My New Acer 5580...a Surprise Right Out of the Box!

I don't know how or why, but...

I bought my Acer 5580 last week for a really good price ($649 CAD with a coupon I have redeemed since). Specs online, in-store and printed right on the spec label on the laptop itself are as follows:

Processor Type Intel Core 2 Duo T5300
Screen Size 14.1"
RAM (Preloaded / Maximum) 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM (Exp. To 4GB)
Hard Drive 120GB (5400RPM)
Optical Drives 8X Super Multi Double Layer DVD
Graphics Intel GMA 950 With 224MB Shared Memory
Average Battery Life Up To 3 Hours
Product Weight 2.4 kg
Audio Type Intel High Definition Audio Support
Battery Type Lithium-Ion
Cache 2MB L2
Fax/Modem 56K V.92
I/O Ports See The Features Section
Included In Box Not Provided By Manufacturer
Network Card 10/100 Ethrenet, 802.11a/b/g WLAN
Other Software See The Features Section
PC Card Slots 1 x Type II
Pointing Device Touchpad
Preloaded Operating System Windows Vista Home Premium
Processor Speed 1.73GHz
Product Dimensions 34.1(W) x 3.5(H) x 25.1(D) cm
Removable Storage 5-In-1 Card Reader
Screen Type Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD
Speakers Acer
System Bus 533MHz

Here is where it gets interesting.

I ran Syspec...strange results. I ran the Acer hardware manager...strange results. They are as follows:

Manufacturer Acer, inc.
Product Name Aspire 5580
Operating System Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Chipset Intel 955XM/945GM/PM/GMS/940GML
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500 @ 1.66GHz Bus Speed 667mhz
System Memory 1 GB
Hard Drive 1 Hitachi HTS541612J9SA00 ATA Device, 111.79 GB
CD/DVD Drive 1 HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T10N ATA Device
Video Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family
Video Memory 224 MB
Audio Realtek High Definition Audio
Ethernet Card 1 Marvell Yukon 88E8038 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller
Wireless LAN Card 1 Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection

It seems I have nicer guts than I was supposed to have.

Does this happen often? How cool is this?

 

the only difference i see is the T5500 instead of the T5300.

Am i wrong or:
Intel T5300 = 1.73 GHz
Intel T5500 = 1.66 GHz

if this is true (google it) then you got less actually... but i'm not sure

 

No, the mega-hertz is not the only measure of power.
@OP : Now it's all about morality...

 

congratulation for new laptop
hopefully it serve you will as u want and really nice price for that
see that more people love acer

 

Well, I'm sure Future Shop has better things to do than track this "problem" down. I'll just enjoy what I've got...plus I have very low morals .

From what I've read, the setup I actually have is the better setup. Clock speed is a bit slower but system bus speed is higher...apparently I have the better setup.

Do I?

 

yep, you can use faster ram... 667mhz rather than factory installed 533mhz...

enjoy, good luck, with any luck won't have to deal with acer support...

 

This thing happens quite often with Acer. I dont know why such a thing happens but it can go either way. Sometimes it becomes a free upgrade while sometimes it happens to be a downgrade.

 

I'm having a similar "problem" with an Acer 5630 6966 I just received from Tigerdirect. It was supposed to ship with a 1.73GHz T5300 with a 533Mhz FSB, but the BIOS, the Device Manager and the Intel's Processor ID utility report a 1.66GHz T5500 with a 667Mhz FSB. It maybe a gift or a glitch. Maybe this is an issue with the Acer BIOS that came pre-installed. The T5300 processor was supposed to be released Q1 2007 while the T5500 was released in August 2006. I might be going on a limb here, but BIOS 3.50 was released in May 2007 by Acer, it is possible that when the BIOS was released it did not have support for this new "similar" processor.

Has anyone out there figured this one out?