Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG Owners Lounge

Here is an example of my Sharp Aquos 65" LCD widescreen TV using the same macro zoom. You can clearly see the pixels because it's zooming in 3x. However, this is not what you would see in normal usage.

 

buddy, i took the pictures with my google nexus one phone which doens't have any macro modes whatsoever!

those dots are physically viewable even from 12 inches away nto as detailed but visable! even if you look at the big picture you can notice them


i didn't even zoom in with my nexus one, if you download the pic and look at the properties it will tell u

and thats a cell phone camera imagine i used a real camera

 

Are you telling me that your Start Orb and Superbar really looks that big in person? It's clearly zoomed in 3x. I can see why you say that the screen is pixelated compared to other screens, but it doesn't seem like other TimelineX owners are facing this problem as much as you. Maybe, you got a defective screen.

I don't mean you physically zoomed in 3x, it's just the resolution that photo is taken in.

 

i noticed it right when i opened the laptop i could see lines go up and down the screen, then the diming effect at low levels,

2nd, the google nexus one doesn't have a zoom level ( optical ) only digital at 2x max. pictures were taken in auto mode no zooming.

no macro
nothing.

camera phone was lined up above the caps key - a s d f

pic below.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

I didn't zoom in on my photos either. It's the resolution of the photos that make it look bigger than it really is. That is why I said it is zooming in 3x if you look at the photo in full resolution.

However, I did not face the problem with lines going up and down the screen. Are you using a refresh rate of 60Hz for the monitor?

 

example, on this website
at the top.. where it has the tabs where it says technology guide.com

the bar underneath it has a checked line that goes across the screen thats what my screen looks like at low brightness levels.

 

Maybe, you're just more sensitive to the pixels on the screen. I only notice the pixels when I concentrate on the pixels on the screen. I don't notice the pixels under normal usage.

 

thats what i think it is, or like the dimming i am see at low brightness , maybe the glasses i wear are making me pic it up more

but the weird thing is only at low levels are see the flickering when changing images on the a website, and the pixels,

but i also notice flickering with the eco light bulbs we have at home

!

 

Mine's screen is the same. If I put the laptop far away, just enough to reach the keyboard with my arms at full length, I don't notice it, but any closer I can see the pixels. Especially on white/bright background, its very noticable. I haven't seen anything like this with other laptops, even on an acer 15.6" 1200x800.

 

Guys, I just thought I'd add my 2c worth. I have ordered the 4820tg which should be here tomorrow. (i5 520m + ati 5650 + 9 cell battery). I am a fair bit annoyed regarding the screen issue that "lastdon" has raised. I have been using an XPS m1330 until now and loved the 16:10 screen ratio, so it was kind of killing me to step "down" to the 1366 x 768.
Anyway, I thought I'd show you all a pic of the screen on my wifes' Sony Vaio NW20EF. I absolutely hate it. Although it is a bit better since I changed the refresh to 60hz. If the 4820tg is like this I'll be sending it right back!
Pic taken with HTC Desire at 5mp res.

 

Lastdon's display is a 13.3", not the 14" and IMO, it is defective. There are comparisons from my display on the 3820TG thread. I am really pleased with the display.

 

It all depends on how pixel sensitive you are (mentioned earlier). It's noticeable when you concentrate on the pixels and on a white/brighter background. You shouldn't notice the pixels as much under normal usage (an arms length away).

I also owned a Sony NW series laptop and the pixels were more noticeable on that laptop than the 4820TG. The main reason is due to the larger 15.5" screen on the Sony NW than the 14" screen on the 4820TG. Both laptops share the same resolution (1366x768).

 

See that isn't too too bad compared to mine,


Like i swear when i first opened the notebook and it was doing that windows crap i was like what is wrong with this display

2 out of 2 so far, i give up !


BRONSKY anyway to make your photos bigger?

they are tiny ... to really see anything ( no offence )


my asus n50 which has a 15inch display, i physically have to move my head right to the monitor to see anything and even then it's hard

 

None taken ... can't make them any bigger. They're taken with my blackberry. If I inlarge them any further you loose all resolution. I need a better camera.

Bronsky

 

I tried to get one (AS4820TG-3195) shipped over to where I live (New Zealand) from Micro Center to no avail. They don't accept foreign credit cards it seems...

Does anyone else have any idea where else I could get the Aspire TimelineX AS4820TG-3195? That's the one with the ATI 5650 and Core i5. It's kinda annoying me now...

 

Looking at my display and comparing it to a few others I do see what you mean, in that the acer display does show more obvious pixels at low brightness than my old laptop or my ips desktop panel. But it isn't as bad as for me to say it leaps out at me - certainly nothing like I would compare it to the checked band underneath the technologyguide.com banner at the top of the screen. I agree that it is much more noticeable at very low brightness, I'd say it is mostly mitigated once you reach 30% or 40% brightness. That's probably why I hadn't really noticed it before, I have it set for 40% brightness on battery and 100% on ac. Now that I've looked for it though I find it hard to not see it in the grey field around the reply box. Arrggh I honestly can't tell if we're looking at the same level of problem or not but my gut thinks yours is worse.

 

I'm with Bronsky on this so! lastdon, your display must be rightly fubar'd. Considering that you reckon your 13.3" is worse than what I just posted, I reckon you should look for a replacement!

 

They are available in that configuration in taipei and shenzhen at least - probably along with malaysia, singapore, others. I know there are gadget oriented importers that specialize in bringing gear from those places to the US and other western countries, not sure if they'd be handling the acer. Not sure what those keyboards look like.

Personally, if you have to go through the trouble of importing one I'd think about the 13" instead of the 14". My 4820tg has pretty serious heat problems when gaming, I'd swap for the 13" if I could.

 

Thanks for the advice, would you say that the 13" better in terms of heat handling?

Also, I'm not to sure how to go about looking in Taipei online, initial google searches yield no results. I may, however, be just silly and a little less than competent?

 

Yes, the 13" handles heat better - it has two fans and two exhaust ports, one for the cpu and one for the gpu. The 14" and 15" models only have one fan for the cpu & gpu combined. Seems to result in 15c-20c higher temps. You might want to see the 5820tg review and read oc-freak's posts for someone who bought a 13" to replace his 15".

I certainly wouldn't want to call you silly - I sure don't know how to find one for import from those places, only that they are being sold there. But the degree of small scale capitalism that goes on in taiwan and china makes me think someone out there would mail you one if you could find them. I just don't know if they are liable to advertise in english, though.

Computer Universe is a german company some have had success in ordering from overseas. They have many timelineX models.

 

per this thread, Good Guys in australia has that model zerty

My new 14" Acer Aspire 4820TG Timeline X - Notebooks

 

ngaw - is your cooling system not working on the 4820TG? I ran the heaven benchmark 3 times and never did the HD 5650 reach above 80C. I've gotten the Core i3 to throttle at the mid 80Cs though.

I'm starting to think some people have bad batches of the TimelineX laptops. On youtube.com there is a video of the 4820TG (Core i5) shutting down at 95C while running the heaven benchmark. However, there are many people in this forum running the heaven benchmark successfully.

YouTube video: (Core i5) - shutting down when the Core i5 reaches 95C
My 4820TG: (Core i3) - ran the entire benchmark with the Core i3 reaching 77C max

ngaw, try the heaven benchmark and post back your temperatures with HWMonitor.
http://unigine.com/products/heaven/

 

mine is 14" and it has the same problem, I remember when I first looked at it, I had the same reaction, wth is wrong with this screen, GRIDS??! I wonder if this is the same for all 4820tg or mine is defective. I wanna return it to MC and get an exchange, but I don't wanna pay for 15% restocking fee.

On another note, I think acer really outdid themselves this time with the back lid, it's the sexiest lid I've seen on any laptop, including the macbook pros, but that's because I think black is so much cooler than silver The palm rest area is nice too.

 

I'm really tempted to buy the 4820tg right now...but still hesitant due to the thin screen and heating issues. Went to MC today to see it in person, and I'm really scared that I accidentally lift the screen too fast and hard and break it.

Also, I saw the video of the i5 config where the heat test blasted the CPU to 95 degrees, and that made me even more hesitant.

I'll probably just run MW2 in mediums settings with low effects, just in case the whole case bursts into hellfire >.>

How long do you think this laptop will last?

 

Awesome, thanks ngaw... I found the same model I was looking for, and for about the same price too.

Now I don't need to deal with crazy American businesses!

 

The problem is that the heaven benchmark on its own isn't particularly stressful and doesn't simulate real gameplay. The youtube video was assuredly heaven + a cpu stress like prime95.

These are my temps after running heaven looped for an hour:



It looks like my temps are even a tad lower than yours for heaven only. However, with heaven+prime95 I see CPU 85c GPU 82c. With borderlands CPU 85c GPU 87c, and l4d2 CPU 86c GPU 89c.

Have you tried running logs while playing games like these? You've said several times that you're not seeing temps like mine, but I'm not sure if you've actually checked under similar circumstances.

 

Wow, those are nice temperatures for the heaven benchmark. I guess, I haven't really stressed out the 4820TG. I mostly play Dragon Age: Origins and Counter-Strike: Source. I'll test out my friend's L4D2 game when I go to the Starcraft 2 LAN party on July 27th. Then I'll post back new results. Thanks for running the benchmark.

 

Is this the 4820TG owner's thread? Anyone can direct me to it if it's not. Thanks!

 

This should be the 4820TG owner's thread, unless there was one created before this. It's either this thread or the 4820T vs 4820TG thread.

 

ngaw, I've tried trawling through the 130 pages of the 3820TG thread, but I'm not quite sure I can find the temperature ranges that result from playing games typically. Could you give me a vague idea of what temperatures I'd expect compared to the 4820?

Anyway, in a question for people in general... Considering that I may be getting one of either these of the 13" equivalent from computer universe (that german site), I suppose there really isn't any big fix to the qwertz keyboard layout physically is there?

 

You have been reading the wrong pages You should start reading from the last page like me

Someone reported that after playing Age of Conan for 30 min

The Avg temperature on CPU and GPU is abt 60degrees hiting a max of 75 degrees before overclocking

After overclocking it went up to avg of 65% and a max of 85%.

I would like to link that page to you but i dont wanna back read that thread again lol

 

Anyone tried installing the new catalyst drivers from AMD yet? I heard you have to turn off the gx switching on the bios first tho.

 

If you're in the US, you can forget about Computeruniverse.

 

I actually live in Middle-Earth (New Zealand), where Gandalf's excessive spellcasting has caused a rift in space-time continuum, causing electronic equipment to come far, far later than should be reasonable

It's bad enough to the extent that the Australians get their devices before we do and to boot, they are selfish enough to not share their devices with us.

I read a few forum posts on an Australian website that pretty much states the presence of the 4820 in their lands, but alas, I think the Acer Middle-Earth is in denial. I might try hassling them again tomorrow.

 

Legolin pretty much has it right. Here's OC-Freak talking about his temps during AOC. The rest of his posts probably have some extra tidbits here and there. I've made some charts of the temps I've been getting and related cpu/gpu throttling here and here. Those may not be perfect comparisons as I have a feeling that my games might be a bit more demanding than AOC, but for now we're seeing 60c vs 90c on the GPU and ~80c vs 85c (probably more like 95c-100c on the i5) for the CPU. My i3 CPU throttles at 85c so it doesn't go any higher (it clocks down to 900mhz to dump heat) so the i5 will get considerably hotter (it throttles at ~100c)

 

I did install it and didn't have to change my BIOS initially. But I found that afterwards the ATI GPU wouldn't switch on anymore. To fix it, I had to reboot and change to discrete graphics in the BIOS, boot windows, then it auto-installed the hardware using the new drivers I had provided. At that point I could reboot and the discrete graphics were working well again so I was able to reboot, change the BIOS back and switchable graphics were working again.

 

Haha ... nice post, but at least you guys can actually get an asus N82, maybe we can do a trade i'll send u a 4820tg or 5820tg for a N82 in return.

Just kidding... from your Ozzie mate!

 

Thanks ngaw, that makes it a little bit more clear.

So, referring to my own question (this isn't against forum etiquette is it?), is there a solution to living with a qwertz keyboard should I happen to well, buy one from germany? Does anyone survive well with one?

 

where can I buy this laptop?

 

I bought a 3820TG from Germany and changed the keyboard to a US layout. I could not adjust to the German model. The keyboard from the 3810T works just fine.

Bronsky

 

In the US, people are buying 4820TGs at Microcenter (no shipping to Canada). There are people who brought 3820TG's at Staples in Canada. Not, sure if they are selling 4820TGs there.

 

Since i'm going dual hard drive, do you guys know if I still have to make backup DVDs for the drivers via eRecovery?

Or can I just have my computer search the original HDD for the drivers?

Anyone know how that works?

To be more specific...

I remove the original HDD w/ factory install and drivers... put that into the ODD bay.

Then I place an SSD in, and start a clean install. When I get to the part where I have to install all the drivers.. can I have the computer search in the ODD-HDD?

(I ask because I don't have any blank DVDs around...)

 

I would make a driver disk from erecovery anyway (only need 1 DVD - clean out the change in your couch). Actually, for the 3820TG, they are all on the site now. Probably the same for the 4820TG. Make sure you know which ones you need before you swap the drive. As long as you don't over write the Acer drive you can always just swap it back into the prime location if your bios wont look for it anywhere else. You can probably get away with a nice reasonably priced SSD.

 

Cool! gonna go try it after work!

 

The i3 + 5650 is now available on Amazon for $799.99... not in stock but at least Micro Center is now not the only option!

Come on Tiger Direct!!

 

I dont see it... Can you link me to the product page? I did a search and all i could come up with was this: Amazon.com: Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4820T-5637 14-Inch HD Laptop - Black Brushed Aluminum: Electronics

But i noticed how its listed as Timeline X AS4820T-5637 so Amazon probably did mean to list this as the TG

Since -5637 suffix is the i3 5650 model

I hope this means that other resellers are going to have it soon. If the 3820tg doesnt come out, at least i can hope to buy the 4820tg at a reseller that wont charge me tax (in ny)

 

.

It's currently out of stock... but it is here

 

IMO the recovery disks are useless. I download the ISO (search the forum) and make a USB bootable Windows installer.

 

Here is a short update regarding battery life on my i3 4820TG with Momentus XT

On the flight from SFO to Narita, Japan I did the following on the single charge w/ 6 cell battery -

*Read multiple PDF files (Japan guide) for 2 hours while taking notes in MS Word
*Watched Top Gear for 3 hours (DVD quality - 1 x 1:30 polar exploration special and 2 x 45 min flims because I don't like star in reasonably priced car)

Wireless was switched off, volume at 40% and brightness at 20%.

It said it had 33% battery remaining. Life was estimated anywhere between 1 hr 30 minutes to 3 hours, not very reliable.

While I was waiting at the hotel to be picked up, I fired my 4820TG back up and read PDF file for another 1.5 hours. Battery gauge read 20% left.

Summary - 6.5 hours of mixed use and about 20% battery left

So in general I'm pretty impressed with the battery life, even with the Momentus XT which is supposed to be more power hungry. I did notice the hard drive stop spinning frequently and retreving data solely off the SLC cache which I think in the end averages out the battery life because it can idle more often than a regular hard drive. So if you are reading in smaller chunks of data (PDF files, small movies etc) then you won't notice much degradation in battery life compared to a regular hard drive using the Momentus.

Also screen brightness was sufficient at 20% to be able to read comfortable indoors. I did try reading it outdoors and even at 100% brightness it was hard to read due to glossy screen.

I will repeat it on the flight back from Japan to SFO and see how it performs.

 

That sounds about right. During normal usage, I got 5-6 hours on my 4820TG with Wi-Fi enabled and the screen on 30% brightness before the laptop automatically shutdown. It does make sense that you would have better battery life than me due to your hybrid SSD drive.