Travelmate 8200 available for pre-order.

Yes please review, and don't skip out the details.

How does the lid and case compare to other laptops,
How does it look, feel compared to the macs.
How fast does this baby boot? You know, stuff like that. Does it get too hot for a lap? Thanks, I can't wait to get mine from NCIX.

 

i ordered mine from ncix.com now.. lets hope it comes in soon !!

 

I just read a review on cnet .. with a little video clip:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Acer_TravelM...-31679411.html

I am just surprised that they gave her a 7.7 .. I mean I have seen them giving 8 and up for worse laptops.

ANyways for those who are going to be reviewing their new toys , could you guys do the rest of us a favor and run two sets of battery tests:

1) with USB devices plugged in
2) without USB devices plugged in.

I am wondering if the battery life will go up 4.5+ hours if there are no USB devices.

thanks

Nick

 

I will work on a full review with picture over the weekend, but here are some first impressions.

Out of the box this laptop is one of the nicest looking laptops I have seen. But while a sexy appearance is nice, isn't it what is on the inside that matters? One other note, in looking at this laptop, it looks almost as big as my 17 inch laptop, for the full review I will get pictures with a few laptops to give a size perspective. One last note, the lid fingerprints very easily, luckily they included a cleaning cloth (for the screen) that helped clean up the case.

The laptop seems to come up rather quickly, I have not timed it, but it has not seemed like I have ever been sitting there waiting on it to come up. I read through must of the basic print manuals included with the laptop (they are not overly thorough), and it is safe to say that the manuals were not written in an English speaking country, but they do get the message across. One thing I noticed that suprised me was that a shortcut on the desktop was incorrectly named. Acer uses PlatinumSecret for the smart card security, but the desktop icon says Plantinum Secret (folder on the hard drive was also incorrectly named). Little things like that I find highly annoying, but again, I bought this laptop for performance, and a misspelled name has no impact upon performance.

First thing out of the box I had to do two updates via windows updates, I was amazed, did a manufacturer actually preload all the recent updates on a laptop. The answer is no. Going back to windows update I had 30 or so updates to install, luckily that did not take too long.

Next up was installing the applications I needed. I did have a few problems with network connectivity until I joined the laptop to my domain, it seems that when I entered that information in the initial setup it did not aplly it. After joining the domain network connectivity was just fine. I have now installed Office, Visio, SQL Server, MSDN, Visual Studio Team System, and various dot net third party controls. In case you cannot guess, this laptop will be used for development work. All the setups ran smoothly and fairly quickly.

Today I should be able to finish doing all the installations and configurations I need on this laptop and actually start to use it. The only spec I do not like on the laptop is the 5400 rpm hard drive, I have replaced drives in my other laptops with 7200 rpm drives. I would have sacrificed drive capcaity for more speed, much needed with SQL Server.

So far this laptop seems like a very good piece of hardware and I have no disappointments with it yet. Over the weekend I will try to post a full review on a different thread for everyone to see.

 

Thanks for the initial reactions, it's nice to see that I'm not the only one that's getting it for development . I'm really glad to hear that they include a cleaning cloth for the screen, my current one is dirty as all get up and I've never taken the time to figure out what is okay to clean it with. I'm looking forward to the review but take your time with it so that we get quality


Now if only Canadian stores would start to get this laptop in.

Oh yeah I just remembered one big quesiton of mine. How are is(are) the fan(s)?

 

So far the fans have been rather quiet, will have more in the full review. I hear more fan noise from an Apple Dual G5 and and HP zd7000 that are running in my office than the Acer, but then again, I have not really taxed the machine. Of course those other machines should have been loafing too...

 

I'm also most curious about the USB/Battery life thing.
Any chance of loading up a Linux bootable CD to see whether the problem is truely MS or the hardware. i.e. make up a bootable Linux CD, boot it with that, run the computer till the battery runs out, then charge it up and plug in something USB that doesn't use any USB power to run and run the computer till the battery runs out and see what the difference is. It's quite an operation and you'd need some piece of Linux software that constantly accesses the USB device, and some USB device with an external psu... But hey - this is what everyone in the world is waiting to find out!
(I'm still amazed no one has done this yet - least of all Tom's Hardware!)

 

Can u elaborate on the connectivity problems?
I'm having a serious WIRED LAN problem on my TM8204..
Surfing via IE is fine with wireless, but when i switch to wired lan..
it will show "Connecting to www.blahblah.com" and get stuck there..
i can ping and got a valid ip and resolves DNS properly..

Have no idea whats wrong.. i've not touched any settings nor installed any s/w..
everything is still stock from factory..
Even tried recovering factory default settings a few times, same prob..

 

Are you behind a firewall? Maybe from your provider/work/school network? Sometimes they require you to enter specific settings for you to be able to connect.

 

Nope, definitely not..
Settings were clean, i've checked..
it's some god **** weird problem..

I even tried direct connection to a cable modem, instead of behind a router..
same results..

The page would load sometimes, but extremely slow..

 

I had the same problem with my laptop, it turns out the wire was getting loose and didn't like my NIC, or my NIC didn't like the wire anymore. I replaced the wire and everybody was happy. Well, I was happy, I don't know if machines can feel or not.

 

So any reviews from end users yet, as I sit here twiching waiting for my new laptop to arrive *twitch twitch*

Can't wait to try my own, but until then let me live vicariously... how are people finding there new 8204's, is it good, what's bad, what's downright ugly, is the heat a problem (the one thing I saw on a review was palm rest and bottom of laptop get hot) how's the noise, does it seem fast (compared to what?) etc etc

 

http://cupidscreamery.com/8200/

 

Just got mine a couple of hours ago. Nice-looking machine, though I think I may be spoiled by my last two being Fujitsus: the optical drive door is a little funky-fitting getting it to latch. Display is beautiful and the machine seems pretty snappy. Haven't had much time to play with it since I'm working and also cross-loading lots of software from my old laptop.

Here's to you getting yours soon.

- Ed

 

I checked that it's available on NCIX's website, I am hoping that they will ship it out soon.

 

Just bought mine, with shipping, for $2364.40 USD! I pre-ordered with Bytewize and ETA to my doorstep is 13 days. I can't wait. You can get in on their 3rd shipment if you order soon. They are selling very quickly I was told. BTW, to anyone that is confused, the 8200 and 8204 are the exact same thing, some retailers just haven't updated the model number since Acer initially told them 8200 when technically it is now called 8204.

:centrino: DUAL CORE BABY!

 

Just called NCIX today, still no ETA. The fact that they still don't even have an ETA bothers me.

 

I emailed the British Columbia rep for Acer and he said the 8204 should arrive in British Columbia on the 15th of February. As NCIX has their main wearhouse in BC I'm guessing you'll have to wait until the 15th, at least! Unless of course it arrives in their Toronto wearhouse sooner....

 

I just picked up my 8204 yesterday from a local distributor here in Calgary, Alberta. So far I love it! I did have the weird NIC issue, but it seems to have resolved itself.

 

Hi all after a confusing afternoon I found out that NCIX is getting the 8204 in either today or on Monday and will be shipping them out as soon as they come in. If it actually comes to my house I will be very happy that I saved some money . Good luck to all that are looking yet. :acer:

 

Pros: It's fast, like really fast. Smokes my Athlon 64 4000+ (single core) desktop in (subjective) normal use. Great Screen - looks somehat half-way between the really reflective screens and the matt finish screens. Great color & contrast, much brighter than my old Dell 15.4" UXGA. Don't forget to wind up the AVIVO color control to get the best picture. Decent 3D Graphics - can play pretty much anything, but you won't be able to run max res/all features on the newest games. Plenty of RAM - 2GB standard Big hard drive - 120GB SATA standard

Cons: 120GB Hard Drive is only 5400 RPM, and is noticeably the slowest component in the system. I know that sounds like a foregone conclusion, but given the speed of everything else, it's even more noticeable then you might expect. 2GB RAM is only 533MHz, not the max 667MHz supported by the chipset. 3D graphics are good, but not super. But hey this isn't a 2" thick DTR with 30mins battery life either I guess. Cooling air fires striaght into your right mousing hand, and is continuosly pumping out hot air. Great on cold mornings I suppose, but not welcome in hotter ambient temps. With a 7200 RPM drive, and faster RAM I probably would have given this 10 for performance (forgiving the 3D performance becuase it's not a DTR class machine), value also goes down to 9 because of this. Design only gets a 9 due to the hot-right-hand effect. Service and support only gets an 8 due to the poor English skills of the local Acer people.

 

The specifications show the 2GB to be 2X1GB DDR2 667MHz sticks... ???

 

andejp12 said: Hi all after a confusing afternoon I found out that NCIX is getting the 8204 in either today or on Monday and will be shipping them out as soon as they come in. If it actually comes to my house I will be very happy that I saved some money . Good luck to all that are looking yet.

Lol I finnally decide to preorder one with Bytewize after waiting for an ETA from NCIX forever and the next day I read this....... OH well, irony at its best...

 

The specs seem to vary depending on where you look - some sites show it as 667MHz DDR2, some show it as 533MHz DDR2,and some just don't specify the RAM speed at all.

Mine definately came with 533MHz DDR2 (SE Asia model). Perhaps worth verifying before you order.

 

See attached CPU-Z screenshots for confirmation

 

The URL got truncated. Here's the proper one
http://reviews.cnet.com/Acer_TravelMate_8200/4505-3121_7-31679411-2.html

 

I called NCIX today and they still don't have an ETA yet. I decided to drop the order. Maybe I'll find another site to get it for a decent price.

 

Yeah, NCIX has really dropped the ball IMO, I'd start hunting again because prices are going up again....I got mine from Bytewize...it was around $2300 USD with shipping...so good luck!