ACER Aspire 5942G i5 issues and comments

Hi

Quick review of the above

Spec 5942G-524G64BN (LX.PMT02.018)
i520, ATI 5650 Blu ray etc

Good
Power, performance superb (e.g. PcPitstop) , doesn't run hot
Screen colour rendering is great face on.
Typical Poor viewing angles though but same as Samsung etc
Blu ray play is excellent LG drive
Reputable WD Scorpio HDD supplied
Keyboard excellent
Solid build
90W mains adapter not too hot. (New model I think )
Same battery seems to be used on other models so hope for cheap replacement in 3-4 years

Neutral
Trackpad needs adjusting to work well
Mouse buttons look separate but are a see-saw. pressing either button in its middle is unrewarding - have to learn to press at outside edges.
Slightly bigger than other laptops (e.g. 5750)
1366*768 resolution a fraction too little for my liking
Tons of free games and trials but all capable of uninstall if patient enough

Poor
No recovery disks supplied
Problem with Window 7 disk consistency check at every startup received no help from Acer and took me 3 days to solve.
Acer FAQ's not updated for this build or Windows 7
Supplied anti virus trial deleted part of the supplied media players install !!

 

Do you have any rough performance numbers? Benchmarks, FPS figures, etc...

 

Acer expects you to make your own recovery DVDs using the eRecovery software tool - please tell me you didn't remove it.

 

Ugly bear, Not done any deep benchmarking but gets windows experience indixes of
Processor 6.8
memory 5.9
desktop aero 6.7
3D 6.7
HDD 5.9

PC pitstop has it in the world laptop rankings as
CPU top 2%
RAM top 1%
Video top 4%
3D video top 2%
Disk top 4%

 

TehSuigi

No I didn't remove it, and I did indeed burn all the disks for the C drive recovery and apps etc once I was up and running.

However My Unit was declaring a file system problem on the HDD out of the box (!) so making recovery disks from a suspect drive is a bit optimistic.
alt F10 was not addressing this at all as it only recovers the C drive not the 'dirty' 100MB partition.

I fixed this file system error using the command prompt and repair options in Windows PE mode on a retail W7x64 install disk I had to borrow. It would have been nice not to have to scrounge around to do that on a £1K system although I can understand pinching a few pence at lower pricepoints !

 

That is unfortunate. Sounds more like a one-off configuration snafu instead of anything serious, and at least you were able to fix it.
Enjoy the awesome, then!

 

Yep, May just leave a note here regarding that fix

Windows 7, Acer 5942, tries and fails to run disk consistency check on SYSTEM RESERVED partition at each startup. CHKDSK (Autochk) counts down to 1 then freezes before timing out and system starting normally.

Diagnosis. The HDD as supplied had a problem (between the MFT and MFT mirror???) for the 100MB SYSTEM RESERVED partition that was seen on the first and all subsequent boots. Windows is not happy doing very much with this partition though.

Because CHKDSK did not run at startup it could not clear the error or the dirty bit for that partition.

Alt F10 did not clear the problem because it does not restore the 100MB partition

Recovery disks were not made as the integrity of the disk image generally was under question at that point

The particular error could be successfully cleared by booting from a retail W7 x64 disk and running the disk check chkdsk C: /f at the command prompt under the repair console. (note C: is the first HDD partition in this mode NOT the main Acer Partition) This is a work around not a cure as further errors arising would still not be handled at boot.

It appears that the failure to run is a known windows 7 driver conflict problem (vs CIR) and applying windows hotfix (which I did later)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975778 certainly seemed to do the trick regarding further 'scheduled checks' at startup that I requested.
Hindsight suggest this might well have allowed the system to solve the problem itself without using the install disk method above .
Note this hotfix is not available via windows update but is expected to be implemented in W7 SP1

As ever No guarantees it will work or be safe for you !

 

And while on the subject of fixes

Automated Reinstall of Arcade 3.1 from recovery partition - disable or remove (or update?) McAfee as supplied in the initial image loaded at the first stage or it will incorrectly delete a playback filter dll in this arcade version during the second automated drivers and apps re-install stage

Seekout and Apply latest ATI MOBILITY reference driver (Catalyst Mobility 10.3). I saw a 3x increase in 2D graphics performance and a couple of % on 3D vs the OEM supplied drivers in PC pitstop YMMV. (Note Acer and most other sensible manufacturers (!-) have opted into this lovely new ATI programme - so it's not like using the old hacks to force a desktop driver down a laptops throat!)

For 64Bit Windows 7 try http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx?

 

Finally
Use windows 7 display color calibration (start, search),
I needed to experimentally (the tests for gamma are poorly rendered) push the gamma slider up a little and reduce red and blue levels a notch to get my view of the best picture and colour rendering. You could achieve the same in Catalyst Control Centre if you take back control from Windows via an option box.

Stick up a test photo as desktop background and be prepared to try a few settings

Highest CPU temperature seen so far is 70c with all cores thrashing on a 2 hour file conversion. Graphics not really pushed but have seen 65c
Unit remained cool, fully stable and was still happy running at 2.4Gigs.