I get my Ferrari 4005 tomorrow...

Yippeee!

It's the XP Home version but that is getting blatted when I get it home and I am installing XP Pro on it...

Anything I should watch out for?

Oh, I may write a review of it too if anyone wants to read it and if I have time... being that this is Christmas an' all

Anything in particular I should concentrate on that other reviews may have missed?

 

Congratulations - I'm loving my Ferraro 05! Eh out of curiosity, how come you're getting XP Home Edition? I thought they all came with Pro.

 

More is better.

 

Sorry to disappoint... but I am sending it back.

I hate it. It is really cheap and nasty.

The Carbon Fiber looks cool but that is it.

The red plastic on the sites is painted red... it's not even red in the first place.

The real reason though is the keyboard. The keys are too small and too close together and there is almost no feel.

My previous laptop was a HP NX7010 and the build quality of that one was great.

I would be using my laptop a lot and this one would drive me up the wall... so I am getting a refund.

So now it's back to the hunt again... any ideas? I am looking for a 15.4" screen with a res of 1680 x 1050 minimum and a graphics card that can play games... the X700 was perfect for what I needed and so was the screen, in fact the laptop would have been perfect apart from the stuff I mentioned.

 

Sorry to hear that, look at the Asus z70va, Alienware m5500, Asus z71v or Sager 5320. Asus z70va is probably the best build quality out of those.

 

Z70va would be my top choice.

 

Dude, are you returning your laptop just because the red stuff is painted ??

How wide is the keybord? From the pictures it seems to have an arched shape. The keyboard on my Toshiba Satellite 5205 is 28.8cm (divide by 2.54 to get it in inches) wide. I never considered it as too small. There are things that I don't like about it but being too small is not one of them.

 

wow! i dont own a ferrari but a less expensive acer aspire 2001 wich is wonderfull (old model). I have read probably all of the reviews of the ferrari4000 ( even the f3000) and "cheap and nasty" are two words a have never seen it described as. Is it really that bad?

 

I own a Ferrari 05 and the keyboard I just measured to be about 29.5 cm... I'm loving my Ferrari, heh

 

how about the laptop ive got practicly the same but screen isnt quite as high res.
How did you manage to get a refund, thats amazing, they could have easly said no because you simply changed your mind.

 

"Cheap and nasty" ? Wow, that's a bit strong... and from your post, I daresay totally undeserved given the quality of this machine.

I'm a Ferrari owner, have had my machine for about a month now, and I really like it so far! I find the keyboard fine to type on and do like the curved layout of the keys (but maybe that is because I also use 'natural' keyboards on other computers, too).

 

I just got a Ferrari 4005 last night. I am anal when it comes to quality and asthetics and IMO there is absolutely nothing "cheap or nasty" looking or feeling about the Ferrari 4005. Yes the sides are painted red but it is so smooth and glossy it looks like enamel. What would you expect the red sides to be made from anyway? The only thing that I do feel is a little cheap feeling with the Ferrari 4005 are the mouse buttons, they are clunky and make a cheap clicking noise when you push on them. Other than that minor thing everything else is a class act. Considering there is nothing perfect out there it is really such a minor issue I can overlook it. As a matter of fact it's so minor I don't know why Acer does not easily rectify it.

 

I picked up my ferrari 4002 nearly a week ago and all I can say is "I wish i could afford the 4005" blaming the keyboard is a lame reason for letting such an awsome machine go, I love the middle key on the mouse pad as it is great for spread sheets and other navigation. It does run a little hot when on my lap under load but this is not enough reason for me to send it back, I love the rubberised surface. And it easily played a 2hr movie in the car on a recent trip the kids loved it. I won't be sending mine back no way in deed

 

Ok... maybe I should qualify a few things... like where I'm coming from.

First of all, this is only my opinion... I am not forcing anyone to accept it and I am certainly not suggesting that it is the only opinion out there.

The reason I said what I said is this:

May years ago I got my first laptop when I was working for a company here in the UK. It was about 1999 and I was given a Toshiba Tecra (700Mhz P3 I think...) and it was a beauty. It had everything (11Mb Wireless built in with an on/off switch, 14" 1400 x 1050 screen - or thereabouts etc). It was top of the range and had a top of the range price to match - about £2000 or so at the time. It was great to use in that the keyboard had full size keys and they felt great (not suite as much feel as a good "proper" keyboard but still good nonetheless. Everything about this laptop shouted quality (as it should... it was sold as the top of the range).

Later this was replaced by a newer model (1Ghz P3) with pretty much the same spec as before. I bought this off the company when I left.

I used this until a couple of years ago when I was doing a contract for an HP reseller. They let me use a NX7000 while I was there... it was a cracker too. The screen res was 1680 x 1050 (15.4" widescreen) and the quality of it was perfect (no dead pixels). The keyboard was full size and the feel off it just oozed quality. I then bought a NX7010 from them when I left and this was the same (the screen res was only 1280 x 800 though). There was very little or no screen flex, the keyboard had no "bounce" to it and I could type all day with no problems.

Recently I have been doing a lot more programming on customer sites and I felt that the resolution on the NX7010 was a bit small... I missed the 1680 res. This was the start of my search for the ultimate laptop:

15.4" screen (1680 x 1050)
X700 graphics (or something similar even though I only play the odd game here and there but I would like something fairly modern)
The ability to support 2Gb RAM (the Hp's only handled 1Gb)
Hard drive size wasn't too important as I never kept any of my work on it anyway.

After much research, it came down to 2 - The Acer Ferrari 4005 and the Rock Pegasus 650.

I read leads of reviews on the Ferrari, professional and amateur reviews, but I could not find very many on the Rock machine. All the reviews, with the exception of a couple, made the Ferrari out to be the best laptop ever (I am exagerating here a bit but you get my meaning) so I had to take that on board.

Now, let's be clear. The Ferrari is sold as being a premium quality piece of kit and as such I expected it to come up to par with the others I owned and used in the past:

I loved the look... much better than the previous versions. The carbon fibre was really nice. It ticked all the boxes for me (not too big, nice and fast, not too hot etc...) but when I started using it I was extremely disappointed. I found the keyboard to dip by about 3mm on the bottom left corner, the screen leaked at the bottom left too. Some of the keys were in the wrong place (the backslash key is usually to the left of the "Z" key on a UK keyboard but it was on the right). The Enter key was tiny, the left and right Shift keys were both the wrong size (on a UK keyboard the one on the left should be smaller than the one on the right but they were the other way round on mine).

Ok, I may have had a dodgy one (with respect to the bouncy keyboard and the screen leak) but none of my other laptops had this...

Maybe I expected too much? Who knows.

Maybe I would have gotten used to it in time but should I really have to? Isn't technology supposed to bend to our will? Not the other way round. I never had that problem with the other laptops I had.

Maybe I should have explained myself a little better beforehand but I was so disappointed with the laptop. I expceted it to be better.

The reason that I managed to send it back for a full refund is due to a law that we have in the UK called the Distance Seling Regulations. They cover the consumer for purchases made over the phone, from a catalog, on the internet etc. They were brought in because you don't have the chance to play around with something before you buy it, like the way you can from a shop. Had I tried the Acer in a shop I would not have bought it.

As long as I sent it back in the original condition (the laptop cam in an outer, plain cardboard box with fancy black Ferrari one inside it.) I never damaged anything and never opened anything like the restore disks etc so they got it back in the same condition I got it (minus the outer box but that was a cheapo anyway).

So, here I am, without a laptop (I sold the NX7010! ).

But, I have been looking at maybe getting a 17" model... let me explain.

I as in a shop called PC World (it's the UK equivalent of something like Best Buy in America) and I saw some 17" laptops (maybe "laptop" is the wrong word!) and they were not as big as I thought.

I had a go at the HX Pavillion ZD8000 and I loved it. It was perfect (apart from the crap graphics card and the 1440 x 900 screen) but I loved the keyboard.

This got me thinking about 17" machines... to cut a long story short, I am probably going to get a Dell XPS Gen 2.

Anyway, I thought I should explain my earlier thread.

 

mickdoc, I am with you on this one. Now that you explained it in more detail I understand. I think acer ferrari 4005 is overpriced for what it offers.

Before you decide on Dell, you might want to check out the sager notebooks, www.discountlaptops.com or www.pctorque.com. I bought a dell 5300 2 years ago and I was so disappointed by the cheap quality of the screen (it had ghosting effects) and everything, that I returned it (every time I made calls to their customer service I had to wait for at least half an hour). I hope their xps line is better.

Also check out this page: http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/s...otebooks/hp_pavilion&storeName=computer_store

The dv8000z series come with 1680x1050 resolution, however this model is available only in US. I am not too sure about UK.

 

I have checked out Sager but I would have to get it delivered from the US. As for HP, they don't have anything with a decent graphics card and a decent screen...

It seems that in the UK we are quite limited.

 

Check out www.rockdirect.com. They are in UK.

 

Of course what one person thinks is great another might not like at all. Thats what makes horse racing! That said after the few days I'm using the Ferrari 4005 I find t the best laptop I've ever used. The display is downright gorgeous, actually I can't believe it's only a 15" display since it looks so much bigger. I guess I can chalk that up to the high resolution. I don't have the best eye sight by far but I used the Microsoft ClearType tuner and everything is super sharp, bright and clear. I love the keyboad, it's fully the equal of the 15" Powerbook and Thinkpad T42. Nothing comes close to the looks of the Ferrari 4005, the Powerbook is very nice in a different way but this Ferrari is a real class act. My one and only complaint are the trackpads mouse buttons, they make kind of a cheap click noise when pushed and they feel clunky compaired to the Thinkpads mouse buttons. That is the only complaint I have, even the fan noise doesn't bother me as it's just a soft woosh sound.. I had a Thinkpad T43p that drove me crazy it was so loud and annoying.