My First owned Laptop Acer 4810TZ & a small review

The design looks simply beautiful. The silver lid and the gun metal color inside is awsome. The dark colors inside will help in not causing any strain for your eyes even after working for long time.

The touchpad too has a matte finish, making it easy to use. It is very responsive. The scroll and zoom gestures helps a lot in reducing the effort though am not convinced with the third gesture, would be good if this gesture could be used for something better.

Option to turn off/on the bluetooth and wifi via the buttons/touch buttons is really good, I had trouble with some other laptops trying to find out how to do this.

The option to turnoff the screen helps conserve energy, while listening to music or doing some activity which do not need any human intervention. The screen is bright enough. I keep it at the lowest brightness while working, without any issues.

3 year warranty cost just Rs 3500/- (approx. 75$ ). The base of the laptop looks extremely solid.

The power backup last close to 9 hrs as advertised. It power downs any device that is not used, a smart way to do it.

Though the ad may make you feel that you don't have to carry the charger it may not be all true. Using the bluetooth, WiFi or CD/DVD drive can eat away the power. So if you are to stay outside for more than 5 or 6 hrs and may use one of these devices for more than an hour or two, its better to keep the charger. But well the charger is not a brick. Not sure how much it weighs, but it is quite light compared to the Dell.

The charging time is not convincing, 3hrs and 20 minutes was required to charge the battery from 10% to 100%. If you work at office/travel, you may have to keep the laptop on charging mode the moment you get back home.


Below are the time of power remaining for the activity listed

With DVD/CD running : 5.5 hrs for 93%
with usb plugged in and music playing from the hdd : 7.5 hrs for 93%
with network cable plugged in and music playing from the hdd : 7.5 hrs for 92% (The same is showing 2 hrs 30 min right now for 59%, thats way inconsistent)
With bluetooth on and music playing from the hdd : 6.0 hrs for 91%*
with music playing from the hdd : 7.5 hrs for 89%
with wifi on and active usage : 6.1 hrs for 68% (The battery meter moves up and down by about 60 min. It may be depending on the usage. The value I qouted is the maximum it showed)


Disclaimer: The values are approximate and need not be exact.


The battery meter turns a bit time to update to the correct value, give it a minute and be a bit patient. It showed 9hrs 20 min at 89% for me today when I was just using the machine for casual works.

* There was no bluetooth device with me to check how the power remaining would be while actively using the device.

Be a bit careful with the lid of the laptop, it not that solid like the base. Apply a little force on the lid and you can feel what i mean. Unless you want to drop the laptop or want to try your muscle power, it may not be a problem, but be really nice to it

The keyboard design looks good, the chiclets design is different from the usual laptop keyboards i have seen. The typing is easy with out any issues.Till now I haven't accidentally pressed two keys together. Rather than a slight curve down design the key has a flat design. The keys seems to be able to go down even if you do not touch it in its middle, but this also gives a feeling that the keys are slightly off balance.Rather than pressing the key just try to feel the key and you will get what i mean.

For some serious works, be sure to get a double core processor otherwise you may regret about it in a year or two down. But for business users or people with some casual works, the single core is more than good enough. I have a SU4100 processor. I have run some IDEs for JAVA J2EE development inside a Sun Virtual Box VM and doesn't seem to have any issues. I look forward to upgrade the RAM to 4 Gb as 2 Gb would not be enough for me. My VM itself need to be provided with near 2 Gb. When using the VM, the processor more often reached the 50-70% utilization.

The laptop runs pretty cool. The only place I felt slightly warm (Compared to other laptops I have worked on, even this must be termed as cool) was the vent on the left near the lid, but that too after making the processor do some serious work for long time.


Things I wished to be modified
1. The second touch sense button which opens up the backup manager. I hope to configure it for something better
2. The third gesture changes the View of a folder. I do not prefer it. Is there any way to configure this gesture for something else
3. Note that I have not mentioned anything about the tocuhpad on/off button. My hands always stays off the touchpad, so it does not makes sense for me, I would like to reconfigure it too for something better
4. The WiFi is switched on by default. Need to make this manual.
5. Scrolling left and right, is there any option for this

See the Passmark rating for the machine in the attached thumbnail.

This is my first laptop and am simply loving it. I thank all the participants on this forum for their valuable inputs. Hope you liked my review, a first attempt.

 

well done mate


but could you include the exact specs of your new beast, as least the RAM size, HD type and Size and Processor type... as these vary across the world

 

Opps sorry for the long delay....Was too busy.....I thought the info would come in my sig. chee

ok now its in my Sig

 

@JimmyJ
A very nice and content review. Indeed, very helpful for me. This is the model I am looking to buy. Just waiting so that I get Windows 7 along with it. Did you buy it in Bangalore? Could you tell me which shop and the price you paid for it?

Thanks.

 

Is this laptop good enough to play 720p HD videos?