Some thoughts on new 5536-5883 and maybe a couple questions :)

Hi everyone, just joined up finally last week after snapping while Newegg had the Aspire 5536-5883 on sale for $399.99 plus some Bing cashback.

The previous laptop seemed to die this spring and was an ancient P3 Compaq. So something new should be better

First Impressions and Positives:

Got it in last week and it has really grown on me since then. My initial impression was that it was a bit plasticky but overall I have changed my tune since then. The finish is nice and doesn't pick up fingerprints, with the exception of the entire screen and outer shell behind the screen. Also, the status lights are very discrete and not overwhelming.

The screen itself is beautiful, very bright, and a nice resolution. Haven't done much graphics wise other than toss in a movie, as the GPU is the onboard HD 3200. I am familiar with it from my desktop, I gave it a good thrashing before throwing my HD 4670 into that...decent enough especially for older games.

The CPU is certainly snappy enough, dual core Athlon 2.1GHz, which fits in well in this household (the HTPC is X2 1.9 45W, the wife's is X2 2.2, mine is an X2 2.6 45W). It does seem to run pretty warm at times the highest I've seen it is 76C. Usually chillin around mid-40s though.

The keyboard is nice, I didn't like the completely flat keys initially but they are nice once you play with it awhile--and the num keypad is a nice bonus. Really don't like the Fn key where it is though--keep hitting that instead of control. The touchpad is okay, multi touch can be screwy, especially with the not very distinctive edges of the touchpad. It blends into the palmrest and if you have one thumb over the trackpad buttons it seems to catch the pad sensor every now and then. We have a Kensington mini wireless usb mouse though so I just disable it and go.

The DVD drive works, though my wife thinks it's flimsy. I just think it's a notebook drive, it's not meant to double as a drink holder. I like all the connectivity (HDMI & VGA, 4 USB, modem, Gb LAN, and b/g/draft-n). No eSATA, Firewire, or Expresscard, but for me not a big deal. No Bluetooth wouldn't be an issue except for the button reminding me it's not on here.

Issues:

Loads of crap pre-installed. Hopefully Acer can start getting rid of some of this stuff as they get bigger. Also had an issue where the wireless got messed up somehow (read: left wife alone with laptop for a day) and ended up spending this Saturday watching football while restoring the OS and then uninstalling crap/reinstalling good stuff.

Acer's support website is terrible. Lots of extra clicking, broken pages, no info, models not listed, kind of par for the course but another thing hopefully they work on.

Hardware wise I wonder how the screen hinges will hold up.

Questions:

Anyone know if it is possible to add Bluetooth internally to this thing? Looked inside the HD & memory bays and nothing looks like it's just begging to get something plugged in. Don't even know if the motherboard has a plug for it (though the button does give the screen indicator of bt with an X for n/a).

And one that goes with that question, is this chassis used by other models (so I could maybe find a guide to teardown)?



Newegg link for info purposes: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115572

Probably getting a Timeline this winter sometime for me, the wife will use this mostly, bought Office 2007 Ultimate with her student discount and threw it on here for her. Should be more than fine for her purposes (web, music, papers, solitaire type games).