My Aspire 2012WLMi performance based mini review!

Okay, so I've had the thing for quite some time now (following the whole 1501LCe fiasco...do a forum search, you'll find it!) and am happy to say, I've started getting some real work done on it

Where to start.....well, firstly, it's one very attractive notebook, as you can quite easily tell from the many, gorgeous, drop shadowed pictures of it floating around on the net! There's some nice attention to detail, and the whole metallic silver w/black trims thing is very nice indeed - quite futuristic looking.

All the sockets are sensibly placed, and there's enough of them to expand functionality later. The only thing is that there is only one PCMCIA slot but that's a fair trade off for an amazingly thin chassis (did I mention it's about 1 and a quarter inches?!). I also had some issues with the onboard FireWire port. I can't say if this is device specific or not, but I'm not having any problems with device detection using my 1394 Cardbus adapter. There are 3 high speed USB2.0 ports ready to go, which is one less than the 1501LCe I ordered originally, but to be honest, it's more than enough. And should I ever need more, I'll invest in a hub.

Of course I couldn't leave out the stunning 15" WXGA widescreen TFT. The picture quality is superb, and there are no stuck pixels. The motion tracking is also surprisingly good for a laptop TFT - perhaps it has a higher than usual refresh rate.

Worth mentioning before I move on, is the kayboard placement. I've heard it said of alot of Acer notebooks, that the keyboard is placed to near to the screen. Sadly, this is the case with the 2012WLMi. Using it at a desk is quite uncomfortable, most probably because I need to find a better seating position. When used on your lap however, it's just fine.

Okay so that's some of the basic asthetic/design stuff out of the way. How does it perform?

Well this is hard to determine. My only point of reference is my last machine, which was a desktop AMD AthlonXP Barton Core 3000+ w/1Gb of RAM. Needless to say this was perfect for the work I do (audio recording and MIDI sequencing). The first notebook I ordered, the 1501LCe, was pretty much an exact match for that system, except it was 64 bit, and had only 512MB of RAM. Of course, I had problems with that 1501 and settled on the 2012 as a replacement. Naturally I was dubious when the manager claimed that a 1.5Ghz will give me similar performance....

Amazingly, however, it does. The 1.5Ghz Pentium M (not to be confused with Pentium 4 M) is indeed a powerful chip, despite it's relatively low clock speed, and even lower FSB speed. I wouldn't say it's entirely comparable to the AMDXP/64 3000+ though. It's more around the 2600 area of performance. As I said, my primary use for this laptop is music. Alot of what I do involves real time effects processing, and random access of multiple streaming wave files from hard disk. I'm pleased to say it handles this very well. A typical song on my old machine would use around 40-50%. The 2012 comes in more around 50-60%, but no stutters or dropouts. The only thing is, performance kind of drops away the nearer 80% you reach, at which point there's very little headroom. But this depends on the kind of processing you're doing.

Another factor in any kind of audio (or video) work is hard disk access times. So far as I know, the 60Gb HDD is only a 4200rpm, but so far - touch wood - I haven't encountered any disk access problems, and that's reading 10+ tracks of simultaneously streamed audio. I even managed to record succesfully to my external USB2.0 7200rpm 120GB! I forgot I'd left the record destination set to the external drive, but it made no difference whatsoever!

The only thing I would benefit from is more RAM, as 512 is really below average nowadays.

Of course, not everyone will be using it for music. Courtesy of the built in ATi Radeon 9700 Mobility w/64MB dedicated RAM, this is also an awesome games machine too! I can run UT2004 with everything turned to absolute maximum (but no Anti Aliasing or Anistropic Filtering) at a resolution of 1280x800, and it's perfectly playable. I'm even confident enough that it will handle the recently released Doom 3, although I've yet to find out for sure.

For general usage, this laptop flies. Windows start times are very low, and programs are responsive and snappy. All the usual suspects - Office, Media Player, IE operate quick and smooth, just as it should be.

CD/DVD burning is effortless, and the pre-insttalled NTI CD and DVD making software is extremely easy to use. Although it burns CDs at 16x, it certainly feels alot quicker.

And of course there's lots of other little features lurking in there as well; built in card reader, wireless LAN which can be activated or deactivated at the push of a very large glowing orange button! Which is very useful if, like me, you alternate between wireless and wired LAN.

I can't comment on battery life because...I don't use it on battery. It's most definitely going to spend 99% of the time on my desk, near my keyboard and guitars.

Anything negative to say? Well, it does run alot hotter than promised by the Intel marketing squad; the Pentium M is supposed to be the coolest, quietest notebook chip out there. While it is cooler and quieter than most, I'd still have a meal tray ready cos once this baby gets going, you're gunna have some seriously burnt legs! However, I've heard that the Pentium 4 notebooks (one of which I was offered) run even hotter than this, and thus have a shorter life expectancy. So I shouldn't grumble.

Also as I mentioned earlier, the onboard 1394 is temporamental to say the least. Sometimes it would pick up my external soundcard, other times it wouldn't. Or it would see it...but knock out my USB2 HDD. Life is much easier with my 1394 cardbus adapter, although I can't see how or why...cos they both utilise the same chipset. Oh well.

The keyboard placement is a bit of a pain. I'm using this as a desktop replacement, and so it will spend alot of time...on my desk. So I've still got to work out a more...ergonomic solution regarding positioning, seat height, etc.

So, overall? Very impressed. The 2012WLMi is proof that clock speed is no longer an accurate way of measuring performance. It holds its own up against the better mid level processors out there, and provides enough power for a multitude of needs. Of course, how long this remains the case cannot be said for sure, what with the Dothan gradually replacing Banias. In these crazy days of 1000+mhz FSB speeds, the 2012 with its 400Mhz FSB may seem inadequate to some. But don't be fooled by the "on paper" figures. Try one out for yourself, and you'll be pleasantly surprised. As I said earlier, I really think the higher 2012 models would benefit greatly from 1Gb of RAM, but I'm upgrading next month and am positive that this thing will absolutely OWN once I've done that.

Bottom line - it's powerful, stylish, and portable. What more could you possibly ask for?

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chimp_spanner Notebook Enthusiast

chimp_spanner Notebook Enthusiast