ACER TRAVELMATE 8172 11.6" Thread

Hi !!!
I am opening a new thread to discuss the new ACER TRAVEL MATE 8172.


Here some links with some initial info about the specs:

Notebookcheck: NBC Onsite: Acer's Notebook Lineup 2010

Intel Core i3/i5 processor
Intel HD Grafik with 128 MB, Microsoft DirectX 10.0 support
Optionally also with NVIDIA GeForce GT 310M with 512 MB DDR3 VRAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M with 1.024 MB DDR3 VRAM (TM 8472, 8572)
Up to 640 GB SATA (5400 rpm) hard disk or SSD with up to 160 GB
Multi-in-1 cardreader, 3x USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA-out, loudspeakers, headphone, line-out (S/PDIF support), microphone-in, RJ45-Port, adapter
Interface for Acer'S Easyport IV port replicator
Optional UMTS module
DASP-technology, fingerprint reader
Acer Crystal Eye HD webcam (1280x1024 Pixel)
2 year warranty incl. 1 year international

PROVANTAGE: Acer LX.TWN03.006 COREI3-330UMMOBILEPRO/2G/250G/11.6/WIN7

NeutronCanada.com

 

Personally, i would go with the 1830T, but that's just me.

 

1830t looks better. And I really doubt this will have Nvidia graphics. If it does it will be a 310m.

 

The article says that the 1830T and the Travelmate get integrated graphics. The 310M is for the 13" travelmate. The GT330M is for the 14"-15" Travelmate.

Bronsky

If they did put a 310M in one of these, I would sell my 1410T. Till then ...

 

In still holding faint hope on that 310

 

I like it. Especially considering I-series CPU, 1.4kg weight and 8-hr. battery life.

And if the first impression suggests it's a better build than the 1830, who wouldn't prefer it?

Guess price would be a major factor influencing the choice.

But neither of the 2 models would now entice me to move up from my 1810.

It would take usb3 - and more - to do that.

 

I may be wrong but I always regarded Travelmates as more"quality products" than the timelines.Of course you shouldn't go on an impression but on facts.On the other hand I can associate more easily the 11.6' form factor with a timeline than a travelmate.In my mind a travelmate is a bigger, better built rather profesional looking machine.

 

Acer America price list as of may 3 $668 ACER AMERICA - NOTEBOOKS Price List as of 3 May 2010

 

Is it right that this notebook will have a matt display instead of a glossy one?

 

hey i recommend you to buy the 1830T
it is the newer improved version and it have some new design specs

 

I would prefer a matt display more over a new design. And from the inside it's pretty much the same as the 1830t from what I've seen.

 

I would buy an 1830T as it has hdmi, but the 8172 is showing up on PC Connection through our corporate account as "on order" right now. The 1830T isn't showing up anywhere. If is goes from on order to shipping by June 1, and the 1830t is still vapor, I know which I will get.

 

I was all giddy about the possibility of the Travelmate 8172 having a Geforce 310M, but upon reading notebookcheck's article more closely it seems like indeed that's just for the 8372. I guess it's time to just wait for reviews that compare this, the 1830T and the 1810T performance-wise.

 

Notebook.de has a 8172 placeholder page ready, just missing the specs. But it's a sign that it might be coming soon...
http://www.notebook.de/acer-serie-g-1361

Let's now see what today's announcement from Acer brings us (probably announcing that they'll be launching timelineX with new culvs... for those that didn't know yet)

 

Products

one config available on Acer's official website :
TM8172T-3519 Genuine Windows® 7 Professional ; 32-bit version; Intel® Core™ i3-330UM Mobile Processor (3MB Intel® Smart Cache, 1.20GHz); 2GB (2/0) DDR3 1066 SDRAM; 250GB SATA hard drive, 5-in-1 card reader; 11.6" (1366 x 768) TFT display; Intel® HD Graphics; 802.11b/g/n WLAN, Bluetooth®, gigabit LAN, webcam

no mention of a matte display... BUT : Optional external USB 1.44MB* floppy drive

*joy*

 

But there's also no mention of a glare display

 

OK,
there is availablility:
PROVANTAGE: Acer LX.TWN03.006 COREI3-330UM MOBILE PRO/2G/250G/11.6/WIN7

I'm holding out another week for an 1830T or Lenovo u160, but may order one of these. I'm just worried about the i3 instead of an i5 in there.

 

Same here. At 1.2 GHz and no Turbo Boost, i3 seems rather slow. Also, the "up to six hours" battery life seems rather underwhelming for such a base-performance machine. I'm hoping there will be a review soon. Would also be nice to see some high-res pictures, if only to find out if the screen is indeed anti-glare.

 

if there are any updates please tell me!

guess this notebook is the only real alternative to the 1830T if you want to go for a matte screen.

 

So, any news, anyone got it, pictures, reviews ?

 

In Switzerland we can order the 8172 11.6" Travelmate from digitec online shop

I will get my Netbook in two days for 1093 Swiss Francs and it has the follwing components inside:

Intel Core i5 430UM (1.2GHz), FSB 1066MHz, 3MB Cache
11.6" TFT, WXGA HD (1366 x 768) mate screen
2x 2048MB DDR3-1066, 2 Sockets (another website in Switzerland states a maximum of 8 GB compared to the 1830 with only 4GB max)
320GB S-ATA, 5400rpm
WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n, Gigabit LAN
no dvd drive
5-in-1 Cardreader (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, xD)
Windows 7 Professional / XP Professional D/F/I/E (Dual-Load)

There are also other places in Switzerland where you can buy it (comparison site): www.toppreise.ch.

Greetings, Ben

 

we'll wait for your review.

 

Quite nice looking I think:

 

I'd like to see if the display is a real matte one (like from the thinkpads or dell latitude series) and the speed comparison between the i330UM and the SU4100 from the 1810TZ. To be sure it's worth the price gap between the two.
So if anyone has a little review or benchmark or something please let us know!

 

As far as I've read, these don't have plain matte displays (like in the good old times). Instead, the displays have some anti-refelction coating (like with CRTs).

Michael

 

Hi Michael.

That's interesting.. I'll have to wait for a review to see if it's good enough. I was hoping for a "real" matte display there.

 

This laptop has been out for over a month yet I can't even find decent pictures of it, let alone a review.

I finally realized that I'm only wasting my time waiting for more news about a niche product. Instead I just pulled the trigger on Lenovo x201i, available at J&R in the US for under $760. It's only slightly larger and heavier (it has a 12.1" screen, anti-glare), but comes from a reputable manufacturer (it's a Thinkpad!) has a full-speed i3-330M (2.13 GHz) CPU and is a properly supported product with a wealth of accessories available from independent retailers.

 

8172 now available in Germany :

Acer Travelmate Timeline X 8172 Notebooks Laptops billiger notebook.de

 

Hi there.

About a week ago I wrote that I bought a 8172. I have now playing with this notebook for about 4 days and would like to give a short feedback. All in all a very nice computer with some shortcomings.
The notebook came in Switzerland with a i5 U430 processor with 4 GB Ram. As the Ram is shared with the grapics card about 2.8 GB are usable. It's a quite powerful machine and a installed two dozen programs including Norton 360, Office and Spybot Search and Destroy. The RAM consumption of the system in idle state (just after start-up) is approx 1 to 1.1 GBs. The OS is a 32 bit Windows 7 Professional. The screen is mate reflections are no problem. During operation you can hear and harddisc but its not disturbing loud. It was mainly running on mains and not on batteries up to now. There is only a VGA port and no HDMI port as with the 1830 Timeline but I knew this before. What I did not know is that you can buy for £ 94 an Acer EasyPort IV replicator that connects to the EasyPort socket on the left side of the notebook. This EasyPort IV features: 4 USB ports, DVI-D, VGA, audio, dc-in... Yes there is a DVI-D port for connecting your external screen.
I could connect my HD ready TV without any problem and see some DVDs without the notebook getting too warm. I even managed to connect the notebook to my EIZO CG 242W with 1920x1200 pixels. YOu have to make the external display the primary display so this works.


Now what I dislike:
The LCD screen displays the colors much too cold. It is really awful who blue the picture is. Fortunately I have a Spyder 3 calibration devices which allows me to calibrate the LCD screen and the difference is huuuuge! Unfortunately as soon as a window of the user access control popps up the screen turns blue again for some seconds before it is neutral again.
If you do not have a calbration device, you can manually adjust the colors in the intel "graphics card" software.

The plastics housing is quite susceptible to notches (on the front above the LEDS there is now a tiny pice of the plastic damaged - just form transporting it one in a bag without a sleeve). I bought a good fitting notebook bag from intel for 13" notebooks which is quite good.

What annoyed me is the preinstalled software. A trial version of a Microsoft Office 2007 (small business?) and Mc Afee Internet Security, Norton Online Backup, Skype, Windows Live Essentials, Microsoft Silverlight, Google Toolbar, eSobi, InstantView (eMail, calender, contacts and doc viewer program).
Moreover there are some more or less usefull Acer Tools as Acer® Bio-Protection, Acer® Crystal Eye, Acer® ePower Management, Acer® eRecovery Management, Acer® Identity Card, Acer® Registration, Acer® Updater and Acer® Video Conference Manager.
As the serial of my home use version of Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 was not accepted and as I use Thunderbird and Acronis True Image I just decided to reinstall the Notebook.

I got a 32bit Windows 7 Professional DVD without key from a colleague who downloaded it from Microsoft (he is an IT technican). The serial at the bottom Of the 8172 was accepted without problems. I just got rid of the emergency partition and have now aproxx 20 GB more space (320 GB HD).

What is a real pain is the fingerprint sensor. Sometime you can try to log in 10 times before it works. No comparison to the finger print reader built into the Lenove W510 notebook of my wife which works flawlessly. The fingerprint sensor built into the 8172 comes from AuthenTec Inc. and has model nr. AES1660. Unfortunately AuthenTec is not selling software to private customers. I would like to replace the Acer Bio-Protection software with a better one. Does anyone of you know a software which works with this type of fingerprint reader from AuthenTec (some Asus Eee PCs should also have these bulit in)? I know that there is software from Digital Persona Personal and UPEK. The software was also getting on my nerves during surfing with firefox as it always popped up for registering a password (I had no time to configure this to get rid of it as I reinstalled it).

I am not sure after reinstallation of the OS if the Acer ePower Management really works. I installed it and it is in the programs folder but I don't see any effects. The normal Power options of Windows 7 work. I made an image with Acronis true image from the initial state and will have a look on how it was originally as I can mount this image. You find all necessary drivers for reinstalling on this seperate DVD then. For some modules there are several drivers and you have to choose the right one. Not an easy task to guess what is built in unless you turn your 8172 around so you can see the stickers on the bottom telling you which drivers you need.

Sorry for the long text. I hope this was helpful to some of you.

Regards,
Ben

 

Oh wow, then i better realize that the bigger Travelmates (8372 and 8472) will be the same.

What a shame.

 

Dear SSJ.

In general it is a really nice and powerful notebook. I am happy with it right now as it is much superior to an atom netbook and also small. If you are looking at the prices of HP Atom-netbooks like the HP Mini 5102 then they cost not that much less. Susceptibility to notches and the bad fingerprint reader is wht I really dislike. The much too cold (blue) color of the screen (also before I reinstalled it) can be overcome by calibrating it. Probably Acer itself will release a monitor profile as soon as the realize the problem. I am wondering if is just my computer that exhibits this problem or if others will notice this too. Probably I will contact Acer before August.

In general the bulit quality of notebooks is not the same as it used to bee four to five years ago. I can clearly see this comparing the old IBM T42p which served me well also during military service under hardest conditions and the Lenovo W510 whose hinges are squealing like hell. On the other hand nearly everithing has become about one third cheaper... this is the "price" we pay. With the Lenovo I had to wait for about 4 months after paying until they had enough HD+ displays and could ship it. Then it came with 2 GB Ram instead of 8 GB (all hundreds of Computers of this type for Switzerland where concerned). it is not what it used to be ;-)

 

I'm not an expert on Windows (I use Linux on a daily basis), but my understanding is that 32-bit versions of Windows can only address up to 3 GB of physical RAM. Hence, 1 GB of memory in your laptop is left unused and that's why the system only reports 2.8 GB to you.

If you installed 64-bit Windows 7 instead, you should be able to see all of your RAM. Though I would first check if 64-bit drivers for all the on-board devices are available. In principle they should be, as the link instantcoffe sent earlier today to a German website indicated that the machine there will have 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium by default.

 

It doesn't work that way.All of your RAM is usable(actually about 3.6Gb because you have 32bit win7).Don't feel that the graphics are taking away your RAM,it doesn't work like that.
If you want the colours in your screen to remain constant use the Win7 calibration.Not an outside calibrator neither adjusting the colors from Intel....Right click>Personalize>display>Calibrate colour amd follow the instructions.
Thank you for the informative review...

 

What do you mean?I think the resume of that review was that it is a very nice and powerful machine.

 

Hey Swisscheese,

do I understand you correctly that the display presettings are bad and if you adjust the colors it's all fine? Or is it the display itself. What's with brightness and contrast?
Would be nice if you could make some pictures of this little thing and especially of the display (active).

Thanks for your review!

 

The screen is a no-no.
The fingerprint is pretty useless it seems and causes more problems than being useful.

Sure, for 11.6'' it would be a nice device, but thinking on the 13'3'' and 14'' device it is not that good...

 

Hello!
I just received my 8172 today and wanted to share some pictures and my impressions with you all.
My first notebook is a 15.4" Samsung (R560 Maloz). I used it as a desktop replacement for a while, until the graphics card was not up to my needs anymore. For such a notebook, it has a good battery life (big 7800mAh battery), but still only about 4 to 5 hours with low display brightness and mild flash browsing. It is quite heavy with ~2.5kg and the resolution is just 1366*768.
I was reading up on a lot of 1810TZ stuff and wanted to get it, but then decided to wait for the refresh and better the graphics core of Intel HD.
But when I read about the Travelmate 8172 I got really excited. Compared to the TimelineX 1830 I didn't mind the missing HDMI port and liked the matte finish of the screen. I also didn't want the i5 520UM processor and was content with the i3 330UM. Otherwise, it has everything I need:
(from the sticker at the box)
Win7 HP x64
Intel Core i3 330UM @ 1.2GHz
11.6" LED Panel 1336*768
Intel HD Graphics
4GB DDR3 RAM
320GB Hitachi HDD
5-in-1 Reader
802.11b/g/n WiFi
Bluetooth 3.0 + HS
1.3 MP Webcam
6 cell Li-ion battery @ 5800mAh

The display can be bent (measured from the table surface and at the hinges) 147°, which is pretty impressive (the battery is not in the way and sits very flush). It is very quiet, when I concentrate hard I can hear a slight whispering from the fan and a barely audible rattling from the HDD (like mice walking over hardwood floor maybe... ). The PSU is great because unlike my other notebook, it is integrated into the plug, so it is just a cord between the plug and the notebook. It seems very small, but of course it now needs a bit more space in the plug, so if you have a connector strip, you may need to leave the neighbouring stuff free . The chassis has a black, matte finish everywhere and looks and feels very old fashioned, like you have a real machine for work and not just some gimmick.
The screen is pretty bright in my opinion, too bright for prolonged indoor use for me.
I will report more stuff soon as I play around with it some more. Now I'm going to deinstall that bloatware or just do a clean install.
The pics:
Notebook bent all the way back with the PSU and a DVD case for comparisions

Display bent in a ~90° angle and lifted slightly with my other arm

Pictures to show the quality of the matte display concerning reflections



All photos were done with the flash on.

Edit: For anyone wondering the correct model I have, the sticker on the chassis states "Travelmate TM8172T-33U4G32nkk" and it was from amazon.de for 649,-€.
Edit2: And the 1830 models that was on my radar (i3 330UM with 4GB and 320GB HDD) was just 30€ cheaper (about the price of a decent anti-reflection sticker) and the 100€ cheaper Pentium U5400 processor models only had 2GB which I would have had to upgrade as well... All the other 11.6" oder 12.1" notebooks with similar specs had something going against them as well, often too expensive, not on the market, not matte finish etc.

 

Hi Death666Angel, thank you very much for your screenshots. These are the first "real" screenshots I've seen so far and it looks very nice!
I'm curious about the battery life when in "normal" use (web surfing and text editing) and would be happy about a little review when you've tested it

Thanks again!

 

I*d like to see some picture from the side. Is it as thin as the 1830t?

 

I don't know what the 1830 would look like. The chassis and display of the 8172 together are about 27mm, with the rubber stands, they're about 29mm. The display is ~7-8mm deep and the chassis is ~18-19mm. For me, it looks very thin.
First power measurements were:
-16W when idle and highest screen brightness
-14W when idle and lowest screen brightness.
Not that stellar, but I haven't done any tweaking yet either (and it was with WLAN active of course).
The fingerprint scanner is very accurate and easy to use, it takes about 4 seconds to register the print and then let me into windows (but you can also choose to not use the thing at all). In order to use it, you first have to register each finger three times (and at least 2 or 3 different fingers... I used all 10). I haven't tried the password bank etc.
Yesterday during university, I got a bit shy of 5 hours usage @ full brightness and flash intensive browsing. Not as much as I hoped, but maybe the battery needs some training.
The battery weighs 328g.
The Laptop without battery weighs 1093g. It is 285mm wide and 206mm from the hinges to the front and 192mm from the display start to the front.
The PSU weighs 190g. The cable is 240cm long.
Laptop + battery = 1421g
Laptop + battery + PSU = 1661g
I am currently uploading a lot more pictures and will post them when they are done. Also, there will be more tests, but maybe not this weekend, probably next weekend.

Edit: Picture time!
All bios screens






Notebook battery


Notebook size comparisons with a normal AA battery as a reference point




Notebook bottom



Notebook opened with the HDD removed, it is not screwed in and in the room there are some rubber anti-vibration strips


RAM


HDD bay with the SATA adapter which can be removed by just pulling




Picture of the screws, they are tricky since there is some clip attached to them and they stop you to get them out normally. You have to break them to get them off or carefully pry the plastic cover off and then they stay attached (broken off in first picture, stayed attached in second)



Some pictures of the HDD it has some strange silver plastic bag around it, probably anti-static and a plastic bar around it which you can pry off in order to install a new one, no screws needed







The RAM SPD read with Everest



And I have a few of my own questions:
Does anyone know a good program for measuring my GPU frequency and CPU voltage? CPU-Z doesn't display any voltages and GPU-Z doesn't display any MHz for my Intel HD graphics card. Also, are there any working undervolt programs for the CULV Arrandale CPUs?

Edit: After setting everything ton lowest in the energy options, I get 11.x to 12.xW when idle @ highest brightness. But I am not certain what disadvantages that brings in normal use or load use. :/

 

@ Death666Angel

maybe you can check HWInfo32 ( HWiNFO32 Download) for voltage and frequency information.
Can you please run 3Mark06 and post the results?

 

Hehe, I saw you post in acer-userforum.de .

HWinfo32 doesn't offer voltages/VID either (still, looks like a nice tool).
I will run 3D Mark when I get home, battery and plugged into AC.

I've tried my luck @ undervolting using RMClock, that didn't provide me with the "advanced CPU settings" :/.

Currently I'm looking into CrystalCPUID. But without having my notebook plugged into the AC and measuring the power consumption it's hard to say whether using those programs changes anything. :/

Oh well, I guess once this platform is a little more matures, we'll say as much support and tweaks as the 1810/1410 enjoy .

 

How to part-time kill the LCD of your Travelmate 8271? Just use a strong flash...

Correctly, it is that easy!
I just wanted to make some photographs of my i5 Travelmate when I discovered that with two studio flashes (Elinchrom Style 600RX about 1.5 meters away from the notebook) you can totally "destroy" your LCD parttime (I turns black and you can only see the background illumination until you restart!). If you reduce the power to conditions where you can take a photograph at aperture 20.3 with shutterspeeds of 1/90 s @ ISO 100 then you can make 2/3rds of your LCD disappear. The notebooks stays responding to keystrokes etc and does not freeze. Nevertheless, only a restart helps bringing back the whole picture. I just wonder what happens when the police catches me because of speeding (I intend to use the Travelmate as a GPS navigator). The LCD will probably also pass away shortly ;-)
This is really no joke! I tried this at least three times and always 2/3rds of the picture on the LCD where gone. The Travelmate was on batteries and not connected to the mains (energy settings: high performance). It was not the radio trigger disturbing the computer as I also tested.
In contrast to the Acer Travelmate, the Lenovo W510 could well cope with several flashes under the same conditions without being disturbed or showing a malfunction.
I have also pictures proving this incredible story. Please excuse the bad quality as I only have been shooting with the modelling light except for the one shot to test the LCD with the flash (There the settings on the camera where not the best resulting in an overexposure).

Before firing the flashes everything is ok:


Now the two flashes are fired:


All of a sudden the 8172's display is only able to show 1/3rd of the background picture. 2/3rds have been gone!


Here are the conditions measured with the Gossen light meter about 30 centimeters off the LCD screen:


The pictures have been "developed" with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.7 on the Travelmate and have not been retouched in any other way.

Does someone of you have an explanation for this strange behavior of the 8172? Again, the Lenovo W510 did not show this behavior.
Happily, the screen works flawless after a restart.

Regards,

Ben

 

What concerns the fan of the 8172, it is not that quiet - at least mine and the one from another person in the German acer forum. You can clearly hear the fan howling; sometimes during surfing, the fan is really loud. Temperatures of the processor cores are about 30 °C according to SpeedFan (room temperature 26 °C) during surfing the Web. The PSU is fantastic because you can mount its quasi turnable plug in parallel or at a 90 degrees angle to a connector strip; this allows you to perfectly adapt the orientation of the PSU according to the orientation of the sockets of your connector strip; no more sockets have to be left unoccupied.

Regards,

Swisscheese

 

got the 8172 since yesterday and I used it for hours. However the fan was/is extremly quiet hardly could hear it.
All 15 minutes it's going faster so that you can hear it slightly, but even then I can't call it "loud". Temperature was at 26°C, too. CPU was between 36 -38°C most time.

Maybe some devices have problems with checking cpu-temperature or something. Anyway my device is very, very quiet!

ragards,
ragerr

 

Thank you ragerr for your comments.
Do you have an i3 or an i5 Travelmate 8172? I have an i5 processor which presumably produces more heat than an i3 processor.

Yesterday I checked how long the 8172 can run on batteries. I chose the balanced energy profile (preset) in Windows and adjusted the brightness of the LCD to about one half which is still quite good readable (at least indoors). Playing mp3 files stored on the internal harddisc and using headphones, the computer ran about four and a half hours.

Regards,

Swisscheese

 

Ran it in standard settings (didn't bother to register the version on my notebook) on battery and AC @ high performance settings, with the latest Intel HD drivers and DX versions (to my best knowledge).
Battery: 1290 3DMarks (408 SM2.0 / 524 SM3.0/1324 CPU Score)
AC: 1292 3DMarks (408 SM2.0 / 525 SM3.0/1320 CPU Score)

I also ran Cinebench 11.5 CPU on this thing (OpenGL testing gave me an error, not going to investigate that for the time being):
Battery: 1.01
AC:
And Cinebench 10 x64 (since I am more familiar with it ):
Battery: 1 CPU: 1705; x CPU: 3850; OpenGL: 1250

For comparison sake:

and

That is a SU7300 OC'd to 1.73GHz and it is either a bit better (1Core) or (naturally) worse than the i3 330 with 1.20GHz and 4 threads. I only found 32bit results for the SU4100 so far, maybe someone else can find some?

Edit: Charging the battery while the laptop is shut down draws 23-24W. It goes up to 26W right now.

 

I have my i5 for 2 days now. This is an awesome machine but I have a huge problem:

When it is plugged in the mains (i.e. not running on batterie) my 3G module drops the connection (Swisscom) whenever it feels like. Despite good signal strength. I have to manually reconnect just about every 5 min - anybody else having this problem?

It appears as if everything is fine as long as I use battery only- just stayed online for more than 3 hours using 3G without a single drop out.

Anybody got a magic fix - I would hate to have to give this cutie back.

 

Hi frank beetz.

The Lenovo w510 notebooks seem to have similar problems too. Check here. Probably this is useful to you. I just had a glimpse on these posts and it could probably be a driver problem.
Unfortunately I can not tell you if this problem also happens with my i5 travelmate as I do not intend to use the 3G options. I will just use the WLAN connection.
What I noticed today is that at least one driver on the Acer support site is newer than the driver installed on my 8172 when it was delivered. This concerns the software for the fingerprint sensor. Before a reinstall from grounds up I had problems with the fingerprint reader which was not responsive at all (Acer Bio Protection Software version 7.0.26.0). The newer version on the Acer support homepage is 7.0.29.0. I installed this newer version and the problems are just gone now. The sensor works perfectly now.

What concerns your 3G module, I have just noticed, that there is a newer software version on the German Acer support homepage for the Ericsson module too (you can quickly find out what module is installed in your computer when you turn your closed computer around; at the bottom there are several stickers). I guess you have the Ericsson F3307-900 module when you ordered it in Switzerland (I have my computer from digitec). Just try this newer driver version and see what happens.

Did you also notice, that the colors of your LCD are much too blue?
Today I contacted Acer about this problem. My serial number was not accepted in the online form somehow and I had to call them (they entered the serial number and checked it for validity; moreover I was advised to press the question marks behind Serial Number and SNID after entering the corresponding numbers when using the form again.

We will see what their solution is and what they say about my funny "knock your LCD out with a strong flash"-problem...

Regards,
Ben

 

Keep us posted about that, it's pretty funny .
When the battery is fully charged, the PSU draws only 0.4W. Not that bad.