall daily use performance is excellent (Office/explorer/etc), but i'm sure this is the case for all new lappys.

Noise
Fan generally not on during general use, but can get loud when gaming.


Issues/Cons

1. The Radeon card doesn't seem to have much tolerance for overclocking. I start to see artifacts/freezes with just a 20hz bump in the core. I wouldn't overclock anyway, but it would be nice to know that there is some room for it.

2. The notebook's back panel and touchpad buttons/arcade area are prone to smudging.

3. The headphone port is on the front...not convenient for connecting external speakers

4. Battery life in the 3-4 hour range with wifi on. Short of Acer's 5 hr claim, (but that was prob w/ wifioff)


Overall Assessment
Very happy with this laptop: I don't game all too often, but wanted something that was game-capable and yet still a laptop (ie portable and decent battery life). This laptop certainly meets that requirement.

PICS

Front View
Right View
From Above
Screen
Screen2
Left View
Closed
Screen Comparison with my old laptop (acer travlemate 737)

Nice review and pictures

I have a question though, does this notebook get warm?

Thankyou for your review. I was looking at getting this one all along and your review is yet another pea in the positive bucket!

In games is this 1280x800 resolution too little?? can you compare it to 1280 x 1024 resolution ?

Hey guys...quick update

i'm having more success overclocking...must've been doing something wrong before

anyway...w/ omegadrivers clocked to 432/229.50

3dmark03 = 3,250
3dmark01SE = 11,700

Just to make sure I ran the benchmarks back to back a few times to test stability (~hr) and had no problems at all.


As to the questions: the notebook gets a little warm on the bottom when on battery, but gets very warm when plugged in. The palm rest area, however, is always cool to the touch

As for the gaming resolution, I don't find it to be a problem, but i'm used to gaming at 1024/768. So it could be a step down for those of you used to higher resolutions

What about a PCMark04 score?

thats good to know that acer resolved that issue (as the ferrari 3000 was getting warm/hot on the palm rest area)

Beautiful notebook. Is that a slot-loading optical drive I see?

Why doesn't PCTorque sell this model? I would definitely consider buying one from them.

Nice review, I have a Aspire 2023 1,6 centrino, 9700 128, 512 ddr, 60Gb and wifi, no bluetooth

Looking at the screen, I should have opted for the 2025 instead of the 8003. Oh, well.

the widescreens seem to have better vert viewing angles

what scren does the 8003 use? 15" sxga+?

Yeah, it has a 15 inch SXGA+. The screen is in no way terrible, but looking at the pictures of the 2025 screen it does not compare. I have installed an anti-glare filter and adjusted the gamma/brightness/contrast through the ATI settings to improve the image but the vert viewing angle still sucks.

If a 2.0 Dothan version of the 2025 comes along I may have to dump the 8003 to a family member.

Acer Aspire 2026 WLMi has 2.0 GHz Dothan.

Congrats on your purchase. I was wondering how ut2004 performs on this machine, the fps on each map style, i am specifically interested in the onslaught and deathmatch maps. Thank you.

I'm thinking about getting that one, do you like it?
Is the casing the same as the 2025?