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Processor
Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64 processor 2800+
I know most people tie the temp of the laptop to the CPU and though it's not accurate that whatever CPU it has it what temp it runs, it does have an effect on that, it's size and weight, and battery life. It's a very small and light system and to the touch it's about the same as many of the other high end laptops as far as palm temp.

Hard Drive
80GB 4200rpm
This is as high as you will find in a laptop that uses mobile drives. Why they used a 4200rpm hard drive in a laptop they named after a super car I have no idea.

RAM
512MB 333DDR
Acer says it supports 2GB of DDR400, but they bundle it with 512MB of DDR333 with no other options. the difference of 333 to 400DDR is probably only going to be noticed in benchmarks. 512MB of RAM is plenty for most users and Windws XP, the only problem would be with very extreme programs, opening up tons of high res pictures with photoshop, and some of the newer games released since Planetside. Planetside was the first game I noticed having major lag with 512 and needed upgraded in all systems I tried it on. Since then there have been a few others and I noticed EQ2 recommends 1GB+ of RAM to play and a minumum of 512. Not that everyone would be playing EQ2, but just to give an example.

LCD
15" SXGA+ TFT
One of the better SXGA+ LCD I've seen. It's bright and average in angle viewing.

Comes with a matching mini mouse (USB).


The paintjob on the lid is what you would expect on an exotic supercar... beautiful and flawless. The sides are still red, but left with a rough texture.




The slot load CD drive is one of my fav features as I've always preferred the slot over the tray.






The system is over all very solid and light. It weighed in under 7 lbs.


The keyboard like most of the high end Acer's I've seen has the curved keys which I get mixed opinions on.


The default desktop scene here. During boot up you will hear a loud "vrrrrroooommmmm" like you're at the track and a car is flying by. This is guaranteed to get everyone's attention, so be prepared.




The hard drive is a pretty easy swap. You can access it by just removing two screws. It take 4 more scews to remove it from the bracket.


Couple of video benchmarks

Aquamark3
26,182

3DMARK01 SE
10,898

3DMARK03
3,028

I ran it with DVD playback right out of the box after completing 100% full charge. It ran 1 hour and 40 minutes before shutting down.

Overall I think it's a sweet system for the right person. To reach the full market a UXGA LCD, faster CPU, more RAM, and a faster hard drive need to be offered as options. It has been noted by another user that they successfully upgraded to the 3200+ AMD procesor. We've been doing some hard drive swaps for people also to the 80GB 5400rpm hard drive and 60GB 7200rpm drive.

1 hour and 40 min??? That's pretty low. Acer's site said 3 hours and i was hoping for at lease 2 1/2 +.

Adam, can you show us where the second slot for the RAM is?

Great Review! Thanks!!!

adam thanks for the review

can u tell us what the default core/mem were set at?

another member who bought the ferrari 3200 off newegg had theirs default clocked at 460/210

the voodoo m:860 (athlon64 w/ 9700) is clocked at 450/200

The default clock is higher than the P-M systems ..it's about 450/208
By the way i am the user Adam was referring to who upgraded the 2800+ cpu to a 3200+ mobile cpu.....I'm back on the 2800+ now because, although i had no crashes or problems with the 3200+ cpu in the Ferrari, the 2800+ runs cooler and therefore the CPU fan doesn't run as much or as hard as with the 3200+ cpu.
I may try the 3200+ again later on, and perhaps add some arctic silver to it, etc...

-Scotty

I'm sure under normal use it gets around 3 hours if it makes 1 hr 40 on a dvd.

Adam- How is the fan noise and heat?

I'm sure you can get more bat life than I get in all my reviews if you give it a really light load. I don't milk it though, I stick in a DVD and crank up the volume with it sitting next to me gaming. I get the DVD started, then pull the plug, if it gets to the end I click the channel back button to the beginning. I write down the time it starts and the time it shuts off.

The short review is all I got to as we had someone drooling over it wanting to buy it right then (and I sold it). I don't plan to bring in a store display as it's something that is asking to get keyed =P... not kidding either.

shboyles, do you plan on doing a review yourself, and also... regarding the battery life. Have you tried seeing how much you can squeeze out of it, doing small tasks, maybe just word processing, with wi-fi off?

If i have the time i may do a review myself......i really haven't had a chance to test out the battery life yet. I did do some internet surfing wirelessly for about an hour on battery and still had over 50% of my battery left though.

What i have done mostly so far (other than trying out a 3200+ cpu in it), is benchmarking and overclocking the ATI 9700.....which is quite overclockable so far.
Here are my benchmarks with the 2800+ cpu in it and the ATI overclocked to 472/235 (I'm sure i can overclock even higher, i just havent had the chance yet).

3dmark 2001:
12152

3dmark 2003:
3465

UT2004 1024x768 Max Details:
107 fps

UT2004 1280x1024 Max Details:
74 fps

Far Cry 1024x768 Max Details:
32 FPS

Aquamark 3.0:
GFX: 3507
CPU: 8387
Overall: 29005

Like i said im sure it will overclock further, just haven't had a chance to try yet. Also i need to put the 3200+ cpu back in and record those benchmarks...I did some benchmarking after i isntalled the 3200+ cpu the first time, and if memory serves they didn't improve the scores significantly even though the 3200+ has a 1mb cache and the 2800+ low power CPU that comes in the Ferrari has 512k cache (which is one of the reasons i put it back in the unit).

-Scotty

I am suprised that you rate the SXGA+ higher than the TM8000 series. As Acer uses the same LG screens in all their range.

I wonder if the screen you review on the 8000 was faulty.

As far as i can tell it's the EXACT same SXGA+ Screen (I have both the 8003Lmi, 8006Lmi, and the Ferrari 3200). I put them side by side and their the same. It's a great screen, but viewing angles could be much better.
It seems very hard these days to find a SXGA+ screen that has good viewing angles and contrast ratios....(at least on a laptop with a really good graphics card)

-Scotty

Damn thats so cool! Nice review!

The HP nc8000 is the only one I know of that has WVA SXGA+ and a decent video card (9600 128MB).

Yeah, i tried that one out for a while...great screen and laptop, but the 9600 was clocked low, and overclocking it was quite difficult without causing lockups (at least the unit i had)

-Scotty

yes, another batt life review would be awesome, here's some banana encouragement

Adam, just wondering if you tried installing new memory and if so do you have to take off the keyboard to access it?