Acer Aspire Timeline Owner's Lounge

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4810T Initial Impression And Review

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Original Intro

I own a 3810T with SU9400 and X4500, and so far it's a really great machine! It came with a 320GB Hitachi 5K500.B drive, which is quiet, fast und cool, but not as great as the X25-M currently inhabiting my notebook.

Sadly, my 3810T has no Bluetooth, even though the price comparison site quoted it. I hardly use it, so it's not really a big deal.

My Timeline scored 622 3DMarks06, so some casual games are possible. TrackMania runs nicely.

The notebook comes with a lot of bloatware, so I recommend a clean install of Windows 7 RC 64bit. It came with Vista 32bit and 4GB, does that make any sense?

That's all I have for now. Let's hope this thread lives long and prosper. Timeline owners, share your experience. Timeline considerers, ask your question.

 

Do you notice a difference between the HD and the SSD in speed and better battery life ?

How much you paid and where you bought your baby ?

How viewable is the screen outside ?



A proud timeline considerer.

 

for 3810T , difference between the su3500 and su9400 model is about 350usd. is the performance difference worth the price ?

 

What are you planning to do? The TDP of the SU3500 us 5.5W, and for the SU9400 it is 10W, so are you willing to have the cpu power usage double for the gain of easier multitasking, hd video playback, and better game performance?

 

chessmaster will be the only game i will play on it.
but i use firefox with lots of tabs open, onenote, powerpoint, winamp, live sync,adobe reader, visual studio maybe a few small other applications at the same time. I am not sure if a single core is comfortable to use for this kind of multitasking.

 

So definetly get the SU9400 version. It will still 15W less power than a P Series C2D at full load.

 

i got the 3810TZ with the slowest processor U2700 at 1.3ghz with 2GB ram and a 160GB HDD. So far i am happy with it; light, great battery life and fast enough for movies, music, word docs, excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations. I am also playing WoW on it though at very low settings.

And it says i can upgrade to Windows 7 on 26th June? Wonder how true that is?

 

In any computer a SSD is a massive speed enhancement. I can't really tell you about any change in battery life, because I only used the HDD to create backup DVDs. When that was done, i swapped in the SSD and the HDD became an external drive. What I can tell you is that on battery mode, the fan only kicks in if you stress your CPU and GPU (Google Earth, gaming...). On all other occasions the notebook makes no sound at all, and that is just awesome.

727 Euro, from mylemon.at

Viewing outside is not that great, the glare is just to much. If you're not in full sunlight, the brightness of the screen can compensate that.

@archilles: In my opinion, you can either get an Atom processor, or a dual core CPU. Everything in between is either frustrating or a waste of money. So, go SU9400.

 

Tocharius,



What is the output Voltage and Watt of the power adapter of your 3810T ?

 

19v, 3.42a, 65w

 

Hi Thomasshiow:

Congrats on the purchase
can you check from the Task manager if your CPU has a single or a dual core..
Thanx

 

my 3810TZ is definately single core

 

A warning to all prospective buyers who want to use this notebook for virtualization: The SU9400 supports VT-X, but the BIOS doesn't. So, no hardware virtualization on my 3810T.

Let's hope they add that feature to some future BIOS version.

 

How does HD video play on the SU9400? Do you experience the 100% CPU problem that other people were saying happens? One last question, have you hooked it up to an external monitor and if so how has that worked?

 

HD video plays without a glitch (I tried 720p H264/MKV with VLC and 1080p WMV HD with VLC (no sound) and Media Player). Youtube HD works as well. I couldn't try Hulu.

So far, no 100% CPU problem and no screen blackouts. Let's hope it stays that way. My BIOS is the newest one.

I hooked it to 2 different TVs over HDMI, audio and video worked flawlessly (in Vista 32bit and Win7 64bit). Haven't tried VGA yet, but shouldn't be a problem.

If you use the notebook to watch videos on a TV, the battery life is just awesome. Before, Windows told me ~6 hours, then I started the movie, turned off wireless and the screen. After the 2 hour movie, the battery life quoted to me was still above 6 hours...

I haven't done any real world battery draining tests yet, though.

 

Oh that's wonderful news thank you. I can't wait for the top tier model to be available in the US.

Just another thing, are the built in speakers as bad as one would imagine?

 

i'm planning to buy this laptop
but still have doubts with the core solo SU3500 procs
however my budget could only afford that type

so with the SU3500 procs, is there any lagging when using firefox with multitab?

 

Everything that concerns multitasking is better with 2+ cores. So if it's only firefox, it might not make any difference. But if you're listening to music and checking your emails at the same time, maybe watching a movie or burning a CD in the background...

An the speakers are not very good, that's for sure. Better than having no audio at all, but I use my external 2.1 system for everything. Or my in-ear headphones on the road.

 

Just browsing will be fine. Especially if you use Flasblock.

SU3500 can not play heavy flash like Youtube HD smoothly.

SU9400 handles it fine.

 

Hi all
A New Bios for the 4810T/Z Ver: 1.20 dated 22/6/2009 is now available on acer website !!

 

i mostly will use firefox but with quite number of tabs e.g. eight to ten tab
so i hope with 4GB of RAM, should be okay, right?

nope, i seldom watch youtube let alone the HD version
my connection is quite bad in here

well okay then, i think i'll go for the timeline with core solo afterall

thanks all

 

how's fan noise? anyone?

 

Two 3810T with SU9400 reviews:

Review 1
Review 2

Many reviews ding the 3810 for not having an optical drive, that is its best feature! After using my EEE, I will never buy a notebook with an optical drive.

 

I felt that the first reviewer was more concerned about inferior multitasking of office applications than the absence of an optical drive.
But SU9400 is just 30% slower than other common mobile CPUs (SU9400 has a Passmark score of 934).
In my experience, most notebooks struggle on multitasking anyway.

For the optical drive, I actually need one.
Not that I use it, but I need to have one for my job (I don't want to say "I don't have an optical drive. Can you give it on an USB drive?" to my boss or coworkers).
So it can be okay for some people and not for others.

 

On battery, nonexistent.
On AC, constant, but not very annoying.

 

Yes, you'll be able to open 100 tabs at least.

 

Hey Tocharius quick question, when I installed Windows 7 on my current laptop the webcam and mic didn't work with Skype. Does the webcam and mic work on Windows 7 with the Timeline and if you have Skype can you video chat?

 

@Bobby: Skype worked with Win7 out of the box, with audio and video, and video quality is pretty awesome.

The only driver i had to install seperately was for the touchpad to enable scrolling and the other gestures. Everything else, including chipset and graphics drivers, came over Windows Update.

 

Tocharius and any one who installed windows 7:

Did you notice any decrease in battery life compared to vista?
I lost almost 2 1/2 hours from the 8 I used to get before 7

 

Loudest i can hear with 4810tz is the hdd !, compare to other laptops i'd say non existent

 

Vista once told me 12 hours with lowest screen brightness and no WiFi. But that number is not realistic.

Maybe battery life decreased a little, but I'm sure you can tweak the settings of Win7 to get the same life as in Vista.

Overall, Win7 is the better OS, so I don't really care. ;-)

 

Windows 7 may lack proper drivers to put the laptop in the lowest energy settings. This is one of the downsides of running a release candidate.

 

Would you think that it's windows job or acer's to provide the software necessary to take full advantage of the timeline series power management,
meaning will the final 7 solve this or do we have to wait for acer to introduce these drivers?

 

I assume once Microsoft gets all the data from the RC and all the Beta's they'll optimize it a little bit but if you want the full power of the battery that'd have to come from Acer to match their hardware/software with the OS.

 

Good question. By the time Windows 7 is ready I would do a fresh install and install some of Acer's drivers and utlities.

But right now, installing Windows 7 RC and installing Acer's Vista drivers/tools may also work.

If it doesn't fully work than there are tools that can be used to manually adjust energy consumption. Like downclock tools. Also, some options can be disabled manually to improve battery life. Like Aero interface or Bluetooth for example.

 

There seems to be conflicting information about which models have bluetooth, which do not. In a post above, it says the 13" does not have bluetooth. Says the same thing on this review:

http://shopper.cnet.com/notebooks/a.../4014-3121_9-33676738.html?info=review#info-1

However on the Acer website, it seems to indicate that the 13" is the ONLY one of the timeline series with Bluetooth. Can someone clarify this for certain? This is important to me.

 

I think there are different models. My 13" does NOT have bluetooth.

 

Well my 3810T shipped yesterday so I should have around Monday-Tuesday. I'll let you know if mine has Bluetooth then.

Also, Tocharius I feel dumb but how did you install 7 without an optical drive? Did you just download an .iso load it and then it worked from there or did you use an external drive?

 

http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345

Step 1 was enough for me. Just format the usb drive right, then copy and paste the Win7 files.

Restart, boot from USB, and you're good to go.

 

Why Everyone having problem with CPU 100% or is it sorted out the ones using timeline 3810 or 4810???????? so I can buy it now

 

@muhammad: Some notebooks have the issue, some don't.

@everyone who's interested: Ubuntu 9.04 (64bit) works like a breeze on my timeline. The only "issue": You have to shut down your wireless via the touch sensitive button before shutting down, or your computer doesn't turn off.

Everything else works out of the box, as far as I can tell.

EDIT: Correction: Ethernet doesn't work.

 

Hello there fellow comrades I'm trying to acquire this wonderful laptop named acer 5810t. But before doing so I want to find out couple things regarding that laptop. Does it come with SU9400 and Radeon HD? And is it available in United Kingdom ? And does it run FULL HD videos without any stuttering when using that su9400 and 4330 Radeon ?

 

There are different versions:

Pentium SU2700 and GMA 4500
Core 2 Solo SU3500 and GMA 4500
Core 2 Duo SU9400 and GMA 4500
Core 2 Duo SU9400 and ATI 4330

Plus versions with SSD's. The SU9400/ATI combo should be able to play HD content fine with no stuttering. And someone on this site has this combo, so it might be out in the UK, otherwise it will be out in a few weeks.

 

Hi guys, this is my first post here, but I couldn't find this information on the Internet and I don't know where I should ask.

I am a prospective buyer of an Acer Aspire 3810T which has Windows Vista Home Premium OS. I have heard that from June 26 onwards, buying an Acer computer with Windows Vista Home Premium and above will get a free upgrade to an equivalent version of Windows 7 when available.

However, the Aspire 3810T does not have a disc drive and I don't know if it is eligible for the upgrade, since Windows 7 should require a disc drive to install? I know that you could get around this by, for example, using an external USB DVD drive.

But I just wanted to ask any owners of 3810T (or other 3810 models specifically) whether this notebook is eligible for the Windows 7 upgrade?

 

SU3500 + ATI 4330 also seems to exist

About HD, GMA 4500 also SHOULD be enough to decode HD as it already support GPU decoding. Depend on material but same would apply to ATI.
Read HERE

 

Any ideas if the ATI version will come to the States, and in 13.3" form?

 

As long as you have the SU9400, FullHD is no problem with either GPU.

 

Read from another post that SU27/35 + CoreAVC has no problems with 1080p either.

Atom + CoreAVC has no problem with 720p, so 1080p for the SU27/35 isn't hard to believe.

 

SU27/3500 probably can't play 720p Flash (Youtube, Hulu) though.

And wmv files may be a problem too.

Other formats should not be any problem.

 

Hi everyone,

I am getting ready to pull the trigger on the 13" Timeline with the Core 2 Solo cpu ($649) to replace my 3 year old first gen macbook and I just have a question about the keyboard. I know it has a chicklet style keyboard like the new macbooks but I was wondering how close it really resembled it? One of the reasons I have stayed with my macbook for so long is because I couldn't find a windows laptop with a comparable keyboard. I have been trying to find a local store that carries the Timeline so I can try out the keyboard but I've had no luck. Any of you guys have any experience with the macbook and new macbook pro keyboards and could tell me how close they compare to the Timeline's keyboard?