Acer TimelineX 3830/4830/5830 T/G

yep there wasnt. i never owned an acer and i was def going to give them a chance. ill buy the u31sd.

 

I was in the exact same boat. There are a few Asus models I'm considering too. The U31 and U36 sd versions it seems will be released in a few weeks. Given the circumstances, I think it's wise we confirm that the Asus models aren't throttling either. I am certainly not spending a dime until I know there are no hardware related problems I can't easily fix on my own.

One of the several things I'm not crazy about on the Asuses (Asui??) is that the U series CPUs have in the past been soldered to the motherboard so no upgrading, even by the retailer. It seems likely this will continue with the Sandy Bridge U's as well. I'm totally with you on the Nvidia situation too.


With the 38x0 series, Acer has shat on a lot of people who were eager to put money into their (Acer's) pockets. Educated consumers is where it's at, though unfortunately still the minority.

 

Their own loss man. In any case im now thinking of maybe even getting a 14 inch. It will def be an asus though. My first laptop was the Asus Z71V and i loved everything about it... the build quility, the finish, the keyboard. But i didnt know how to take care of laptops back then and didnt make it last. .

 

TBH they should have kept the shell and just redone the motherboard and chipset.

 

You should take a look at the qx411

 

Ding! Exactly. Hell they could have kept the electronics the same and put a decent 1600x900 in it and charged $1k and I'd have bought a new one.

I'm hoping the U41sn or U41sv get to the US and don't have any throttling issues. Those should be direct competitors to the 3830/4830TG models. the U41jf was the only 14" I considered other than the 4820TG last year. While it had an i3 CPU, it was pretty well overclocked from the factory. It got better battery life than the 4820TG but had a slightly slower GPU, the GT335M.

 

Acer has the new Timeline notebooks posted on the US site. Notebooks | Product Group Looks like only the 3830TG gets the GT 540M GPU. There is no 4830TG model at all and the 5830TG model gets an I5-2410M and a GT 520M GPU. Now that Acer has these models posted, we should see them readily available. Looks like Newegg will have them soon. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ncode=00-1248552&DEPA=0&refer=channel&CMP=OTC-

Bronsky

 

Amazon already ships these laptops. Example: Amazon.com: Acer Aspire TimelineX AS4830T-6642 14-Inch Laptop (Cobalt Blue Aluminum): Computer & Accessories

 

I need help in choosing new laptop for student. I thought that acer would be the best decision, but after reading this thread, I have changed my mind. I am searching for 14 inch laptop, running on sandy bridge core i5,with good quality screen, what can you suggest me?

 

Samsung qx411 from bestbuy

 

newegg was selling the 3830tg for a while now. How funny that 13 inch gets better gpu than the 15. Maybe if the 3830tg got the 520m it wouldnt have the throttling issues. Either way cooling shouldve been kept dual fan.

 

I would consider ASUS. they have some good computers coming out soon so sit tight and wait or check out the available models now.

 

I cant wait till new models of asus will be available. I was looking on u31sd but it doesnt have optical drive, the same is to u36sd. U41sv has all I need, but the price is over one kilobacks, and this model isnt available in USA. Samsung is very good laptop,but there is a little problem with it for me. I live in Russia and I also need russian keyboard. There is always some place on keyboard keys for another language stickers. But in samsung english letters are in the center of key, and there is no place to stick russian one((. Any suggestions?

 

yeah... why the heck do you need a dvd drive? buy an external one for 20$. Most stuff nowadays is USB, you can even do OS installs that way. Optical drive just adds weight and bulk to a notebook.

When you carry your notebook around do you ever install stuff on the go from a cd? no.. u usually go back home, and install it there. So why not just keep external usb drive at home?

 

I need optical drive for using live cds. And I often intall different OCs on my laptop, and making every time new boot flash is annoying. For example acer 4830 has optical drive, but is not bulky at all. So built in optical drive is big plus for me.

 

if it is not a problem, please post here all issues of acer 4830t

 

Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG, 4830TG and 3830TG

Look in middle of page what Nando posted. Those hinges look like they can break with an easy twist. Right now i have a dell vostro 1500 and this is one sturdy machine. I dropped it from my hand on the floor, i lift it up by the lid sometimes... and it does not give way at all. If i do that to this acer it will break in half.

If you cannot do with an external optical drive look into this:

GenTech PC - Asus U41JF-A1 14 inch Notebook

has good gpu you can even game on it. 14 inch screen and good battery life. notebookreview said this notebook doesnt have as good build quality as other asus... well i cant imagine it being like the acer above!

 

Maybe it's the preproduction model, in my 3830TG it is very sturdy, it may be looks not sturdy but let me tell you this hinge is very sturdy, strudier than my Acer 4740G..

I already tried this on the store..the palmrest is a bit warm..but the most important factor is it looks not as good as the 3830TG, and Acer gave me several bonuses when I bought the 3830TG..

 

I think maybe some of the negative posts are a bit exaggerated. Some have not even held one in their hands.
I had one, loved the machine and the build quality. The only thing that was a problem was the battery, as many of you know.
There are even some members here that have the 3830 without battery problems, so calm down

I'm waiting for my refund. Until then I'm searching for other laptops. But I just found a different configuration for the 3830TG, which is actually a 3830T. It's 200$ less, and the only difference is the lack of 540m GT.
I guess I can live without the nvidia, as gaming is not top priority at all.
All I want is the new i5 and the intel quick sync support, which is YUMMY if you do a lot of video encoding...

Also, I don't know if it's important to you, but the Asus u36SD has the crappy 0.3 MP webcam compared to the 1.3 MP of the Acer. But that's just the webcam, it may be of no importance to you

 

jadbox
Could you post here exact specks of samsung that you have bought at bestbuy?

 

Samsung - QX Series Laptop / Intel® Core™ i5 Processor / 14" Display / 6GB Memory / 750GB Hard Drive - QX411-W01


Only thing i dont get is no bluetooth

 

My wife has had it with her Thinkpad. She's looking for a 15.6" multimedia notebook that she can use at presentations. I think I'm going to take a look at the DV6T with the Quad and 1080p display for her (I'll be borrowing it a lot on the weekend I suppose ).

Bronsky

 

hi guys, it's been a while. i am now using throttlestop because i can't bear the lag in witcher 2. even with throttlestop, the game lags at certain times, but i think it's just poor optimization with respect to the drivers and the game. i am reaching temperatures of 90 degrees with throttlestop, i hope this would not harm the computer in any way. in spite of this, i am still happy with my 4830tg.

 

What about your battery? What is the wear level?

 

Now I am choosing between ideapad y470,hp dm4x. Can anybody tell what is the better choice? And why? Thanks a lot for answering guys.

 

The y470 is very fast, has i7 and 555m. The Acer is no match! BUT it's bigger and heavier and also the batterylife is not as good.

The HP has better batterylife but weaker graphics card and cpu

 

Are there any serios issues with one of them?

 

I heard that the lenovo laptops dont have good screens unless you go for the x220. But im not an owner and i cant tell you first hand.

Havent heard anything bad about the HP.

 

Build quality of the y-series of Lenovos used to be rather cheap and flimsy compared to Acers or even recent HP lines. You might wanna do some research and find if the current line has improved build quality or not.

 

Anyone have a US release date for the 4830tg, i see the 3830tg being sold at amazon and newegg now, but not the 4830tg

 

The Lenovo laptops suffer from the same problems as all the other laptops with 1366x768 screens, in that they're variable from batch to batch, come from multiple suppliers and tend to be, at their best, just so so. This isn't a Lenovo issue, it's a general laptop issue with all 1366x768 machines really. Some are better than others, but it's more a crap shoot to see which one you get with any manufacturer.

 

At this point, there is no 4830TG scheduled to be sold in the US.

Bronsky

 

Amazon have 3830TG for $750 with free shipping and no tax to most states, and if you have an ".edu" e-mail address you get a free Xbox 360 ($200). But I won't read the last 10 pages to see if the throttling issue is over, I'll just pass while trying to beat my consumerism.

 

hi, i downloaded passmark and tried to see the battery wear level. however, having used this the first time, i am unsure which values to compare. i looked it up and i found these:

"• Design capacity: The theoretical capacity of the battery when new. Measured in milliwatts hours (mWh) for most batteries.
• Full charge capacity: The battery's current fully charged capacity. In some batteries it is possible to compare this value to the designed capacity to estimate the battery's wear.
•Alert levels: The manufacturer's suggestion of when a "Low" and "Warning" battery alert should occur.
•Bias: Some batteries reserve a small charge that is biased out of the battery's Full Charge Capacity and Current Capacity values to show "0" as the critical battery level. Critical bias is analogous to setting a fuel gauge to show "empty" when there are several liters of fuel left. "

And here are the reported values of passmark:

Design Capacity: 66600 mWh
Full-Charge Capacity: 66600 mWh
Current Capacity: 45288 mWh

From how I read it, it seems that i have no battery wear, which is very unlikely. Can you recommend other programs to test the wear level?

 

Sounds too good to be true

Try BatteryCare or BatteryBar

 

The program is just telling you what the battery says. My 6 month old 4820TG shows design capacity of 6000mAh and last full charge of 6040mAh. It's likely your battery and mine has some small excess capacity, so the wear level doesn't show until that excess capacity wears out.

 

my acer 3830 TG only 12 days of usage and now the wear level reach 12,73%


what shuld i do ????

btw i'm using battery care. the information said that i have used 4 discharging cycle, is there any solution for my problem ?

should i recalibrate my battery ?

 

i downloaded battery care and checked the "Detailed Information" tab and the wear level is 0%. I still don't believe the results though.

 

This is really strange. I mean, one person has 12% wear after 12 days, and another 0%.

I guess it's really hit or miss with these new batteries.

And it doesn't matter whether it's Sanyo or Panasonic batteries

 

May be the 4830TG doesn't have such problem like the 3830TG..

And that's why I choose the Acer TimelineX, the perfect balance. Oh, don't remind me about the Battery Wear & Throttling problem..

 

is there anyone who has used 4830 TG had the same battery problem with 3830 TG,

 

Hi all!

Last week I bought my Acer 4830TG in Singapore. So far I am pretty happy with it. The specs are:

Intel i7 2620M (2.7GHz)
14" 1366x768 Display
NVIDIA GT540M (1GB DDR3 VRAM)
750GB HDD (WD)
DVD Super Multi Drive
8GB DDR3 RAM
6 Cell Sanyo Battery
Win7 Home Premium

So far, the machine feels pretty solid. I originally found this forum because I was trying to find out whether hardware virtualisation was enabled in the BIOS or not. I run VMware Workstation and I bought this computer because of the i7 2620M processor. I didn't realise that hardware virtualisation was turned off in some BIOSes and could not be switched on!

Well, it looks like VT-x is enabled. I think... I am tempted to flash the custome BIOS from a few pages ago, but still haven't seen enough feedback to know if this is a good idea or not. Anyone?

Also, what is the difference between the T and the TG models?

 

Yes I have a 4830 tg fpr about two weeks now and my wear level ist at 8% and slightly increasing now after it went from 0% to 7% in just three cycles.
I really dont undertsand these Batteries
I will just wait for 1 or 2 months and see whats happening if the wear level is too high Ill just change my battery since I have a 6 months guarantee on it from acer

 

In the Timelines series, the TG Model designates a unit with dedicated graphics. A T model has integrated graphics only.

Bronsky

 

I have 3830TG and after 1 month of usage (around 15 cycles) the BateryCare shows wear level at 9.57%. When I use the notebook for 'normal work' (no gaming or other performance intensive tasks) it runs on the battery between 8-9 hours(I didn't do exact measure but I can if anyone is interested) so I don't see any big issue here.
It looks to me people are just doing too much panic about the batteries relying on the info from BaterryCare (and other software tools) which IMO doesn't need to be always in-line with reality.
I also found on the Acer official website this: "...Acer's PowerSmart long-life battery retains 80% capacity for more than 1,000 charge cycles, for up to 4 years of use...."
So when your battery wear goes above the 20% you should start to worry and call Acer IMHO.

 

Wow you're so lucky to get the i7 model, they does not offer the i7 model in my country.

T --> Timeline or TimelineX series with 8 hours battery life
G --> Discrete/Dedicated graphics, for example nVIDIA or ATi/AMD graphics
Z --> Cheaper model with lower-end spec, usually comes with Pentium processor

 

You still lucky.. my 3830TG is about one week and has 28-30% Battery Wear.

Yeah, and my battery wear is 28-30% now, one week old.

 

Too much panic? The people that are compaining see wear level around 20-30%, that's not acceptable.

And that's why people complain, because the wear level is over 20%, read the posts...

Aren't you going to exchange it? Or do you hope for some miracle to happen ?
I'll probably buy it again, but this time the cheaper model without 540m GT (maybe)

 

I will go to ACSC (Acer Customer Service Center) soon when I have time to complain about the Battery Wear, I hope they will understand..
I think no other notebook can match this, the only other small & light notebook with mid-powered graphics are only Sony VAIO SA/SB and Alienware M11x-R3 but both of them are very expensive, almost twice the price of this 3830TG.
If you don't plan to use it for gaming/design, I think no GT540M is no problem. I hope it will not have the Battery Wear issue.

 

If you discharge it completely, and charge it, and then it shows ~0% wear, then it's a reporting problem, not an actual problem with wear. My experience has been that many times a new battery doesn't properly report wear until three or four full discharge / recharge cycles.