Acer Aspire Timeline Owner's Lounge

I did try AHCI mode 1st and still got the BSOD so I'm not sure I would make that conclusion. Anyway, choosing the "extra" DVD drive from the F12 boot menu worked and I now have a 64-bit version of Win7RC installed.

 

There is an empty PCI-E slot in the machine so you can add your own WWAN card if you so choose.

 

I just bought a timeline 3810T for my girlfriend and installed win7.
When I installed the touchpad driver from Acer the touchpad got all laggy and non sensitive... Any body encountered the same problem? Solutions?
I run win 7 32bit.

 

where would one put the sim card? or do WWAN cards have built in sim slots? i've never owned one before..

 

There is a sim slot under the battery. Can't tell you if its connected to anything or not, though.

 

I installed from an external USB hard drive (3.5"), I guess it would work from a USB stick as well, just try unpacking the ISO to a formatted partition ( marked as "active" in the windows disk management utility), then enter the BIOS (press F2) when booting up the laptop, go to boot options and make USB HDD the first device.

 

(I have just clocked the 51 pages here plus other threads related, and reviews about the Timeline series )

My main reason for looking into the "Ultra Low Voltage" line, and particularly the Timeline series with its fluid cooling contraption, is to have a totally silent operator for when I am reading and diagramming. Also, doing the aforementioned while listening to MP3's..

So far, Tocharius & lowteckh are the only Timeline users that have mentioned the constant fan noise emanating from their laptops, although lowteckh never mentioned his machine spec, so I am assuming his is the same as Tocharius: SU9400?

For this reason, I am looking into the SU3500 (3810T) that has a lower Thermal Design Point rated Max @ 5.5W.
I will install XP to gain some edge in performance as I do not care about battery life. I will upgrade the HDD to SSD for extra silence.

My current laptop Asus W7S (Max TDP 35W) is overbearingly loud. Doing light & simple tasks in battery saving mode, still soars the fan, which is stressing me out.

Am I making the right choice by going with the 3810T SU3500 as a super silent machine since I don't care about battery life?

Am I going to the extremes from having experienced the most shallow piece of construction man has ever put together for $2500AU: ASUS W7S T7500..?
(I have been burnt).

I just want a computer that runs without the fan going off while doing simple tasks, such as reading online and making diagrams. I would like the option to switch into power mode when required, but most of the time its pretty simple and I would like to see an improvement in technology; the tool (laptop) that has maximum transparency in operation.

 

Mine is nearly silent the majority of the time, the fan does kick in and blow nice hot air out the side vent at times. Have only used for a few days, but overall I'm quite happy with the noise level, I think it's pretty minimal. I'm using the 3810t with the SU3500 in it.

Interesting to note that possibly the SU9400 causes the fan to run significantly more, can others weigh in? This makes sense, but you would hope the difference would be not so noticeable.

 

What about Netflix, is Silverlight any better than Flash or does it too not use the GPU?

 

where can i get the 13.3" su9400 sti4330 version?
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=34601
Can i get it in the US?taiwan may has it....
thanks...

 

I was quite surprised and impressed that I was able to get 1080i HDTV from my HDHomeRun playing smoothly, if intermittently so, on my 3810t (su3500). I did have it going perfectly for a few minutes, so I know it is possible. Haven't nailed down if the problem with getting consistent smooth playback is due to a crappy router or just a weak CPU, will test and post back.

 

How easy or hard is it to change the hard drive? Is the hard drive designed to be changed or do you have to take the machine apart to do it?

 

On Acer's support site there are two different touchpad drivers available for the 3810T. One is by Synaptics and one is by ALPS. My 3810T has the Synaptics hardware, so if your model is the same then you might have downloaded the improper driver.

 

I have the SU9400 and I rarely hear the fan when on power. Surfing firefox with about 5 tabs open and streaming Slacker radio it doesnt make much noise at all on battery, matter of fact muting the radio I hear the hard drive access noise more than the fan. I have to pick it up and hold it to my head to hear the fan much. When plugged in I hear the fan more but it is still fairly quiet. Ofcourse I have only had it for a little over 24 hours so I am still getting used to it. But coming from a bunch of other laptops I will say its the quietest one that I have every owned. The cooling technology is top notch as it rarely even gets warm on the bottom. I spent 3 hours today working with it on my lap and it didnt cause any discomfort, and it was still reporting 6 hours of battery life. The only annoyance for me is not fan noise, but the fairly constant blinking of the wireless icon LED. LOL. For me the key points on buying this laptop was nice keyboard, long battery life and light weight. I ran some tests last night and was able to watch hulu through the desktop client with little to no lag or out of sync audio. I watched a couple of the 720p videos from the microsoft site with no skips or out of sync audio. All in all I am so far completely satisfied with my purchase. No buyers remorse. Which I have not been able to completely say with some of my other laptop purchases.

 

It's true that the hard drive is more noisy than the fan, but that is when you use the notebook with integrated graphics. If you are using ATI graphics then the notebook could get quite warm and the fan is definitely spinning fast and you could feel its presence, but then again it's not loud, just there.

 

Hello. I can not provide a link. All the videos downloaded from Utorrent. If you want you can send an invitation to a Spanish website which is hosting the video "Tantra" (HDCity 99% of videos with English and Spanish audio). I need a post office where to send the invitation.

If anyone is interested I have 20 invitations to hand out.

The configuration of the MPC HC is accurate, except for a plus that can be given to the audio for greater volume.

Greetings.

 

Anyone know how the internals of the timeline with ATi Graphics look like?

 

thanks man!
Works perfectly!

 

i have the 4810TG, with the SU9400 and the ATi4330. I have upgraded the HDD to an SSD, and the machine is pretty silent. In the library where the airconditioning is running you can't hear it. At home in the dead of the night however, you can hear it slightly. Even on battery the fan is usually running very quietly. Once you turn on the ATi its a little more audible.

I think that the SU9400 is just above the threshold for complete passive cooling (the laptop is very cool to the touch, just the area under the processor is maybe 30 degrees C warm), so i would think that running a single core would turn it into a completely silent machine.

You could also consider the 15" model, that one might run cooler?

 

Just to follow up on my own comment, I hooked the Timeline in by ethernet cable, bypassing the wireless equation, and now 1080i / 720p video plays super-smooth in fullscreen from my HDHomeRun. To be honest, I did not expect this little juiced up netbook to be up to the task, and I am very happy with this turn of events. I need to try turning of WPA to see if that helps, that or upgrade to a 802.11n router...

To add to a few comments scattered in the thread...

A few observations on my 3810t (su3500):

Vimeo gave the best results, and I can't say for sure why, but I think some videos on there are just less demanding than the busy, heavily produced videos on Hulu. I found several videos on Vimeo that played no better than some on Hulu. There are occasional pops and clicks in the audio and the video skips frames intermittently. The degree of glitching seems, logically and in observation, to be related to the complexity of the video being played (see how it varies in this video). I will say that portions of 720p videos with not a lot of movement in them often played back flawlessly at fullscreen. The best thing Vimeo has going for it is the fullscreen non-scaled playback option (native size video, little black borders around all sides for 720p videos), which seems to play nearly as well as it does when windowed. Aside from that, I don't know if Vimeo is doing anything different than Hulu / Youtube or if the better playback I experienced was simply a product of less demanding videos being played.

480p Hulu videos when windowed are silky smooth, and stay nice as a pop-out window enlarged to the point where it spans about 2/3 of the display width. Going fullscreen with a 480p causes choppiness that is hard to bear for very long. Fullscreen 360p lessens the choppiness, but it's still there. 720p videos windowed on Hulu are intermittently smooth, but it just isn't good enough. The true 720p pop-out window (native res., nonscaled) ups the jerkiness noticeably (in contrast to Vimeo in my experience), and going fullscreen with scaling makes it completely unwatchable due to low frame rate.

Tried a few videos with Youtube, and 720p performance seems about the same as Hulu.

Some take home points about internet / cable / antennae video on the single-core Timeline:

• 1080i / 720p HDTV plays very smoothly in fullscreen in WMC from my HDHomeRun.
• 480p on Hulu plays smooth when windowed or in a pop-out window enlarged up to ~2/3 the display width. Fullscreen 480p on Hulu is choppy. Fullscreen 360p is a little better.
• 720p flash video of any kind gives variable jerkiness related to the amount of on-screen movement and makes the video mildly annoying at best, and is generally best avoided. That said, some 720p movies on Vimeo can play very well full screen.

BTW, the gesture touchpad rocks!

 

Does the jerky video from Hulu and Utube indicate a weakness on their part (really on flash video's part) or on the solo timelines? It seems many of the players (mpc, zoom player) can better accommodate video than hulu. In other words if one were to download a hulu video that was jerky, could the download be played back smoothly with a solo timeline using one of the advanced players?

From searches the hulu jerky video is not confined to timelines, and there are many other pcs including I'll bet a lot of netbooks that can't play hulu smoothly. Maybe it's time for flash video to reinvent itself so netbook class pcs can play.

 

Other players = not flash movies = GPU acceleration most of the time
Hulu = flash movies = no GPU acceleration yet (for flash generally) = CPU decoding = big demand for CPU power

 

Yeah I think you are right the video should play better in a player other than the flash browser plugin. It's not such a practical question to me, I'd much rather just visit the sites when I need to then try to download and build my own collection of videos.

This video here on Youtube starts out reasonable in full screen HD, with just some gentle frame skipping lightly scattered about, until you get to about 1:30 in, and a flock of birds taking up the entire screen brings the SU3500 to it's knees instantly.

So Youtube does a nice job with fullscreen 720p as well, as long as the camera is relatively fixed and there is little on-screen movement. I take back what I said about Youtube being the same as Hulu. Hulu won't even play 480p smooth at fullscreen.

That explains why the frame rate on Hulu is significantly worse. Although, even with the GPU acceleration that Youtube and Vimeo utilize, motion-heavy 720p videos are too much for the SU3500 (and 4500MHD) to handle.

 

As far as I know, Flash is not GPU accelerated at all and it doesn't matter if it's Youtube or Hulu. It's Flash fault, not those websites.
Read here for example. On the other hand, maybe it is already possible? here + here

 

Flash is garbage.

My netbook can run HD video in quicktime and windows media perfectly fine but in flash the whole video is a slideshow. I wish the internet would move onto something better.

 

Ok, I misunderstood you, thought you were saying Youtube and Vimeo were using another file format besides FLV. So, I don't know why but Hulu definitely sucks performance-wise compared to other HD video sites. It's like there's an extra layer of bloat in there clogging up the pipe.

 

I'm looking at getting an Acer 5810 Timeline for college, but I can't find the SU9400 version anywhere in the United States. I really want the 15 inch screen, so does anybody know where I can get one? Thanks in advance for any of your guys' feedback!

 

I'm not sure they are even making the 15" with the su9400, let alone you can't hardly find Timelines of any size with that CPU currently. Maybe someone else knows.

 

Hi guys, I ordered the Windows 7 upgrade kit and wanted to check the status of my order. I was given this website to enter my order number and email address.

https://ebiz3.mentormediacorp.com/Query/faqs.aspx

However, it requires a verification code and no matter how I try, it doesn't seem to think that I am entering the right code. Anyone know anything about this?

 

I too ordered the Win7 upgrade kit and got that exact same link in the confirmation email. I wouldn't worry too much since October 22 is still a long ways off. Thank god the Win7 RC doesn't expire until next year.

 

When do you think the 4810TG is going to hit the US? I'm looking forward to an SU9400 and ATI switchable graphics.

I bought my brother the 4810T the other day with the SU3500. He really likes it, but I have a feeling he'll be mad when he can't play Hulu or Youtube (standard def) videos in full screen. I've noticed it's very choppy, even after I removed most of the pre-installed software. But hey, more of an incentive to say "hey, I just started college, I should be studying, not watching videos online."

I was able to play Quicktime movies (natively) at 720P full screen at around 50-60% usage. I even played 1080P full screen and scaled to the native resolution of the screen. Worked out pretty good. I haven't tried WMP, but I figured Quicktime has always been the big one to get working correctly with no special codecs.

The only thing I wasn't able to do for him was create a restore DVD. It kept telling me to insert a blank DVD/CD after about 7 - 10 minutes. The drive did not spin up at all when using the eRecovery software. I've tried launching it with Administrator rights, and disabling the UAC, but it was a no go. I saw one post about it so far with no resolution. I have tested the DVD player out. It plays dvd movies (tested with PowerDVD 9), burns media and data on both CD and DVDs (tested using CDBurnerXP). I installed the latest drivers and BIOS.

I don't really notice any real spikes in usage, other than the normal SVCHOST (not audio or video related, viewed with Process Explorer) spikes at random times. Any incite?

 

Swiharta's message 524 contains one tough YouTube video link. I couldn't even play it my 4810t su2700 or even with a 2.1 Ghz solo core laptop. I'll bet it reqiuires a duo core and maybe even a superfast duocore. As Swiharta points out the bird flock that fills the screen with tremendous information can bring most laptops to their knees or even stop them in their tracts. Here's the challenge:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBG4vG1JX3c&hd=1>

Can any of you duo su9400 acer timeliners play that video? If I thought this was the future of flash video or I needed to frequently play videos like that, I might have to get a faster duo core laptop. Does this video represent a valid figure of merit test for a pc, or is flash simply too demanding?

 

Buy it from Canadian NCIX.
They have 13, 14, 15 inches with SU9400.
Also you can get benefit from the current high exchange rate of US dollar!

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=39840&vpn=LX.PBB06.001&manufacture=Acer

 

Swiharta's killer BBC clip (post 524) can be played nearly flawlessly (a few dropped frames with the birds) by downloading it first, then playing with zoom player. I'm surprised that zoom player does such a good job because it's fairly easy to use. It even plays the 1080p amazon adventure video from microsoft. This restores my faith in my acer timeline, because it appears if I really want to watch a video, all I have to do is download it first and use a good video player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBG4vG1JX3c&hd=1

 

You might check my famous killa sampla mkv clip. It's bade on flying birds scene. It's encoded with to high profile, so I think that both ATI and Intel won't accelerate it and SU9400 will choke on it
http://rapidshare.com/files/82525583/killa.sampla.x264.mkv

 

Bad move. You will have to pay VAT + the price comes out to be higher for worse specifications than the USA Version if you bought at J+R not even including Canadian VAT.

Price would be $940 + higher shipping vs $899 at J+R. J+R has 4GB Ram, 500 GB HD, the Canadian one has 3GB Ram, and I dont recall the HD Size.

 

J+R only has the 13 inch SU9400 Timeline though...

I'm looking for the 15 inch version (for the numerical pad/optical drive).

If it comes down to it I wouldn't mind buying from Canada, but are there any sites in the U.S. that are carrying these models?

Thanks for both of your responses!

 

Would buy a 3810TG right away if it had WWAN, beats me why it aint available.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=399929

Shows the internals of the 3810T and how to take it apart to install a wwan and bluetooth card. I already ordered the bluetooth module and should be here in a couple of days so I will post detailed pics of the install when I get it. I am also thinking of adding this wwan card but right now iphone tethering is working fine.

http://tinyurl.com/njzdd3

 

Ok folks: I know theres an Acer Travelmate with the 8 hour battery life coming out but its unclear if it will hit the USA. Only makes sense for them to, but Im not 100% sure yet. If the Travelmate comes out to the USA, I assume it will be superior and $100 more expensive give or take than the Timeline.

My question is one of build quality. I have been speaking to people who have had Acers break after 1 year of usage. How is the build quality on the existing 3810T-6415 models? Do I have anything to be concerned about?

 

Exactly why do you think it's superior?

It seems to come at the same price here, just a matte screen.

 

I have the same question. Is there creaking and cracking from the plastic while picking it up or using it? I want to pull the trigger on this laptop, but more than anything I want a laptop that is solidly built. Does it feel sturdy or flimsy, etc.?

 

Travelmate has more features and options. I saw the german specs and it has more than just a matte screen. Fingerprint reader, WWAN + 3G options, seemed to be more configurable than the non Timeline ones.

Unclear if it comes out to the USA and what differences it will have but Travelmate is the Business line while Timeline is the Consumer line. The fingerprint reader and Vista Professional are nice.

 

Actually the Travelmate models available in Germany have less features than the Aspires. They're cheaper too. Specs are here:
http://geizhals.at/deutschland/?cat=nb15w&xf=85_13.3~525_Acer

WWAN and 3G are mentioned as options on Aspire too but no one has them yet.

 

Screen slightly flimsy because they had to thin the laptop lid
Otherwise sturdy.

 

No its not. In your own link the Travelmate is priced higher.

Travelmate has Vista Professional, Fingerprint reader, availability of the docking station, matte screen, etc....

Acer TravelMate 8371-944G32N (LX.TTD0Z.231)

Core 2 Duo SU9400 2x 1.40GHz ULV • 4096MB (2x 2048MB) • 320GB • kein optisches ...
(zu wenige) 78 [Lagernd] ab 769,99 17.07.2009

Acer Aspire 3810T-944G32N Timeline (LX.PCR0X.260)

Core 2 Duo SU9400 2x 1.40GHz • 4096MB (2x 2048MB) • 320GB • kein optisches ...
92% (8)

1 x [User-Beiträge] 35 [Lagernd] ab 719,90 14.07.2009

That is about right and I do expect the Travelmate to be a tad more expensive which is fine considering the additional options over the Timeline.

Unclear if the Travelmate 8371 will make it to the USA or not. As of now it seems like its Europe only till further notice. I don't see any vendors with an American part # for the Travelmate 8371 unfortunately at this time.

 

Depends on which model you're looking at. The cheapest Timeline model is a € 499,- Travelmate. The most expensive Timeline is the Aspire with SU9400 and ATI 4330 (not listed there). I would say that's superior to the Travelmate.

But if you're looking for business features the Travelmate is the way to go.

 

In the USA we dont have the ATI option available for whatever reason.

We also don't have the Travelmates available either to date so I can't compare options to options.

But assuming same specs on both, the travelmate will be slightly more expensive with fingerprint reader, matte screen and vista business which requires it to be a higher price.

In the USA the highest model right now available is the Timeline 3810T-6415 which has the dual core 9400, 4GB Memory, 500GB HD and integrated video for the 3810T range.

Europe appears to have different specifications available including the ATI option. So its unclear if the higher end timelines will appear here or if the new Travelmate's will appear in the USA.

I can't wait too much longer as I want to buy something soon. I doubt new models from Acer or someone else with same or better specs will come out in the coming weeks so its quite possible the Timeline 3810T-6415 could be the only option.

 

Hi, installed Win 7 RC on my 3810TZ but can't get the touchpad gestures to work. The Acer support page has Vista 64 bit Alps and Synaptics touchpad drivers. What do I need to do to get the touchpad gestures working under Win 7. Thanks.

 

I dont find it flimsy at all, plastics are pretty much high quality, no creaking or sponginess on mine. Screen is thin but I dont feel like I am going to break it when I am moving the screen to a more comfortable angle. To me build quality on this series is pretty good.