Acer AS5534-1096 WalMart

I though WOW not bad for 348!!

We had a $20 dollar off coupon for Walmart on a walmart charge card so 328 seemed like a fantastic deal

I have spent the last couple hours uninstalling crap ware and installing useful programs and setting it up for my sis.

I find this a good buy and good laptop here at first but I will keep testing it this week and will give a full review later.

At this time it seems fine as a buy for 348 if you just need a full laptop instead of a netbook.

I'm expecting 3 hours from the battery since its 6 cell

my Dell studio 15 gets at least 3.5 hours so we sill see.

 

Some things since last night

I hate the key board, the feel is not the same as my Dell, it feels "Flat" and plastic, it has a full numeric key pad though

The Windows 7 experience score is 2.9 even with the ATI video drivers updated,

My dell with the intel 4500MHD is a 3.4 to compare.

The computer with windows 7 running only has a ram load of about 24% so about 75% ready for programs out of 4 gb that is better then my Dell studio with 3gb of ram, I have only 60% available.

the processor, a Atholon X2 dual core seems to run well and is responsive.

Screen, the LED screen did not seem as bright as my dell HD LED. I eed to run some bench marks for a full report.

I will run bench marks on this machine by tomorrow and report back.

more later.

 

DRFP -- I am very interested in this laptop as well for my wife. Please do post your findings and thoughts for myself and others to benefit from. I am especially interested in the quality of the webcam as I will be out of town and we want to use this to keep in touch. We looked at an Acer AS5517-1208 at Office Depot tonight and the webcam quality is *amazing*, whereas most other laptops we have looked at have really horrible cameras.

If the camera is the same, then this is essentially spec-for-spec the same as the 5517-1208, except this has a 250gb drive vs the 320gb drive in the 5517-1208. And this one is $200 cheaper!

*EDIT* Also, does this one have a scroll function on the touchpad? We looked at so many tonight that I can't recall if the 5517-1208 was one of the ones that did not have a scroll section on the touchpad. That is frustrating for me, but she doesn't mind.

Also, incidentally she really liked the large flat keys in the store, maybe it is a woman thing vs geek thing.

Another thing -- her expected use is basic internet browsing (MSN, etc) and watching YouTube videos and the like. She doesn't game, beyond the occasional flash-based game online. She will be taking online courses after the new year, but that shouldn't be too involved either, I expect a combination of flash-based tutorials and forum-style interactions. My main concern is whether or not the processor will handle this kind of usage for her, as I'm not familiar with the Athlon processors anymore (they make things too complex nowadays) and not be laggy. Also, we'd like to use Skype if possible (or something like Yahoo IM, etc w/ video) so I need to find out if the processor is powerful enough for that.

Thanks in advance for all your help. Any info you can provide will help us out a lot!

 

This one is configured without Webcam, I bought one for my SIS on ebay for 4.60 USD, I think to add a 20 or even good $35 web cam would still make this a good deal.

Its light
Processing power seems to be very good

I'm testing the battery tonight to see how long it lasts with a full charge

The screen is very good (Amazing thats its a 720p HD led screen at $348 USD walmart. )

its upgradeable to 8gb of ram ( there are two slots used with 4gb ram and 2 empty per my test software CPUID)

I will do a full report, expect tomorrow or next day after. I'll take Pics too.

 

Awesome, thanks!

I was wondering about the webcam. If I'm not mistaken the pic at walmart.com looks like it has a webcam, but I was thinking that might be a stock photo. Looks like that's the case. Not a big deal though, as most of the internal cams are horrible. However, if you ever get a chance to look at the 5517-1208 webcam in person it really is amazing to see. Looks like smooth real-time television in a dinky little built-in webcam.

8gb? Wow.

 

Here you go my review

at first I'm impressed with the low price, this is a budget notebook but not such a budget feel.

Its just around 5lbs and thin ( I think quite light for a 15.6" screen)
It comes with a 6 cell Battery so far it lasts about 3 hours, I will test further

Pics:










Here are the PC wizard 2009 general performance bench Marks:

WEI 2.9

Processor Global Performance : 50537.57 Marks
Cache and Memory Global Performance : 31590.00 Marks
Memory Global Performance : 3356.29 Marks
Video Global Performance : 174.00 Marks
Hard Disk Global Performance : 80.00 Marks
:
CPUIDMark System : :
8574 :

General Information :

Processor : AMD Athlon 64
Frequency : 1200 MHz
L1 Cache : 2 x 128 KB
L2 Cache : 2 x 512 KB
Chipset :
AMD 780
Physical Memory : DDR2-SDRAM PC2-6400 (399 MHz)

Video Card : RS780M/RS780MN [Radeon HD 3200 Graphics]
DirectX Version : 10.00

Hard Disk : WDC (250 GB)


And to compare my Studio 15

WEI 3.4

Processor Global Performance : 73930.90 Marks
Cache and Memory Global Performance : 50942.00 Marks
Memory Global Performance : 6640.91 Marks
Video Global Performance : 166.00 Marks
Hard Disk Global Performance : 86.00 Marks
:
CPUIDMark System : :
13177 :

General Information :

Processor : Intel Pentium T4200
Frequency : 2000 MHz
L1 Cache : 2 x 64 KB
L2 Cache : 1024 KB
Chipset
Intel GM45/GM47
Physical Memory : DDR2-SDRAM PC2-6400 (399 MHz)

Video Card : 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller 1
DirectX Version : 10.00

Hard Disk :TOSHIBA (250 GB)


I was expecting the studio to do better (I may of paid 429 for the studio but it retails for 599 at Dell)

the Studio is $259 more and yet the main difference I can see is the camera, and the speakers. The music played on the Studio is better but its due to the woofer included, so if you consider the Acer has a Standard stereo laptop speakers I found them to be lacking decent bass but otherwise fine for a laptop.

So if you looking for a decent budget laptop I have to say this is a good deal.

Thin
Light
2 USB ports on the right side and 1 on the left side
VGA port
Lan port
Headphone and Microphone jacks
SD/XD/MM/Sony


More then I expected at 349 USD

My sister will love it

 

Looks great. Thanks!

 

I just got this laptop and have noticed that the fan is always on. Anyone experiencing this?

 

Do you think it would run World of Warcraft comfortably?