how good is the Acer Aspire 5680-6123?

it's got amazing specs for the price...I believe I read somewhere that Acer cuts corners with the 7600's and they're only 64bit memory instead of 128bit. obviously corners are cut somewhere, being you get so much for so little. I'm impressed with a lot of Acer's 14" models, the LCD has almost no flex, the larger they go, the worse it gets, which bugs me.

I haven't seen any, but does Acer have any good 14" models with a decent graphics solution? all I want it to do is run Vista in all it's glory and be able to play HL2 and it's siblings (ep. 1, 2 etc).

thanks!

 

Approx. the same performance as mine..
HL2 ep1 runs just fine at max res. and detail.

 

Well I'm glad to see someone else is looking at the 5680 besides me.

Haven't found any reviews anywhere and would like to know the same info.

It has the features I'm looking for...slot-loading CD/DVD drive, dedicated video memory, and DVI port. However, I haven't been able to get any information whatsoever on the video card. Does 64-bit mean it won't run Aero Glass? I'm not a big-time gamer (in fact, very little gaming) but I do want to run the fancy new graphics in Vista.

 

I've never used the slot-loader very much besides in the car...
In think I would rather tray-loader, can you get this model with tray-loader instead?

 

Got my 5680 a week ago. So far really happy with it.

I'll list the bad first (not much):

- Running two instances of prime95, I managed to get the CPU temp up to 87C. Ambient temp was about 25.5C which is a bit warm, but still, I wasn't expecting to see such high CPU temps. Prime ran for 36 hours with no problems though, so I guess the system is stable. HD temp never rose above 50C and when I pulled the battery out, it was also nice and cool.

- Slot load can be listed as a plus/minus. The minus is that I had a couple of CDs come out with very faint scratches perpendicular to the recorded track direction. I cleaned the drive slot opening carefully and its been good since. The plus is that I love not having use that very breakable tray, plus the cool factor

- Intel VT technology is supported by the T7200 chip, but is not enabled through the BIOS. BIOS doesn't currently even have an option to enable/disable VT.

- nVidia video card only has a 64-bit memory interface (obviously to save on cost).

- DVD burner writes using z-clv and starts at 2x, then 4x, followed by 6x and finally gets to 8x near the end of a DVD. Full 4.3GB DVD-R takes a little over 13 minutes to write.

The good:

- The glossy screen is fairly ridgid and I can't get any shimmering on the LCD no matter how much I flex the screen.
- Performance is great with T7200, 160GB HD and 2GB of RAM.
- Battery life between 2.5-3.5 hours depending on use.
- Everything else just works.

 

Could you tell me what the A/V in plug is like? I was wondering if I can attach an older video camera I have and transfer some vid's to dvd?

 

dynot - Can't help you there, the 6123 (north american) model doesn't have any vid cap functionality. You'll have to check someone who has a european model.

That's unless you're thinking about firewire, and yes, it has a 4-pin (small) connector on the left side.

 

I was afraid of that.

I downloaded the manual from a European site and wasn't sure if the NA version had it. OTOH, the specs on the Acer Canadian site does show both "RF in" and "AV in".

Did you buy yours in the US?

 

Nope, got it in Calgary. $1,699 CDN + GST, so the price wasn't bad at all.

 

Well I guess it doesn't look good for me. I ordered mine yesterday for the same price less $45 for employee discount through the company I work for.

No big deal if it doesn't have those features but would have been nice to have.

I'm particularly looking forward to the DVI capabilities.

 

The optical drive is upgradable. So you can find models which tray loading ones. Personally, slot loaders save much more space and is more robust.

 

Bundys...how fast does it boot up? Heard some issues about Acer boot time due to all the extra software they pre-load.

 

Wouldn't know...first thing I did was to clean the HD and load up a MSDN copy of Win2K3.

BTW, does anyone know what a blinking orange power indicator means? Just started blinking today regardless if i'm running on batt or wall power.

 

I just ordered the 5680-6516. The specs are a little different. The Video card comes with 128MB on board and a built in webcam. When I saw you only had 64 megs, I panicked and had to go back a look at my specs again.

Have you used the built in tv tuner yet?

 

If you're referring to bundys' post he means 64- bit video card, not 64-megs. I got the same model and it does have 128mb video ram. No built-in TV tuner as far as I can tell.

 

About 45 seconds from the login screen, give or take a few secs.