Acer Aspire S7-392 (Haswell) Owners Lounge

Just got my S7-392 today.

This thing is awesome. I'm coming from a Macbook Air Sandy Bridge and couldn't be anymore happy.

I have ZERO issues with the keyboard. Feels fine to me and comparable to a Air and the touchpad is great. Sorry to hear some have some messed up keyboards but everything has been superb. Screen is great, multi touch gestures on the touchpad work perfectly and the performance is ace. I'm able to run Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition (My game I take with me on the road) in 1280x720 with med/low settings at 70+ FPS.

 

Hi,
I am looking for few add-ons to my 392-9890. Any suggestions what to buy?
USB3 to LAN adapter (tired of waiting for Acer's converter port combo adapter)
External CD drive
Additional AC adapter

Thanks,

 

So I woke up this morning and decided to send my 392 back. I really like this ultrabook and I have never owned a machine as nice....but I just cannot stop making mistakes when I am typing on the keypad. The space-bar is the biggest culprit. My previous laptop ( HP DM1) was so much more forgiving.

I'll hold off on buying another until reviews of the Samsung 9+come out.

 

I had an issue with the space bar as well. I requested a replacement that will be in today. Really hope it is perfect. Or else I'll have to wait for the new Samsung or Asus ultrabook

 

Have had mine for several days.

Keyboard: yes the keys sometimes don't register, especially the directional arrows, but I have not had an issue with the spacebar or typing in general. I think my typing still will adjust to this keyboard, and most ppl will be able to as well.

Trackpad: yes has the weird jumpy behavior when you try to click the L button, this seems endemic to most of the new trackpads, especially on those with 1-piece design.

Screen: very beautiful, good brightness.

Speakers: excellent. Impressed so much sound can come from such a small machine, and has great 3D stereo effect (maybe this is due to the built-in Dolby software).

Windows 8: HATE it.

I only paid $1242 total for the i7/256GB model, and this is my first ultrabook. Ultimately, I conclude that it's not worth it. I doubt I'll bother to return this, but I just don't see the value of spending ~$1800 on this, or any laptop. You want thin/light but powerful enough for office/school? Consider the Acer V5-131-2629, while slower/weaker, with lower screen res, etc., has bigger HD and can be bought for $318 (no tax, free shipping, 30$ coupon code for Visa V.me). Is this worth FIVE of those laptops? Heck no...

I mean if you're buying this as a luxury indulgence or a geek-chic fashion accessory, I can understand, but now that I've played with a top-of-the-line brand new ultrabook, I have to say, they don't live up to the hype AT ALL!

 

Does anyone have any tips on how to improve battery life to reach the advertized 7 hours?

Cheers

 

is there a EASY STEP BY STEP procedure on how to unraid the hard drive? i have a 128 gb, so i'm understanding i have two 64 gig ssds? fyi. i'm trying to install ubuntu.

 

Let us know how the replacement is.
I'm also making so many mistakes on this keyboard (though not the spacebar).

 

If I remember correctly, the startup screen wants Ctrl+i to get to the RAID menu. The damn thing boots up so fast it may not register. I got it to stop and ask by putting it into Legacy BIOS mode.

!!!WARNING: You will lose all of your data if you do this!!!

* To get to the BIOS - Spam Fn+F12 during boot.
* To be able to change the BIOS mode from UEFI to Legacy: you need to set up a BIOS supervisor password. Make it easy, and unforgettable! You could lose big if you forget it. Write it down, on paper, on your forehead, on your dog, on your wife, everywhere.
* Switch to legacy BIOS mode.
* While you're there, disable the "quiet boot" or "splash screen" or whatever it's called, so you actually have a chance of seeing something.
* Spam Ctrl+i during boot to get to the RAID menu, though it should prompt you about the RAID business.
* The instructions were pretty clear from that point.

I recommend you read all my previous posts in this thread if you want to get Ubuntu installed. Some of that info is out of date now, since I know much more about the issues involved, but the basic process is the same.

Currently only the 3.11-rc1 kernel has BOTH wifi support and support for native 1920x1080 on boot. The later kernels seem more stable, but you have to do the hacky X config workaround to get native resolution working. I always switch to the newest daily kernel, and am in an ongoing conversation with the intel-gfx guys about the display bugs.

You'll probably want to have both the kernel you want and the wifi ucode file for the 7260 downloaded on a separate flash drive so you can copy them over and install the kernel after you've booted into your new OS.

The only grub line you need to add to get the display working is

Code:

acpi_backlight=vendor

Unfortunately there are some bugs still, but the xbacklight program works quite well, though the brightness keys do not.

 

Hi I'm worried about overcharging the laptop. Is there a mechanism in place that stops the battery from reaching 100%? Like if you keep the AC plugged in, it will stop at 98% or so. If not, is there a software I can install?

Also, what if the computer is off? I want to make sure that this battery doesn't reduce and reach its halflife one year for now as it did for many of my laptops.

 

I just kept mine plugged in for the last 10 days... and I noticed that the battery never charged more than 96%.

 

Been playing with my replacement for the past few hours. Can confirm that this space bar is like night and day compared to the last. Can hit it lightly at any point and it responds. I am still making some mistakes typing though. Not able to determine if certain keys are not firing or if I am just not used to it yet. Will wait another few days to a week to see if I adapt.

 

I can tell you that even though the keyboard is a 7/10 at best (when for this price we should get a 9 or 10/10), it just means that it'll take some time to get used to. The number of mistakes I've been making has decreased dramatically as I've learned how to "press" the keyboard. I'm already totally fine with the keyboard, even though my previous computer had a much better one.

 

That is good to hear. Hoping I will respond the same. And yeah for the price you would think these PC makers could get it right. How hard could it be to replicate the experience Macs are known for.

 

Download batterybar and check how much wear your battery has. I kept mine plugged in one night and now I have 0.1% battery wear.

 

I got mine from Microsoft store, have the same issue as Shehrose.
Only one week of use, the Battery wear is already 2.5%, considering return this laptop but afraid I might get another one with the same issue.
I remember reading one post on Amazon review mentioned that he experience 5% battery wear only one week.
Seems like the battery quality is poor.

Execpt the Battery, everything else is fine.

 

so far. its not noisy for me on moderate use with mild gaming. not so bad. but the area near the exit fan is does get hot sometimes.

I have this the i7 256 from Microsoft and i continually get 7hours give or take. considering i watch youtube and Netflix on this badboy its not bad.

maybe you pounded that shift key too hard. anyways, if i were you you should go back to the Microsoft store and have it swapped out if you think the keys are busted. you have 14days for return anyways, no restocking fee. all my keys work fine so far. everyone just needs time to get used to "touch typing" with these kinds of ultrathin ultrabook. i learned to touch type with my first ultra thin with the Samsung series 9 at first i pounded the keys on those but i found it better if you just touch type. so i'm used to it by now. 55wpm very accurate so far for me. TOUCHtyping for these ultrathin ultrabooks. this is not a conventional laptop keyboard. but like the other guy complained about. i hate the programming on the backspace. its too slow.

 

Ultimately it seems i think you're the one who bought this as a geek-chic fashion accessory because you don't see the value on this ultrabook. this expensive ultralight ultrabook is for those who needs portability, i don't know why you had to buy a very expensive laptop. but for me i use this ultrabook for work everyday to produce income. i travel with it regularly to multiple job sites 5-6 days a week. i can tell you right now portability is everything for me. the convenience of not lugging around those extra pounds of gear everytime has made my work more efficient. and do you know why its very expensive and not for regular consumers? because it's tax deductible if you use it for work. like i said its not for everyone so if you don't see the value of owning and paying for extra dollars then you're just in it for the HYPE. that's funny though.

 

It's all packed up and ready to go back to Amazon. After two weeks I couldn't get use to the keyboard and the space bar issue. I am typing on my old HP DM1 and it's like butter..............

 

how are you getting 7 hours? I can only get 5 hours with 50% brightness.

thanks

 

Hi,
Any recommendation which USB3 external optical drive will properly work with the S7-392?
Thanks,

 

Under light use( only surf internet, brightness at 50%), I could get six~seven hours.
The Discharging Rate showing by BatterryBar is around 5000~6000 mW.

Under normal use,( Surf internet and watch youtube or video , brightness at 60% ), I manage to get 5 hours.
The Discharging rate is around 7500~9000 mw.

Under heavy use (play game) , I think it's around 3hours and it get very hot....

When I received this unit , I did experience the wifi disconnect issue, after update the driver from intel ( the driver version is 16.1.1.3, date 7/19/2013 ) it hasn't happened since then.
The driver on Acer Website is the original driver that came with this unit, and that driver cause disconnect issue on my laptop.

 

Just got mine in last night, it's my first laptop so keep that in mind when reading my impressions.

First of all, I must say the screen looks very good. I'm not sure I'll be able to carry on much longer with the TN panel I use at my desktop rig. It's certainly a lot easier on the eyes(though using the laptop again during the day, the glare may outweigh the increase in display quality, and I haven't even tried it outside yet. I was also impressed with the built in audio when using my portable headphones.(AKG K81) Said headphones don't sound so good out of even my stereo and they got closer to my STAX than I'd ever want to admit. I'm going to be demoing a Sennheiser HD700 this week so I'll keep you guys updated on how well the laptop holds up. Don't get me wrong, it's still 'integrated audio' but it's far above that in either my Acer desktop or custom built P67 computer. I wish I had a chance to A/B it with the ASUS STX soundcard I had a few years back.

Onto the cons, the keyboard. I do a lot of typing and while it was pretty obvious I wasn't going to get something like my mechanical keyboard it's nowhere near in the same league as the Dell XPS I looked at in Best Buy. It is a few levels above the laptops in the <$500 category however. I'm going to give it some more time but if I'm not able to adjust to it I may need to try something else. Also I'm having troubles getting used to the touchscreen, my fingers are too fat! I'm sure that's pretty typical for people new to the tech so I'll give it a chance. Though I am having some problems getting some sites to zoom/scroll. It seems to just do what it wants: sometimes it highlights text on the page, and some sites don't seem to be able to zoom at all.

And a few little bugs that I've noticed: this likely won't be an issue for many people but the way I sit blocks off the vents in the back. That being with my knees up and the laptop suspended between my knees and chest. Maybe I should have picked something with vents on the bottom? Also it went a bit crazy when I moved it off of my lap to go get some water. It started making a lot of beeping noises and the screen brightness was going up and down. The only thing I can think is that when I gripped it(on the bottom and top near the power plug) that I was flexing it in a way that the plug was losing and gaining contact as I moved it. The laptop didn't seem to be bending, but it's still a bit worrying.

In a few minutes I'm going to try playing some Civ5 on it and I'll let you guys know how it goes. I'll try and time how long the battery lasts in game as well as if performance stays constant plugged vs unplugged. I've had people on the civforum telling me the HD4400 can easily max the game on huge maps, but I'm highly skeptical of said claim. They'd really have to have optimized the game for ultrabooks as my desktop(i5 2500K, R7770) is barely able to do that. So I'd like to set the record straight on what it actually can do at a reasonable FPS.

 

interesting .. i seeing first time that acer has branded power supplies .. hmmm
i have new tablet iconia w700p and i have still liteon psu ... still nice thoo

Acer Aspire S7 Touch Screen Ultrabook Review - World's Fastest Ultrabook Intros New SSD Form Factor | The SSD Review

haswell even faster : http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/13/acer-aspire-s7-392-review/

it was prepared..

 

Hello guys
I just wanted to know if u can post windows experience index what score u have .. i really want to copare mine acer iconia tablet w700p with your s7 (all models) ... here is mine :

 

nm...I thought that was the S7.

 

Anyway guys I have something for you .. service guide (pdf) .. anybody wants it ?

 

Interested.

 

Wow, reading all the "hate" coming from the S7 owners. I was even considering getting one too. Do you recommend the ATIV Book 9 Plus over this?

 

knock on wood, no big problems here. At full price, I probably wouldn't have bought it, but I got a great deal.

As reported in a earlier post, my touchpad does click if I lift the computer up in a certain way. You really have to be lifting it from under the touch pad. Even though it clicks, it doesn't register anything since my finger isn't on the surface.

What issues are you hearing about which is deterring you?

 

Nobody can recommend a mirage.

 

An update on how well the S7 handles Civ 5, the guy who said he can max it out on an Intel HD4000, huge map, 1080p(using a Dell XPS12) must have been smoking something. The HD4400 sits just under 20 FPS with a mix of low/medium settings lategame on a standard sized map. The game is noticeably sluggish and there are enough graphical glitches that the game is unplayable. I can see parts of the map in the fog of war(trees mainly), there is terrain unloaded inside the FoW creating grey blobs on the edges, and the darkened layer supposed to be over explored but currently not visible terrain is non-existent. This is the big one as you'll think you have vision on a tile and next thing you know an army appears out of nowhere. The other bugs are annoying but not game-breaking.

I'm updating the graphics drivers now in hope it will fix the issues. I was forced to download the drivers from Acer's site as the Intel ones refused to install. Annoying to say the least.


And on the topic of battery, don't be worried if it shows 95% right off the charger. That is actually perfectly normal, it just means that the machine isn't lying to you.

"Cellphones actually lie to you about two things -- battery life and bars. When it comes to battery life, phones often lie to you, like the government, for your own good.

The main issue is that most cellphone batteries are never kept at "100 percent" charge, because being at 100 percent charge can do long-term damage to the battery. Instead, phones are made to charge up to 100 percent, and then let the battery drain up to 10 percent, and it will "rest" in that state until you take it off the charger.


Not literally.

The phone will say 100 percent when you remove it from the charger, because if it didn't, you'd go, "I left this phone on the charger all night, why didn't it reach 100 percent yet?" and complain to customer service about the phone or the charger being broken. So it reads 100 percent at first to keep you happy, and then, in the interests of truth, the phone will quietly pretend the battery is draining over the next few minutes until it reaches 95 percent or whatever charge the phone is really at. It appeases both your expectation to see 100 percent when you take it off the charger, and your need to see an accurate battery reading as soon as possible.

The only side effect might be you getting annoyed that your phone "drains really fast" after you take it off the charger, but not a lot of people go to the returns desk for that."

8 Gadgets That Lie to You Every Day | Cracked.com

Yeah, the article is about phones but it should still be the same idea in play here.

Update: no change with the new graphics drivers. That is very disappointing seeing as Firaxis has put a lot of work into getting this game playable on ultrabook computers. I'll have to do some more research and see if this issue is specific to the Intel HD4400 chip or only to the Acer model. It could be a problem with Acer's special graphics drivers(I've had a friend who had much worse issues with Toshiba. Certain applications would only work once he started using the standard Intel drivers.)

Update # 2: Actually, it turns out the new drivers have made the problem worse. Not only does the game crash while loading 3/4 times.. but now I have this to deal with.

Steam Community :: Screenshot

I've found videos of people playing the game glitch free on HD3000 cards, this is unacceptable. And I just asked my friend who was running the game on the igpus that came before the HD series and in quote "it ran like s..., but I had none of that"

 

Thanks Z. That 's a huge help.

 

Yes! Definitely.

 

Show me some s7 results and as ssd on your raid 0
Thnx

 

The WIE results are:


CPU: 7.1
RAM: 7.6
GPU: 5.9
Gaming: 6.5
Hard Drive: 8.2

And AsSSD:

 

Can anyone confirm if the mini display look-alike is a propriety port?

Acer Aspire S7-392 Review - eCoustics.com

I dont have any mini display port accessories, so no way to test it.

 

I know this might be asking a lot, but would someone be able to write up a step by step instruction on how to install ubuntu onto this computer? I've installed it countless times on much tier laptops in the past, but what with this new UEFI + windows 8 secure boot, raided hard drives, and the fact it cost a pretty penny, I am much more hesitant to try it unless I know exactly what I need to do.

Thanks in advance!

 

A basic review of the current Haswell machines:

Review: Haswell laptops deliver on long battery | Business & Technology | The Seattle Times

 

Hello guys
so am back with s7 service guide as i promised here below ;

Download aspire_s7391.rar from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

 

Hi guys,

Just received my s7 a few days ago. Like it so far however I just notice some light bleed on the right side of the screen. I don't see it all when using the computer, only when the background is dark/ black in color. I discover it when restarting my laptop on the acer logo page.

Are you guys having any similar issues? I'm debating if i should return it or not, its not a big deal but it is an expensive laptop. I just dont want to be more severe in the future. What do you guys think?


Sorry bad camera.

 

defo return .. too much white

 

Do you have dropbox installed? Maybe a backup service? Did you install an additional virus scanner other than the one that comes default with Windows 8?

 

I'm really kicking myself for not jumping on that M$ student deal. Argh!

 

I noticed that bleed on that Acer start up screen but when watching a movie or using a black youtube vid to test for bleeding I see none. Is the back light just turned up to a ridiculous level on that startup screen or what. Because it alarmed me when I restarted my computer but I can't replicate it elsewhere.

 

I did the same thing with black screens since I noticed something similar on my start-up. I have a lot of bleed at the bottom but then I can't trace it at all afterwards. Not sure why this happens.

 

same here. I only see the bleeding on startups. not while loaded or even watching videos. so i'm not too worried bout it.

 

I just purchased an i7, 256 S7 on eBay. For $1520 shipped I am happy with the price. It is only $40 than Microsoft store student discount now which I would ha e done if they would have let me pay online. I am looking forward to this because my current laptop is a 5yo crappy Compaq.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

ASUS has had that problem with all of their UX31s since the first. I don't know if it is a problem with screens from a certain manufacturer or something with how they boot but it is exactly the same.

 

I guess the bleeding is not only on mine. But I just sent in the unit in for a replacement. I'll let you guys know how it goes.