Acer Aspire AS5741G-6983 Ordered Today

I ordered the above unit from Costco, $699 + tax and shipping, specs are listed as follows:

Processor and Memory:

* Intel® Core™ i5-430M Processor(2.26GHz)
* 3MB L3 cache
* 4GB DDR3 Dual-Channel 1066 MHz

Drives:

* 500GB (5,400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
* 4x Blu-ray/ DVD±RW Super-Multi double layer drive

Graphics and Video:

* 15.6" HD widescreen Cinecrystal LCD display; 1366 x 768 native resolution; 16:9 aspect ratio
* ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 with 512MB of dedicated DDR3 VRAM

Communications:

* 802.11b/g/n Wifi Certified™
* 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN

Audio:

* 2x Built-in speakers
* High Definition Audio Support

Personalization:

* Color: Mesh Black Design
* Integrated microphone and webcam

Expandability:

* Multi-in-1 digital media card reader accepts Secure Digital, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard and xD-Picture card

Ports:

* 3x USB 2.0 ports
* HDMI™
* Headphone/Speaker/Line-Out
* VGA
* Microphone in
* RJ-45 (LAN)
* DC-in Jack for AC adapter
* Kensington Lock slot

Operating System:

* Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Additional Software:

* Microsoft Works 9.0

Power Supply:

* 6-cell Lithium Ion Battery (4400 mAh)

Any thoughts on this setup? I am hoping it arrives by Friday, will post a review once I have some initial experiences with it.

Longs

 

Since you are asking for opinions, I have to tell you that you probably could have gotten a much better deal buying an AS7551G-5821 instead of an AS5741G.

For only $750 you can get at Newegg.com (quite possibly the best store of its kind ever) an Acer Aspire 7551G with:
- an AMD Phenom II N930 (faster than an i5 430m and in fact maybe even quite a bit better than an i5 450m)
- an AMD Radeon HD5650 with 1 GB (a lot swifter than an AMD HD5470 with 512 MB)
- the same 4 GB memory, 500 GB HD, DVD Super Multi, WiFi card that the 5741G has
- and, if the above were not enough, a very, very nice 17.3" 1600x900 display (which is fantastic unless, of course, you actually need a smaller display size)

The reason I write this is not to burst your bubble, but rather that it breaks my heart to see how people have not yet realized what an amazing bargain AMD's latest CPUs, GPUs and chipsets really are.

I am not saying that it is your case (in fact you might very well and for a million different reasons need an AS5741G and nothing else), but many people still think that anything made by Intel must automatically be better than any of AMD's stuff, when in fact (except maybe in the case of the extremely high-end stuff that does not even remotely have anything to do with laptops) 9.5 times out of every 10 AMD has an equivalent or better part than Intel for considerably less money.

But please disregard all the above ranting if you in fact need your AS5741G as it is and do not need to read any nonsense about the musings of any foolish AMD-loving lunatic.

 

Mjuhny - no problem on the opinion... I have ordered from Newegg a few times, but the computer is not for me. Costco's return policy is MUCH more flexible than Newegg's, so if there's any issue with it, ultimately it can go back. Newegg doesn't do a "no questions asked" return.

I'm not automatically bought into the "Intel's better than AMD" argument by any means.

It's supposed to arrive today, so we'll see how it is!