Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T Thread

hehe, yes I didn't fall numb cause this new 1810t with i5 at all...

 

Plenty of pics of the AcerTravelmate 8172 in the 8172 thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/480471-acer-travelmate-8172-11-6-thread-4.html

 

I want an 1830T so badly my teeth hurt! When the heck is the i5 coming to Canada?!!? The company's logistics management is seriously broken. I've got computer money to spend but they won't let me spend it.

 

So, I called up Acer today... I called Acer Canada 15 times, unable to reach a human (it kept asking me for some sort of ID, even if I told it I wanted to buy accessories, and refused to let me pass that prompt even if I said I didn't have one, hit 0 for operator, or entered a bogus ID number), and eventually gave up and called Acer's US tech support.

The Indian gentleman who I talked to confirmed that Asus' US laptops warranties are valid in Canada, except that I would have to ship the laptop to Texas instead of Mississauga for warranty service. A friend who used to work at a computer store said that a few years ago, they didn't even have the option to ship to Missassauga anyhow, and they used to have to ship everything to Texas.

I'm thinking I might start looking to get an i5 model online from the US, since it's looking less and less like Acer is going to introduce the i5 model in Canada.

 

Just got mine. Didn't realize just how small and light this thing is haha. Build quality and everything looks fine to me and overall it's a nice looking laptop.

Only thing I'm not liking so far is the mousepad, just feels a bit weird, but it should be fine once I get used to it.

So happy I finally got mine. good luck to you guys in Canada, hope you're able to get your hands on one soon.

 

Damnit, I'm in the same position. Been waiting and waiting and waiting, no news. Let. Me. Spend. My. Money. On. You.

Regardless, how are you gonna order it from the States? I'm finding all the websites only ship nationally, not internationally?

And why wouldn't Acer release the i5 version of the computer in Canada? That's nuts...but I too agree it's seeming that way....

 

i always test the same video on laptops in the shops to beeing able to compare.

YouTube - The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

bohemian rapsody from muppets show

on the 1830 i3 330um i was not able to play it smoothly in 1080 (but watchable)
720 was totaly smooth.

maybe someone could test it on a ati machine...

but me, IMHO i dont want to compromise battery life for that..

 

Just out of interest - why is this a factor for you? Given the screen, is not 1080p?

 

I have to say this is the most enjoyable computer thread I have ever had the privilege to have access to. Very knowledgeable folks as I count down to my August 5 purchase of the 1830T.

 

Haven't been around much I see. Just kidding.

Bronsky

 

While the laptop's internal display is not 1080P, he may want to output it to a monitor or TV which is 1080P.

 

That's good to know; it gives me patience on my purchase of an 11.6''. Battery life or smooth 1080p playback is really the compromise of my summer; here's hoping to fall releases.

 

Good to know about the warranty business. Now if only Costco will stock it so I can drive across the border to get one!

I phoned a retailer (NCIX) today and they had no info on it whatsoever; no price lists, nothing. When forced to guess, the rep threw out late summer for ETA, but he really had nothing to go on.

Does anyone know if ASUS makes an equivalent machine?

 

Hi there. Anyone know the battery life difference between the i3 1830 and the i5 versions?

Also, has anyone heard when the different color versions of the 1830 will be available in the U.S. So far, I'm only seeing black.

Thanks for any insights?

 

With 54 processes running, this video never went above 24% cpu utilization in 1080p. Core i5-430UM, plugged in, doing nothing other than watching the video and looking at task manager.

 

I just played that on the 1810TZ in 1080 and it was absolutely smooth.Strange,the i3-330um shouldn't have a problem.

 

Assuming that price and availability are not issues, would folks recommend the i3 or i5? Thanks!

 

Since there isn't any spectacular diference in heat,noise,and battery time,the i5 of course.

 

What about the U5400? It looks like it's based on the same technology as the i3/i5, so I'm guessing it won't have better battery life?

Doesn't this mean the 1830 will have worse battery life than the 1810? I'm trying to decide which to buy, the 1810 or the 1830. I don't see the improvement in trading a faster CPU for less battery life, especially in a subnotebook that you wouldn't use CPU intensive applications on.

Do you guys actually use any CPU bound apps? I can't imagine any, surfing, office, movies/music, not very CPU intensive. Any recent games are out of the question anyway due to the IGP. And since all versions of the 1810/1830 play back movies up to 1080p the same (the most CPU intensive app it would be used for), wouldn't it make sense to go for the model with the longest runtime, i.e. SU4100 1810? Do you see any flaws in my reasoning?

 

Not only threre isn't any flaw in your reasoning but because of exactly the reasons you describe many many 1810T owners are keeping their notebooks and skipping the 1830T.

 

Guys,

Can someone that has the 1830-3927 (the 1830 that has the i3 chip) please try to play that video and post results? I would like to know what is the deal with the i3 and 1080p video. I mean there is a us$200 difference in price between the machine with the i3 and i5 chip.

Thanks.

 

I have the i3 (1830-3927) and I was able to playback the muppets bohemian rhapsody in 1080p just fine on the local display. It was pretty funny. My first time seeing it. I also simultaneously played back the video on youtube from my quad core desktop on my 46" HDTV for comparison. To my subjective eye I didn't notice anything significantly different.

Now I did have some trouble getting my laptop to display properly on the external HDTV screen via an HDMI cable. Perhaps a bug with the drivers? It displayed a 1920x1080 resolution but it was "bigger" than the TV screen. No controls (that I could find) were available to correct this with the acer video drivers provided.

Also, I've noted before that I was able to playback a looped chapter from a blu-ray title just fine on the laptop (it played from the harddrive). I'll have to try to play a full movie and see if it plays w/o stuttering.

cheers,
foo

PS There is only a $100 difference between the i3 and i5 variants in the US stores (e.g. newegg, amazon, etc.).

 

The TV might be responsible for the picture being "bigger". Check your overscan setting (might be called something else depending on your TV brand). It could also be the software you use for playback (MPC-HC for instance can have this effect depending on the settings).

Can you please do the same test with the laptop running on batteries (if it was not the case). And also I would love to know how much 1080p playback time you get on battery (on the laptop screen only - no TV). I know that the screen is not 1080 but my movies are 1080p.

BTW where can you buy the i3 or i5 in the US?

 

Amazon.com
TigerDirect
CircuitCity
Provantage
Compusa
B&H
eCost

To name a few...

EDIT: Also, man will it be hard to live with this Alps touchpad till 2013. Sometimes when I try to do the circle scroll (aka Chiralmotion on a Synaptics), it starts to go backwards! So instead of clockwise to scroll down a page, it will scroll up!

Man I might have to get an 1840 next year with Sandy Bridge and a Synaptics touchpad...

In other news I still love this thing. An Avast virus scan completed in only 4min 24sec! i5+ssd is an amazing combo. Here is how Avast does its scan:

 

The Acer 1830T-3721 looks very impressive. Having a i5 with 1.7 Ghz turbo speed and only 18 Watts in a package this small and this light is amazing. I hate track pads, so I don't mind the track pad problems; I always use a mouse. I like the fact that this unit has both a Gigabit net interface AND bluetooth! This makes it clearly a better unit than the 1830T-3927 which lacks bluetooth and turbo boast. As far as the screen size, plug the HDMI into your big video screen TV when you get tired of the small text size. I am definitely seriously thinking of buying this, since FRY's has them in stock down the street!

 

Me too. No matter how good the track pad might be. Just buy a small wireless (laser) mouse you can use on every surface. It's simply much more comfortable.

 

Can this play games like the 3820tg? Or there is no such thing as the 1820tg?

 

Ok, according to this review:

Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T Review - Battery, Wi-Fi, Green Tests, Configs, Software & Verdict

the 1830 has 3 hours LESS runtime (5:53 vs 8:47 or about 2/3rds) than the 1810 when surfing over WLAN. What a joke ...

BTW, can the "HURR i5 DERP" guys in here come up with actual uses for the increased CPU power?

 

Yes, I tried the TV settings too but with no luck. With an HDMI connection my TV has limited options for manipulating the input signal. I've been able to display my wife's XPS m1330 w/o problems in a 1080 mode, not sure why the 1830t is having problems. Any one else having this problem?

I should have clarified, this was on batteries and the "Intel Graphics Settings" (under advanced power settings) was set to Balanced (vice Maximum Performance or Maximum Battery).

In an earlier post, I played a continuous loop of a chapter from a blu-ray title (Natures most amazing events). The laptop got about 3 hours 10 minutes which was a little disappointing to me. I was hoping to watch back-to-back movies on a coast-to-coast plane ride. I may try to tweak it some more to see if I can eek out more movie watching. Or perhaps DVD playback (vice bluray) will last longer.

 

That's exactly how AVG does it's scans too.It scans when you install it and in the following scans it skips the safe files.

ps:I am a trackpad hater too.Strictly mouse for me too.

 

About the "why faster?"... Probably I'm the only one on the forum (good for the rest of you), but I'm a statistician. I have various high performance environments I can use, but these don't help me much when I'm on a plane or with a customer. I've only had the i5 for a day and it's not all set up, but I'm seeing definite benefit from the speed increase. Short answer: math related tasks...many of which are now highly amenable to parallelism.

 

Nearly six hours run time on batteries is plenty. I am sure that can be tweaked up a bit with power settings so it is closer to the 8 hour advertised time. And I wouldn't play blu-ray rips on an airplane anyway. Normal DVD rips at 720p would be fine if your flying; I'll bet you can get two movies in on a cross country flight easy. The extra power IS important if your doing heavy analysis and demos to customers, which is why I am buying this thing. What other laptop this small and this light has i5 power WITH gigabit IP and bluetooth connections at this price point? None that I know of. All the others are bigger, heavier, and cost $800 and up.

 

Well I sure would be thankful if someone owning the 1830 could give us some hard data or maybe even do a test on the runtime doing light tasks with wifi activated. Don't get me wrong, I'd go for the 1830 with the i5 in a heartbeat, considering the better CPU and non-glossy lid, but not at the price of having 6hr battery life vs. 9hrs. That will probably make the difference between not having to recharge during the day and also not having to carry the AC adapter.

Now the price difference doesn't matter that much to me, but if your budget is limited, you also have to consider that for the difference between the 1810 and the 1830 i5 you can get a nice 128 Gig SSD, which will more than compensate for the lower CPU speed for general use.

 

I use Corel Paintshop Pro X2 and Lightroom 3, both are significantly faster and more productive to use with the i5 over my old 3810t with the SU9400. Thanks to the new architecture and Turbo Boost, both programs load and render images faster than on the 3810t did, even when I had the ssd in it. Also, I am a college student and use Windows Media Center and a Hauppauge 950Q tv tuner for my television/dvr. I am able to for example, watch the World Cup games and browse the web with less stuttering in Media Center than before.

And also, Turbo Boost comes on frequently, even when browsing the web, so even just daily non cpu taxing things can get a boost from Turbo Boost. You do not need to be doing a strenuous activity for Turbo Boost to be useful.

I am not a touchpad hater, I love them. I just hate Alps and strongly prefer Synaptics.

 

You missed my point. The point wasn't i5 vs. i3 (since the power consumption is more or less the same), but 1810 vs. 1830. You always have a power outlet handy - great for you. But I think a lot of people bought the 1810 because of the unparalleled battery life. The 1830 seems to have just an average battery life and is thus not special anymore. And I don't think that's a non-issue.

I just wanted to hear from 1830 owners 1. why they went for the 1830 vs. the 1810 (and I already got some good answers - some people run heavyweight apps and thus need the faster CPU), and 2. if the battery runtime is really as low as stated in the review posted above.

 

Since this is the more frequently used topic (I just have a TM 8172, no 1830), I will also post my questions here:
Does anyone know a good program for measuring my GPU frequency and CPU voltage? CPU-Z doesn't display any voltages and GPU-Z doesn't display any MHz for my Intel HD graphics card. Also, are there any working undervolt programs for the CULV Arrandale CPUs?

And if anyone is interested in some TM8172 pics, just look at my post
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/480471-acer-travelmate-8172-11-6-thread-4.html#post6451835

 

Can someone who uses photo editing apps tell me how the image quality is on the 1830T? How is the image quality via an external monitor/ HD tv better? Or the same?

 

It could be interesting, if an i3 owner would post the 3dMark06 result for comparison with the i5-430.

 

@ Gaylord Fister

AWESOME USERNAME LOL

 

Running battery drain test, battery bar and Windows calculated doing nothing mine can get over 10 hours idle. Power save mode, screen lowest brightness. Remember I have an Intel ssd. Battery has 5.2% wear already. I am connected to Ethernet because my university's wireless is acticting funny.

 

Hi guys same "dilemma" here, 1810 and battery life or 1830 and cpu power. BTW here in canada the "Olympic edition" of the 1810 (SU7300) is pretty cheap you may also find many refurbished with 1y international warranty.
I have some questions to this forum, I would like to generate multiple answers as I'm sure many of you can replay:
- when you play 1080p videos (.mp4 or h264) with the 1810 which is your cpu usage? (irrelevant for the 1830 as it has more power to spare)
- I also understand that flash 10.1 is now accelerated and recognize the 4500HD of the 1810, how much is your cpu usage using youtube HD (1080p) with the latest flash?

-Again I would kindly ask to some 1830 owner to estimate the battery life without wifi (if you are in travel, wifi is useless) as the benchmark many people refers to

"Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T Review - Battery, Wi-Fi, Green Tests, Configs, Software & Verdict"

is made with wifi on.

Trycage
================================================

 

Sorry if I missed it, but does anyone have Ubuntu (trying 10.04) running on the 1830T yet? I seem to be having some trouble with both the wireless and wired drivers.

 

Similar questions here...

I would like to know how the 1830's that have the i3 chip handle H264 1080p videos.

I am also interested in the Ubuntu question. Has anyone installed it and had success with all the drivers? Thanks much.

 

I have a Ubuntu/Win 7 install from my 3810T, and Ubuntu works fine except I am having problems with wifi and ethernet. To install the wifi drivers I used the search for hardware search in the menu and thar found drivers for the Broadcom wifi, but to install them I need to connect to ethernet and despite the cord being in, nothing comes up. Otherwise everything else is fine.

 

More Ubuntue network information:

Neither the wireless nor wired network connections even get lights (never seen that with a wired connection).

If you go to a terminal and type "sudo lshw -C network", you'll see the network is "UNCLAIMED", which the help says means that there are no drivers loaded.

Here is how you can load the drivers

On a computer with Internet access...
Get the Ubuntu packages:
- ndiswrapper-common
- ndiswrapper-utils
- ndisgtk
If you start at Ubuntu -- Details of package ndisgtk in lucid you will see links to the other dependencies.

Grab the Broadcom driver off the Acer site (only need the .inf file)

I put these all on a USB stick and then stuck the stick into the 1830T with Ubuntu

In Ubuntu...
- Load each package in the order above
- Go to System -> Administration -> Windows Wireless Drivers
- Install the new driver by pointing to the .inf file

Sure enough, it says "Hardware present: Yes". But, the terminal (command above) says otherwise.

Just to check, I did download the atheros drivers and Ubuntu does correctly state "Hardware present: No"

Hmmm...kind of makes the computer not so useful...but I'll keep working on it.

 

The cheapest that I see the 1810 SU7300 is for $570, so the i3 is only around $60 more. Too bad the i3 does not have bluetooth.

 

Bluetooth is easy. You can get one of those small bluetooth dongles that plugs into your usb port. I got one for someone else before.

You'll lose a usb port when using bluetooth, but if you decide to leave the dongle in all the time you'll hardly see it. Here's a link to one:

TINY USB 2.0 BLUETOOTH V2.0 EDR DONGLE WIRELESS ADAPTER - eBay (item 130397652519 end time Aug-02-10 11:30:12 PDT)

That one ships from the US and costs $3.00 with free shipping. I went for one coming from the US even though the ones coming from China cost $.099 since those took 2 weeks or more to get here. In Ebay just search for "USB Bluetooth Dongle".

 

You should really post this at Ubuntuforums.org. Someone there will surely help you solve this issue, even though you seem to not be doing too bad yourself.

Yeah, I plan on installing Ubuntu first thing and this makes the laptop of not much use. Damn...

 

and, does anybody know if 1810tray is also available on 1830T?

 

Just got back from Fry's with a new never opened Acer Aspire 1830T for $699 plus tax in a nice little black box with i5 processor, 4 GB RAM and 500 GB HDD. This thing is virtually the same size as a netbook, but feels much more substantial and more solidly built. I don't see any visual defects or problems with the mouse buttons, tightness of construction or mouse pad. The battery is the same color as the computer and has about an 1/8 inch overhang in back. I think this is by design, as when the computer is jammed into a carry all, the battery edge will protect the more fragile lid hinges when the computer hits the bottom of the bag. The texture and color of the lid is great. I love it. I'm blown away by the size even though I have a Mac Mini, also very small. I think these UL notebooks of 11.6 inch screens are the wave of the future, giving the size and weight of a netbook with the computing power of a full blown laptop, at considerably less cost than a traditional notebook. I don't think Best Buy has figured this out yet; they have a row of 20 netbooks and a row of 20 six lbs and up notebooks, but nothing in between.