Acer Aspire 1690

It seems like no one has given this machine a mention lately. Any user reviews or opinions? It seems like this is the cheaper alternative to the 8100. One thing, can anyone confirm whether the CrystalBrite display is the shiny coat?

 

To answer my own question, i just went to a showroom to see the 1690. Indeed, the crystalbrite display is the nice shiny coat over the screen. This CrystalBrite screen is very bright and displays good contrast. Havnet had time to compare to that of other brands though.

 

PM 740 (1.73GHz)
512mb (2x256, sadly DDR 333)
60Gb
64mb X600
15.4" CyrstalBrite
DVD+/-RW Dual-Layer

converted approximately USD$1540

Good deal? Physically, only bad thing is that its a bit thicker than the 8100.

 

I just bought a 1691 WLMI in Germany, 1200 euros (1570USD) and am very impressed. 1.6 GHz, 80Gb, X600 64mb, 15.4" Crystalbrite, Dual layer DVD, 512mb.

 

Hi flatti!

Would you mind giving us a mini review? Also, does the memory card reader alot feel a bit tacky?

Thank You!

 

Screen: shiny and high contrast, but low tolerance to up and down movement, ok with side to side movement.
Card reader: same as on other models, but havn't used it yet
WLAN: works very well, very sensitive antenna
Speakers: adequate
Start-up: fast
Software included: notmuch at all really, rather stingy I thought
Software support: Drivers and utilities STILL not on Acer web site. Come on Acer!!!
Service: Acer Germany and UK are rubbish, I would recommend using ACER Switzerland or Austria, they are quite helpful.
Battery usage: rather high, not recommended for long trips, better for plugged-in use at home or office
Other bits: I'll do a Sandra benchmark soon and post the results.

 

i've seen a LG screen and it has a beautiful image. very quality, indeed.
Can anyone compare the lg screen , our a sony vaio, with the acer screen.

By the way , anyone has already test the battery life ?

 

I have an acer 1684 and I'm impressed with the battery life.
off course, ever situation is different,
I worked on it (whitout a cable) on a website, resized pictures an burned some cd's and the battery lasted almost 3 houres (full capacity:- CPU speed maximum, LCD brightness 100%)

but when you travel and you're not working on full lcd brightness/cpu speed, the battery lasts more than 5-6 hours.

greets Koen

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by orangeguy

 

I have the Aspire 1692 for two weeks now and I'm very satisfied with the overall quality.
More specific: the new crystalbrite TFT is very nice but as with that kind of TFTs you have to be careful with your backlight (it looks like toshiba's trubrite). Battery life seems to be around 2 and 30 hours with 50% brightness and max CPU.
It is hot but not so different than other laptops I've used before.
I had a small problem with the DVD RW which was solved by myself upgrading the firmware.Unfortunately Acer, until now, doesn't support the DVD drive.
Playing games, watching movies is not a problem with that machine since both video card and CPU are working very nice. Speakers are not something special and I haven't seen any special audio utility.
Also it is very easy to read PDFs since the wide TFT gives you more space than a normal monitor.
Finally it is relatively light (3kgs) and has small DC adaptor and runs very quietly.

Aspire 1692: 1.73GHz, 80Gb, X600 128mb, 15.4" wide Crystalbrite, Dual layer DVD, 512mb RAM.

 

Well I have the 1694, I upgraded the ram to 1 gb. This one comes with the 2ghz P-M (133mhz) and 100gb seagate momentus 5400 drive. I overclocked it [ ] and here are some benchmarks:

http://tinyurl.com/5kqfp
http://tinyurl.com/4exqf
http://tinyurl.com/5cxse

It gets just over 12k stock in 2k1.

 

On some websites, they say that there is a built in wifi aerial, does anyone know if this is the case? I recently tried 2 Sony Vaios (FS115B) and was very unimpressed with the wifi performance and wondered if they were typical of the Centrino genre.

The 1693 is available from Acernotebooks.co.uk http://www.acernotebooks.co.uk/asp/product.asp?recorprod=1&product=224&cat=79&ph=&keywords=&recor=&SearchFor=&PT_ID= for £919, and seems good value at this price

 

Hows hot is hot.
mine use to run very hot, so hot infact that i returned it to acer. the area around the fan got so hot that is was to uncomfortable to touch. it didn't burn, just was uncomfortable. is this normal???...

my faulty 1683wlmi was much much cooler... i never really noticed that one getting hot at all...

Acer 1693wlmi, P-M 750, 512mb, ATI X600 w128, 80gb hdd.

 

On the Acer 1690 specs says that it has SPDIF output but in the manual there is no mention of it.
I connected SpDIF output and it didn't work although I turned on the digital out
Any ideas?

 

I have just bought in Turkey in few days ago.I have a chance to compare Acer 1690 wlmx Sanoma series with Toshiba F10(in USA it s F15)and Fujitsu 8010e...

shortly result;

screen:CrystalBright views looks like Fujitsu 8010 s view,but its widescreen,8010 is not. Even it s a little bir better...But eyes cant choose difference...

connect:hot-point connection s really top-spot,antenna s well done.

cpu:so fast,amazing.When I compared it with others.
gpu CI express...what can I say more? others are in 9700 ati or 5700nvidia series,and all them are behind x600 ati. I have played Farcry-Max Payne-Nfs Undergrouns-Pro Evalution Soccer 2...Again all performance in high details and very smooth...no problem in scenes..it s a real pleasure to play a game.
I have used an external Skystar Usb Tv card.TV screen are amazing too..
keyboard:is standart and easy in usage,no problem with it...

overall:10/8.5

this is my 5 th notebook...And This s what a pleasure to see improvements in this techs.

 

Hi everybody!

Can anybody tell me somenthing about the fan noise of the Aspire 169x series? (In particular 1694)
Is the heat very high when working at 100% ?

Thanks indeed :-D

Raffo

 

I'm working on my 1693 now and it is on battrey and is totally silent. On mains, I haven't noticed a noise problem and I'm fussy.

However, I was getting an odd wirring noise yesterday (Harddrive vibration?) but it has gone away now... has nayone else had this problem.

There is a problem withte fan outlet being under the machien adn easily covered up, I suspect taht is why it was getting so hot the first time I used it.

I'm not too impressed by the centrino performance (what does everyone else find?) but have jsut upped the power setting in the Device manger and that seems to have made a difference.

 

Hey phantomlynx thanks a lot for your reply! [ ]
I'm looking for a Centrino mainly for the low noise level.

I think I'll buy an Acer Aspire 1694 even if the battery life is a bit short, only 3,5 hrs. Is it true?

Have anybody installed Linux on an Acer Aspire 169x? Good result?

Thank you all in advance

Raffo

 

Hi
I am new in the world of laptops,and I am very interested by the 1692 because of its specs and price,but lot of people are saying that acer are not good! is it true?

 

I'd say that the battery life is pretty good , and may well be upto 3.5 hours, with use of the Acer pwoer mamagement oftware, which seems quite good. I know you ca nget upto 5 hours these days, but I don't think that is for a machine with a screen this size

 

In my opinion the 1692 (centrino 1.73) is good concerning the speed of the processor. The only problem is the speed of the Hard Disk which slows down the whole system when it comes to work multitasking.
Ati works very well (tested with Rome Total War battle)
No weird noises till now (40 days of operation)
My only problem is the SPDIF connection which I can't make it work. Maybe it's a faulty driver (conexant) I don't know

 

What do you mean with "the only problem is the the speed of the hard disk" ?
Isn't an 80Gb at 5400 rpm ?
I've read some post with bad burst rate but should be anyway faster then the usual hd at 4200 rpm.

 

I recently had a 1694WMLi: P-M 2GHz, 512MB DDR-333, X600 128mb, 80GB 4200

My HD runs at 4200rpm, wich is a bit slow.

It gets somewhat hot (and unconfortable) right under the trackpad, so I setted the x600 to run at lowest speed even when plugged in and it seems to work. HD is around there, too, so upgrading it could demand a mouse. Playing a FPS requires it, too, so no problem with the card running faster at games.

I undervolted it to 1.116V and now the fan does not jump in when idle (or net browsing) at 2GHz. I recommend it!

phantom, I'm impressed with the centrino performance. It's faster than my desktop P4 3.0HT with 1GB ram, and most of the time you can use just 700MHz and keep going. Wouldn't try that with a P4, what do you think?

The screen looks awesome (haven't tried a vaio, then, but is fine for me)
DVD recording works flawessly with the integrated software (NTI or whatever)

Speakers are the lowest point, IMHO. Must recommend a headset or external ones there.

Seems like BT collides with WiFi, but I must try harder. Maybe was the FMA software.

Hope that helps.

One just laptopped

 

"Seems like BT collides with WiFi, but I must try harder. Maybe was the FMA software." I don't understand this shorthand I 'm afraid.

I don't have the software to check relative speeds but I have been impressed with most everything but the wifi element; this is fine if I stick in a card.

I discovered the 'heat problem' was caused by my having the machine directly on my lap and material blocking the air vents... I now use it on tray and it is fine. There have bee nsome odd sound effects but nothing consistent.

I was impressed with e NTI software too, also withe Acer's power management software.[ ]

 

Hi guys!

Do you think an Acer 1694 with Pentum-M at 2,0Ghz would generate more heat than a Acer 1693 with Pentium-M at 1,7Ghz?

Intel speicification says all Pentium-M Sonoma cpus dissipate 27W regardless their max frequency so I think their should produce the same heat.

Moreover the production of cpus involve many variables and one of those is the quality of the silicium wafer that lead to the production of cpu able to reach low or high frequencies. So if a cpu is well made and is able to reach higher frequencies, it's just better then the other but shouldn't means the produce more heat.

There are heat problems instead when Intel is short of 2,0Ghz cpu and overclock 1,8Ghz cpu in order to satisfy the market request.

Am I wrong?

 

Sorry forgot the score for 3DMark05. Here is the score : 2207

ACER Aspire 1691WLMi
1.6 GHz, 512 RAM,
ATI Radeon X700 128 MB
80 GB @4200 RPM

 

Just got Aspire 1691WLMi from Acer Australia. It came with ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128 MB. I run 3DMark05 and X600 128MB as a comparison?





ACER Aspire 1691WLMi
1.6 GHz, 512 RAM,
ATI Radeon X700 128 MB
80 GB @4200 RPM

 

3DMark05 Score: 1255

ACER Aspire 1693WLMi
1.86Ghz, 512 RAM
ATI Radeon X600 128MB
80GB

as reported on this page:
http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/MiniPCPortablesPDA/ACER-Aspire-1693-WLMi-sujet-13948-1.htm

Seems X700 is times better!

Can I ask you your opinion about the noise of the fan of your notebook?

Thanks

 

During a normal work, the fan seems very quiet. The noisy of the fan was obvious when running a 3DMark05 benchmark.

The temperature measured by SpeedFan is 54oC after running the laptop for more than 5 hours.

ACER Aspire 1691WLMi
1.6 GHz, 512 RAM,
ATI Radeon X700 128 MB
80 GB @4200 RPM

 

Hi,

I am trying to use an Aspire 1691 with an external monitor, in addition to the notebook screen, with different reolutions on each.

I want to use the standard 1280*800 on the notebook screen, and 1152*864 at 75Hz on the monitor.

So far I have not been able to achieve this. Any ideas?

Fiatti

 

Thanks, but I have monitor 2 greyed out, and although I can select it and choose the resolution, this isn't taken into account, and nothing actually happens....

 

I beleive that you right click on the Desktop to bring up the Properties dialogue, then click Settings, choose monitor 2 by clicking on it, then move the slider beneath... least that's how it works on my desktop with twin screens

 

Try the advanced properties button that you can find in the Screen Properties window just under the two grey monitors.

Check in the various ATI sub-windows and enable somenthing like dual-view or similar.

Hope it helps [ ]

 

Can anyone help? Does your Acer do this?

I have an Aspire 1693wlmi

When I go into the Device Manager and go to properties for the Intel 2200BG Network Connexion (Centrino wireless card), and click Properties, Advanced, I can't see the left half of the dialogue box, and can't make it bigger. As I need to change these properties, it would be very useful to see this last half (left hand) inch or so.

Any ideas... I have changed every font under the Appearnace tab, but none affect this tab... also it is the only th eAdvanced tab that has these oversized fonts

 

That's weird [:0]

My solution: try with Windows System Recovery Utility

Uncle Bill's solution: format and reinstall [V]

 

Hi, here in Italy it seems different people had problems with the 1692WLMi: when turned off and unplugged but still with the battery in, you can hear a noise like an electric buzz coming from the back, near the memory place and also, after some testing, a fast drop in battery level. They asked about it and Acer offered a motherboard replacement. It seems it happens to the very first shipments of the 1692. I wasn't able to find the same problem in forums outside Italy, I would like to buy one but now I'm thinking to wait for the new Benq S52 or S72. Some feedback? Thank you.

 

I have the 1692 since yesterday but I didn't have the time to check battery timing,now I will test it

 

Ok,tested
no electric sounds when shutdown with battery
Battery is respecting the expected 3 hours with 40% brightness

 

Ok, thank you for your testing. It seems this problem affected the first 1692 delivered in February (I hope so [ ]).
Are you satisfied with it?

 

I am very satisfied
the screen is amazing!
Exellent for games and dvds,and very fast machine
I tried c&C zero hour with full gfx options and the game is veryyy fast [^]
i will try also the demo of empire earth 2

 

Did you try to burn some DVDs? I read about a new firmware for the recorder that fix some failures and improve its burning score...
How long last the battery if you use it for watch a DVD, I've got a baby and when traveling I'd like to use it to keep him busy [ ]
Thanks for you answers, very kind

 

Check my page for 169x users for firmware[8D]

 

My dvd burner is a panasonic because it's the asian version the european one is different.
About the noise you talked about,there is an electric sound coming from the inside when off BUT it's really very very minimal,you should stick your ear to the motherboard to hear an electric whisper [|)]
Don't worry this is normal when you know all motherboards keep a little electricity for "wake on lan" option [ ]
Battery level is not fast droping,I already made 3 tests.
I didn't try with a full dvd movie but if battery life is 3hours so with dvd it should be around 2h15.
I don't regret at all this product,once again the screen is really amazing for DVDs and games

 

Is it possible to diseable the "wake on lan" features so to spare some battery? I think you're right about the noise but all the other notebooks with the same option do the same noise when off? In this case I don't understand why Acer changed the motherboard to the computers sent to repair due to this noise... Take note: the fixed computers have still the same noise but much more weaker than before: I guess that the old MBs had some problems and the new ones have the "wake on lan" option enabled and they are OK... Regarding the battery level the guys with the problem wrote about a drop of 10% after 3 hours with the computer off: very different result from yours!

 

You will not hear the noise unless you paste your ear to the back of the pc so it is like when they get the 1690 repaired [ ]
tested battery after it has been off for 4 hours: 99%

 

I had a 1681 about 6 months ago for a few days and I found the battery would last for about 4-5 hours at least when wireless surfing.

I am definately keen on the 1690 series (in Australia) but I don't like the sound of the poor battery performance. Is it really only providing 3 hours?

Dave

 

Hello
I am looking for Acer Aspire 169x but I can't find any web where could I order it or at least check the price.Could somebody let me link for some websites where could I find it?Thanks a lot...

 

Btw : I would like to buy it in USA so I'm looking for USA's sites

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Meaker

 

Hello!

Just bougth the ACER Aspire 1694WLMI
and I am getting crazy with the electric noise
it is giving when the CPU is iddle...

Is there any solution to this problem?
I read the it disapears when you undervolt it...
how can I do that?

(UPDATE)
I just noticed that if you turn on the Bluetooth
the noise disapears... so... That is one solution!
Not a good one anyway.... [|)]
Thank you very much.
Best regards

Filipe Alves