1700 encounter

Hi ho.
Griegerie here (Greg)
Got my paws on the 1712smi.
It was a three way scuffle with three stores, one really giving me the run around, claiming they ordered one for me to see, and bumping me daily, delaying a trip out of town to where in knew one to be, factualy. I made great pains in telling these folks that I was merrily comparison shopping and may not purchase the unit, and the three places I spoke to said 'fine, we'll keep it as a floor unit'.
So, I finaly decide to go to the store out of town, and when I get there, the sales men start running around bumping into each other, and doing a little jiggle about the 1712 not being instock, where upon I start hollering for the particular manager I had spoken to the night before.
Out comes the unit. Er, sort of. It was a small box, or correctly, too small a box to be a 1700. Out pops a tablet acer. oops, my bad, I had been too busy smoldering over the aspect of train travel for naught. Back to the store room, this time he comes out with the unit in a shopping cart. Grappling, he staggers with this box, which was roughly twice and half again the original tablet's size. He seemed to be agape and shocked with this unit, I think it was his first encounter as well. By the time he put the box in front of me, the smoke had cleared, I can't imagine anyone not getting a chukle from this scenario.
He opens the box, out slides the acer branded box, he opens that, out pops a shoe. Now, this shoe was very small, so I assume the wise acre who made the remark about the power suply being as big as his shoe must have been a transgendered expatriot of asia, who's family had still practiced the cruel tradition of footbinding. I'm a size eight, not even close.
Heavy.
He dropped the acer on my finger as he placed it infront of me, but luckily, it landed on the finger that was taken halfway off last year by way of being closed on by a speeding window, and it's nerves are not up to par. What weighs 16 pounds? A cinderblock? A donut spare tire? Two gallon jugs of water? A rock the size of your head? a pair of hipboots after you've waded in too deep while flyfishing? Something else that weighs 16 pounds?
Tie the bugger down when in the car, this thing flying about will kill someone. Or keep going, right through your windshield after your ABS goes off. But not before interfering with your airbag's effectiveness. Or flatening the back of your head.
It really didn't seem that bad though. Those remarks about weights and brains did not rub me the right way. Our friend weighed 16 pounds when born? Did you ever apologize to your mother? I suspect you new something us other unborn didn't, which made you attempt to prolong your stay. In the vein of knowing something others don't, you wouldn't happen to be a highly succesfull stockbroker now, would you?
Of course you didn't weigh 16 pounds at birth!
I myself weighed a pound and ten ounces. I practically fell out, and come to think of it, I don't recall mum thanking me. So, if anyone wants to makes comment alluding that one who buys a 'puter' this heavy suffers from thought process aberations, my excuse for carrying this thing is to make up for low premature birth weight.
ok, ok.
This unit will serve five different residences at various times of the year.(four of them are not mine :-( It will traverse terrain between the various locations locked in a vangaurd case, unless anyone can recomend something that one has the option of plucking foam to fit, that isn't too big. The unit will never be used entransit, or in my lap. Being used on one of those 'eat in bed' type stands will be the closest it gets to my lap. Not that I'm afraid of smothering the unit, it's just that I can be rather fogetfull, and fear one day I might leave my fly open, go to a particular type of site, and get tangled up with the underside fan.
The sales man plugs the unit in, and XP prompts us for user info, and the second salesman says 'This is the end of the ride', where as I request to speak the the manager again. Being that she was a very beautifull young lady, I was actualy starting to look forward to sales associate altercations.
She came, told the salesmen to proceed, and that the unit was to be put on display. They did. One unplugged the unit, without powering down, but I noticed the screen stayed lit as he carried it to the display counter, then he plugged it in. He then turned the unit over to look for the battery cover, murmering to himself that he wasn't sure if it was in the box or the unit. I laughed, told him the unit was on since he unplugged it 5 minutes ago, but to not worry about the battery, as my understanding was that you had to unscrew the bottom cover screws to get to the battery.
I liked the unit. The right/left clicks did not seem stiff, as some had mentioned. I felt it was very sturdy, not the least flexible, texture was great, tactle feel was good. The pictures don't do it justice. I was not too concerned for the mis shapen keys, for I am a 'hunt and pecker'.
This unit has little legs in the front, and larger ones in the back, to keep the air moving underneath. I bet you could buy some of those cylinders of chocolate chip cookie dough you get in the freezer deptartment, cut some wedges and slide them under the unit while gaming, so you can have some fresh baked cookies to snack on whenever the urge strikes.
Someone at acer tech told me the 1700 had no fan on the bottom of the unit, and that it only had a cpu fan that drew in air from the vents on the left side of the the unit, and expelled it on the right side. Wow, what was he smoking? There was one well vented fan underneath, and everything else looked very well vented as well.
It was at about this time that I informed the salesman that the abrasioned flat spot on my forhead was the result of banging my head on the back of the train seat infront of me for the duration of the ride out -upon realizing that I had left my DVDs behind. They lent me theirs.
Does watching DVDs heat a proccesor up? I let the acer play for about 45 minutes, and it did not get hot anywhere. Not on the keyboard(as does the hp zd7000, which has TWO fans underneath) or anywhere else, top or bottom. I just hope to god that acer does not take advantage of the extra space, shoving asbestos sheets between the cpu and underside of keyboard, or underside of unit, to give the tactle appearance of cool running. I would have done a hair - singe test, where you take some hair and hold it over the vent to see if it singes and melts to nothingness, except that I didn't bring any scissors, and was not about to volunteer my locks so I might set them afire and go running about the store inflames.
My only thought now is screens. The acer tech claims no one ever calls asking what the contrast ratio, nits of brightness, response rate or type of screen cover any acer has, including the 1700.
This does not bode well for me, I smell a crock.
BTW,someone posted what they thought to be the name of the manufacturer of acer screens. Cutting and pasting that name into google did no good, so might they try to clarify this claim?
I did try to compare the acer screen to that of the sony GRT360ZG or some such 7 units over. The acer screen was much brighter, but maybe not so rich in color. I notice if you tilt the sony screen away from you, the screen gets darker, the colors richer. Same for the acer, except the the sony tilts away till the screen is flat on it's back. If you are a fan of industrial and consumer product design, and find the sony's design to be very 'sexy', I'd advice you not to lay it's screen on it's back, you may find it hard to contain your enthusiasm.
Regardless, the acer will not go flat. I think it went back about thirty degrees. I guess I won't be hanging the acer on a wall and get to use a wireless USB keyboard and mouse with it.
Lean either screen towards you, the pictures get brighter till distortion. I felt the acer had a limited sweet spot to veiw from. Also, the acer had an etched screen, as oppossed to a crystal clear gloss screen on the sony, which reflected every light in the store into my face. Etched screens don't reflect light.
Question; the 1712smi has a P4 with a 3.02 gig cpu and 800mhrts side bus, and 1024 gig of 333 DDR 2700 ram. But doesn't the 800mhrts side bus require duel channel 400 RDR/DDR 3200 ram to get all the bennifits in performance? Does the 333 actualy slow it down?
I would like to know just how many desktop parts this thing has, I hope I can upgrade it a bit and get twice the years out of it. I wonder how high the P4 chip will go before they change the chipset or 'pin pattern'. I know a 20 to 40 gig laptop drive is over $200, that can get you a 250 gig desk top drive that will fit this unit. I just wonder, given the 1700s size, if the motherboard will ever be upgradeable. or if the video is a card, or on the mother board. None of the techs I spoke to seemed to be privy to this information. Again, that, to me, is not a good sign. Though one tech told me the 128 megs were shared from the computers ram, as oppossed to the video having it's own dedicated 128 megs of ram.
I had originaly been given a very favorable quote for the 1712smi pro from a dealer, and when I went to order it, it became apparent that someone made a vey large booboo to the tune of $500. They had given me the 1711 XP home price, $1500. I was under the impression that the 1712 pro was $2000. But the 1712smi home has been coming in on price search engines around mid $1750 to $1900. So that boo boo shrank to $250 to $300. I just have to decide what Emerchant to trust. But even though I thought I was right up to that sony's price, I still liked that acer. Well, I just guess I ain't got no brains!

 

hey, welcome to the boards and thanks for the wordy post about your new Acer 1710 there. That's one huge notebook, but size does matter if you want more power I guess.