Review of my 1681 Wlmi (long)

Ok, I've owned my 1681 for the past week or so now, while I haven't put it on any major tests yet I've tried out a lot of the features built in it and these are my observations re: this unit.

First like I mentioned before in other posts, I didn't buy this unit brand new but it pretty well is. I got it on ebay from a member that bought it only about 2 weeks before she had to sell it. I received it like it was a brand new unit, everything was included and packaged like I got it from newegg (where she got it, I have original receipt).

I opened up the unit and was very impressed, the LT was well put together and looked very stylish, it had a nice weight to it. While I did wish that it would be a little lighter than what it is there were features that I didn't want to go without and was willing to accept the extra bit of heft that the unit has.

The widescreen is beautiful!!!! For a laptop a 15.4" WS is just the ticket between size and viewing area. My screen looks crisp and bright, no dead pixels that I can see and images that I bring up on it look very nice. I am very happy I went with this choice for viewing size.

The keyboard for me took a little bit of getting used to, all the keys work good but I guess I've spent too much time on my desktop and was used to keying on an actual desktop kb. The first few days on it I was making typos galore, I have to admit that I was getting a bit ticked at this. I wasn't sure if it was me or the keyboard was f-ing up but after a bit more time with it I can say that it's better and I'm getting used to it. I still make the occasional typo that I feel I wouldn't make if I was using my desktop so I guess I need more time on the unit. The palm rests are ok but I guess they're the same on all LT's, just an area to rest your wrists while typing.

The touchpad is nice, having not really used a laptop before it took a while for me to get used to that too. I didn't know about the touch feature instead of using the left or right buttons so the first little while I was "clicking" on something that I didn't mean to but I figured it out pretty quickly. I have since purchased a wireless notebook mouse and use that a lot more than I do the touchpad, guess I'm just paranoid about wearing out the touchpad or something. Given the choice at home I would use my mouse over the touchpad.

The disc drive bay works nice, the bay in my eyes is a bit flimsy and sometimes getting a disc on or off properly means you have to put a bit of pressure on the hub, something that I'm not that fond of doing so I use a lot of caution here, taking my time to make sure the disc goes on or off without too much pressure on the bay. Perhaps with time discs and the hub centre will loosen up a bit making disc removal and install easier. The Acer programs that run the drive work well. There isn't a lot of features with those programs, just the basics to playing the disc that you want to play. I do like the psychedelic program you can run if you're listening to a cd but I guess for most people they would pop a cd in and work on a program or something. We won't mention the sound from the speakers, we all know about that. On the 1681 they are stereo contary to what acer says on their website. Let's just say they do the job and if you want better sound use headphones and leave it at that.

The hardware that comes with the unit is impressive for the price you pay for this unit, a comparable LT with the same features would run a lot more from another company so I'm trying to find out where Acer is skimping out on to be able to sell this LT for the price it goes for new but I can't find it. It's not built cheap, looks good and works well. Sure the battery thing is an issue but another LT manufacturer may have a longer lasting battery with their LT but maybe not a dedicated video card or a DVD burner so you can see what I'm getting at. The software that comes with the unit are nice and since I'm not doing any major processing or serious work with my LT they serve my needs. I've loaded in a couple games to test out the LT and they all work flawlessly. While I didn't buy this laptop for gaming I installed some games that I could play if I were going on a trip and want to kill some time so in that regard I have no problems. The built in card reader is fantastic!!!! I love the fact that I can take pics with my digi cam, pop the SD card in the reader and see my pics on a nice sized screen instead of the screen on the back of the camera or wait till I come home from a trip. Yes chances are good that when I travel "lappy" will be making the trek with me.

On to internet, I don't have high speed at home so it's dial-up for me (yeah call me ancient). The modem works good, connects at a slightly slower rate than my desktop but the faster processor of the Centrino makes up for it in loading pages. Certain ebay pages now take forever to load on my desktop but when using the LT they load up faster. I may get high speed in the near future so when I do there'll be a router in there for me to go wireless. AFA wireless, tomorrow I'm taking the LT with me to several hotspots and trying that part of it out so I'll report on that later.

So as you can tell, I'm pretty favorable towards my 1681, for the price I paid I got a great laptop that works flawlessly and will serve me well for a while to come. There are some things I don't like about it but they're pretty minor. The drive bay door is right where I would usually grab to pick up the laptop (on either side in the middle). I've already mentioned the flimsy bay door so picking up the laptop there is iffy for me. When I pick it up I get it by the corners then get the middle on the right side and eventually transfer my hand to the middle at the rear of the unit. Speakers, well it's a laptop so let's just stop there, at least they are stereo. Finally the battery life, nothing the 8 cell battery won't fix.

In the near future, I actually want to start fresh with this laptop so I'm going to reformat the HD and do just 1 partition, I plan to install XP pro (already bought it) and maybe look into getting more ram (up to 1 gig on 1 dimm) and of course the longer lasting battery and then just enjoy using it. It's a lot better being connected sitting on the living room couch than being stuck in a room where the desktop is.

Overall, the 1681Wlmi is a great laptop for a great price (even if you paid regular or internet store prices), 2 thumbs up from me!!!!! Hope this helps some of you deciding if this LT is for you.

Tony

T. Chan

Ultinet desktop P3 450Mhz
Acer 1681WLMi, arriving this week

 

nice review but for how much did u get it for? the price?

 

I got it for $1200 USD including shipping from Florida (where the lady lives) to Buffalo where I wanted it shipped to my friend's place for me to pick it up last weekend. A brand new 1681Wlmi up here in Toronto goes for around C$1900 + 15% tax so you can figure out how much I saved.

I brought it back into Canada tax and duty free last weekend with help from another sales invoice done for me by the seller for a lower amount.

T. Chan

Ultinet desktop P3 450Mhz

Acer 1681WLMi

 

Not bad good for you. I just bought the new Aspire 1683WLMi (1.7Ghz Dothan, with Bluetooth) for $1500 USD brand new with the carrycase, I feel I got a good deal. But the prob is its stuck in the middle east with my friend. I ve got to figure out a way now to get it back here quick. Though he can bring it when he comes only next month!

 

Well, tried out Centrino-ing today downtown at some free wifi hotspots, the LT worked like a charm. Turned the unit on, it picked up the signal and I went to the hotspot provider's website, signed up and I was on. It took only a couple mins and I was online smurfing away. [ ][8D]

T. Chan

Ultinet desktop P3 450Mhz

Acer 1681WLMi

 

i have the same model and i am very happy with it too
very happy with the performance and its design...

only thing im not happy with is the optical drive;it gets very noisy when reading cds..

also battery decreases while it is plugged in, i couldnt figure it out why, i've mailed to acer about this issue, we will see..

i recommend this laptop to anyone its great..

 

I like mine aswell. Accept it gets real hot, not able to have it on my lap.

Acer Aspire 1681WLMi Owner

 

Please could you try to do a benchmark of 1681?
Sandra it's ok at all.

Processor
Memory
Hard disk
Videocard

Thanks



I suppose so!

 

Hi, I bought one of these laptops 3 weeks ago and I am quite happy with it. However I have a bad experience with the optical drive.

When I try to burn DVD I get a lot of problems. I tried with Ultron DVD-R 2x and now I am using them as coasters I supposed that they where very bad quality DVD so I moved to Verbatim, with DVD-R 4x (the ones with a film style) and I succeeded at the second attempt but then the most of the times the unit stays for years trying to recognize DVD (both, the burnt and the blank one).

Then, I thought that possiby I would have better luck trying with DVD+R so I bought Verbatim DVD+R 4x. The unit recognizes them quite fast (not without doing "floppy like" noises ) but when I try to burn a DVD with Nero6 or NTI CD&DVD maker I get an error just before beginnig to write and can't continue.

I don't know if it's a problem of the unit or if my DVDs are so bad (I don't want to become a different brand DVD collector).

Could anybody help me?

Thanks.

 

Cman, thanks for your great review on the Acer 1681, this is a great resource for those looking to buy this notebook. Oh, and a good lesson in how to go across the border to save money. Kind of ironic how old people in the U.S. run across the border to buy cheap RX drugs in CA while younger people from CA run south to the U.S. to buy cheap electronics.

Ahhh, neighborly love.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by tomasjoad

 

i heard that dvd writer was picy thats why i bought a kodak dvd-r and it worked just fine...i am still very happy with the laptop

 

I also had problems with my DVD burner. When i bought the laptop I tried to burn a CDR, only one of four attempts was success. Then the drive didn't even want to read cd. I've sent my computer to service, and right now I'm still waiting to get it back.

 

Hi,

I have no problem writing cd's, only with DVD. I think that those SOSW 852 are not all the robust they may be. To have it repaired, you take the computer to the place you bought it or where?

Thank you.

 

Another question for all the gurus [ ]. I've readed that the hidden partition is used to recover the hard drive to factory settings and it holds a small linux distro to control the cd player (the one that allows you to play a CD without booting), is that true? Is there such a CD player in this model? Because I have found no information about it. It's is possible to restore only with the restoring cd's? I wanted to format an install suse and probably win xp in ntfs and I was wondering wether is there any problem deleting the hidden partition.

Thanks. See you.

 

Yes I took it to the store where i had bought it, they probably send the computer to acer's service.

 

Today I've received an email from acer, asking me to update my NTI software which has also installed a new ASPI driver and surprisingly I got a DVD+R 4x burnt without problems.

The link is http://www.ntius.com/default.asp?p=support/acer_sw so if you have any problem try this before panic

I'll have to do extensive tests to check the reliability of this new driver.

 

After several tests, I had lot of problems with both, the new and the old drivers so no way with thiis burner, I'll have to get it repaired. Could anybody tell me the mean time taht it takes to repair such a problem aprox.? I'll take directly to the Acer center of my country.

Thank you.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Cman

 

Some of the 1680 models comes with dvd ram .HL-DT-ST and there is no problem with these models

 

Hi,

I've taken the notebook to repair and they've told me that it was quite strange that the DVD fails. So probably it's only my bad luck : )

Unfortunately it took 15 days to get it repaired as they had no the DVD as a spare part (on XMas this computer was a new model). Probably now the things are better.

Hope it helps.