Acer Ferrari : How to Test Drive!!

Hi,

I got my new Ferrari 4005 yesterday!! But cant believe i actually saw few dead pixels~~~

Am shipping it back to acer requesting for fixing the LCD up or hopefully replacing it! I had few questions and was wondering if any of you could find the time for the same :

a. How do we test the thing... I did the dead pixel test and seeing even one is heart breaking . How all and what all do we need to check?

b. Hmm the sound sucks, my friend who got a Toshiba M45-S355 for 700 less bucks sounds better /.... what the heck is Realtek, sound card? Maybe I should try setting the equalizer up.

c. Is there any utility which monitors the CPU temperature, performance or warns of any impending disaster?

Or anything else which you think should be done before getting on with all installations...

Nothing can be more frustrating than shipping a ferrari back.. verheat:

 

A. generally to test a system, just put it through it's paces by running either apps/games, using it or install some diag/benchmark programs. This will push the CPU/GPU, Ram & HDD. Things like 3DMark, PCMark, AquaMark, Memtest & HDTach. Also get MobileMeter to monitor your CPU/GPU/Chipset & HDD temps. Get Battery Eater Pro to test the battery runtimes of your notebook. To search for dead pixels, you can either run the programs to test them or just change the backfround color to all white or all black.

B. Realtek is a big manufacturer of auido chipsets for notebooks. I'm sure if you search through a bunch of notebooks, a lot of them will probably be Realtek or other brands you've never heard of. Notebooks rarely have audio chipsets made by Creative Labs or by other large auido card manufacturers. The audio may sound better in the Toshiba because the use better speaker (Harmon Kardon I believe). They specialize in speakers, so the audio would be better. As you said, try adjusting the audio settings.

c. MobileMeter is a good utility to monitor your CPU temp. I'm not sure if it will warn you of an impending problem (never had that happen to me), but I'm sure you'll notice it way before it gets to that point.

Personal recommendation when you get a computer with an OS preloaded, perform a manual reload of the OS (not from the recovery CD's). Get rid of all that junk that the manufacturer seems to like loading into your system. Update all the drivers with the lastest and greatest. Use the drivers from the maufacturers site as much as you can (Intel NIC, goto Into, ATI Graphics, goto ATI). These drivers are updated a lot more and therefore will fix a lot of problems and increase performance/compatibility. Only get the drivers from Acer's site if you have to (not available anywhere else). And don't install any software you don't want/need.

Putting a clean OS into your notebook will help with performance, compatibility and battery runtimes (at least it did for me). Below is a link to my review I did on my notebook. Scroll down and you'll see the performance difference just be reloading the OS and changing the drivers.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2397

-Vb-

 

VB --- Thanks for the input! Is there a software which detects dead pixels? I thought there were none and went about the primitive way of hunting them!!!

 

http://www.laptopshowcase.co.uk/downloads.php?id=1

 

Just as a report - I got my Ferrari 4000 last week and I ran the "Dead Pixel Buddy" just to be sure: I have zero dead pixels.