travelmate 3201xmi review - my initial thoughts

Hi,

Just got the 3201xmi a few days ago, but already I must admit, a few things make this latop rather irritiating and I wanted to see if other people found the same

Issue 1 - keyboard, on the left side, flexes a lot more than the right hand side and gives off a tinny vibration sound. Generally a standard laptop keyboard, nothing special. What do other people thing. Compared to a tecra 9000, or t41, is it hard to work with.
Issue 2 - came with FAT32 disks, had to reinstall from my own xp CD, since acer only gave me an "image" of their install.
Issue 3 - Make sure your disk drive is in DMA not PIO, so get SP2.
Issue 4 - laptop was advertised to ship with SP2, did it hell.
Issue 5 - The fan...never seems to turn off.

Overall, can't say I am that impressed, and given the chance, would now spend more for a T42.

I would love to hear what other people think...

 

i find the laptop fine...

 

Livejazz,

Other users on this site seem to like the 3201XCi model (don't know about the 3201XMi). Some users have mentioned minor issues, but a lot of them is personal preference rather than actual problems.

1. You did not need to re-format your entire system, Windows XP has a Convert utility that is included that will convert a Fat file system to NTFS.

2. HDD's in XP will always some in DMA mode. There may be the possibility that the system doesn't detect it as DMA, but that's easily fixable by deleting the HDD controller in Device Manager and restarting. The OS will redetect with proper settings, so XP SP2 is not needed. SP2 generally replaces the HDD controller drivers and this causes it to redetect the hardware attached and therefore get the correct settings.

3. If the unit is stated in writing on their site that it comes with SP2, you may want to contact them regarding this. Mainly because this can be considered false advertising. There might be a chance the CD image might have SP2 on it, but not the original load on the HDD. The HDD's may have been mass loaded in the factory with the older image, but updated CD's included with the system.

4. The settings of your system and what you're doing at the time will affect the fans operation. Try changing the power management features. Also, if you're running a game at the time, the fan will probably not turn off.

-Vb-