Any experience/probs with 4502LMI please?

I am finding very little about this particular Acer model, the 4502LMI. Any good/bad experiences from anyone?

I am very interested in the screen adn whether the integrated graphics card is ok for everyday stuff and DVD watching... I would like to play an occassional game too, but it would not be farcry and such likes. Any advice welcome! Thanks

 

I have the Acer 4502LMI. As far as the screen goes, it's fine for everyday use and DVD movies. It comes with the video memory set to 16 mb minimum in the BIOS and can share as much as 64 mb. You can change the video memory MINIMUM to either 8, 16, or 32 mb in the BIOS. Dvd's look great at stock settings. I am not a gamer, so I can't speak to that.
The only problem I had was 4 days after I got it, the Hitachi 80GB hard drive died. Acer was great in responding. They picked it up on Monday, shipped it halfway across the country to Texas, and had it back to me on Friday with all the updated software installed. Battery life is excellent at approx 4 hrs. The only thing I may do down the road is add a faster hard drive, maybe one of the 7200rpm drives. System does not get hot all doing everyday stuff, e-mail, spreadsheets, DVD's etc.
Any other questions, ask and I'll give you my two cents.

 

croth56, thanks so much for your quick and positive reply! Glad to hear that the graphics are acceptable - just out of interest, do you have your settings at 64mb or is it quite ok with 32? Obviously, I'll fiddle with that once I get it, but I am assuming that giving all 64mb still leaves you with 448mb (if my mental arithmetic is up to scratch!).

Just one more question, about the included hard drive - how many rpm is it? Thank you again for your help croth.

 

It comes set at 16mb default. This works just fine running DVD's. The setting in the BIOS is for setting the minimum setting only. I guess it will utilize the 64 mb only if whatever your running requires it. I set the minmum to 32mb and didn't notice any difference in the stuff that I do such as spreadsheets and DVD's.
When you go to display settings, advance , intel extreme graphics tab, you see an information tab. Here it list the minimum and maximum video memory available. Mine is currently set on 16 mb min and 64 mb max. The BIOS only allows you to set the minimum. It runs great set at the default settings. Again, I have not tried any games. I suppose you would want to up the minimum if you did that.
Anyway, other than the hard drive deal, I've been happy with the unit.

 

hard drive is 80 GB, 4200 rpm, 8mb cache Hitachi

 

Thanks so much for your help. I should be getting it in just over a week and am now really looking forward to it. This will be my first laptop! Like you, I think I will get a faster hard disk when I get the chance - although I will also use my current one as external backup - its 120gig and 7200rpms, so should be fine. Just one last question - what sort of RAM chip does it have - 2700, 3200...? Thank you again for all your help...

 

PC 2700, DDR 333

 

Thanks a lot croth! Maybe its worth doing a little feature on the laptop - I might write up a little review once I get the laptop, as its so hard to find any info on it...