Acer Aspire 5670 Series Review (pics, specs)

by Andrew Johnson, Alaska USA

Overview and Introduction:

The Acer 5670 is one of the first notebooks featuring Intel's impressive new Centrino Duo processor which has two cores to offer significant performance gains. It has a sharp 15.4"

wide aspect screen putting it in the mid-sized desktop replacement category. It's also loaded with extras such as Bluetooth, a sleek slot-load DVD burner and a built in webcam, which, along with the ATI mobility X1400 graphics and 1GB of Ram plus a 100GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive make for a pretty impressive machine.

Acer Aspire 5627WLMi (view larger image)

Acer 5670 Configuration as reviewed (Acer Aspire 5672WLMi):

• Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache)
• 15.4" WXGA CrystalBrite LCD with 16ms refresh rate.
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128MB
• 100GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive
• Slot-Load DVD super multi drive
• 1GB DDR2 dual channel memory
• 802.11 a/b/g wireless with singalup high efficiency antenna
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
• ExpressCard slot

Acer Aspire 5672 in the box (view larger image)

Build & Design:

Acer 5670 top view (view larger image)

The Acer 5670 is clad in silver painted plastic and a combination of glossy and flat black plastic. It's not thin, but it's not bulky either. It is a fairly solid notebook with decent hinges for the screen. There is some flex but nothing alarming. Only a hard press on the rear of the screen will cause ripples to appear. I like the slot-loading dvd burner which looks sleek and avoids potential damage.

Screen:

The 15.4" WXGA "CrystalBrite" LCD is glossy and spectacular. It is bright, with high contrast, saturated colors and even illumination. The viewing angle is very good to the sides and falls off more quickly to the top and bottom like most laptops. Response time is rated at 16ms which should eliminate ghosting even in high speed gaming.

Built-in web cam (view larger image)

The screen is about normal brightness for a high quality notebook. I had to turn the brightness down to get a correct exposure in a bright room -- five 60 watt light bulbs hung in a chandelier above the notebook photographed on my floor.

As with all glossy screens, reflections of lights can become annoying to some. Your eyes, like my camera, can usually focus on the screen rather than the reflection as shown here, like this:

Example of glossy screen and different vantages your eyes and brain might take of focusing on the screen (view larger image)

Speakers:

The speakers on the front of the notebook put out a decent level of crisp sound that is about par for notebooks, but still sounds tinny with no bass.

Processor and Performance / Benchmarks:

Just what can be expected from Intel's advanced new Centrino Duo chip? It has twice as many cores, so is it twice as fast? Sometimes, but usually the benefit is smaller. However, while most benchmarks won't show a twofold increase in speed, heavy multi-taskers will immediately notice a significant boost in overall system responsiveness. Tasks that would normally cause a major slowdown on a single core machine (like running super-pi or rendering a video) seem as if they're not even running, because the computer is ready and available for your other input on another program.

For a single program to take advantage of two processor cores, it has to be specially programmed. More and more software is being written this way, and for now at least most high end software that is likely to make you wait in the first place is. Video and Photo software is often "multi=processor aware." Being a photographer, I spend many hours using Adobe Photoshop. While I believe even older computers are more than fast enough for most tasks, it will be a long time before Photoshop's need for speed is satisfied. Why wait 60 seconds when you can wait 1? Or none?

I compared the Acer 5670 to my Dell 9300 in common Photoshop tasks real photographers do, not wacky filters that might make an Apple seem super fast. The Acer's clock speed is only about 4% faster than the Dell, so I thought it was a fair indication of the performance gains possible with a dual core CPU. Both machines had 1GB of ram, and the Dell has a faster hard drive (7200 RPM vs. 5400 RPM)

While the tests are not all inclusive, it represents some of the things I am commonly waiting on the computer for, and illustrates the potential performance gains dual core CPUs offer.

Test 1: Average time to convert a 16.7 megapixel raw files to Tiff using Adobe Camera Raw 3.3
Acer Core Duo 1.66GHz: 12 seconds
Dell Pentium M 1.6GHz: 22 seconds
Here the dual core is almost 85% faster!

Test 2: Unsharp Mask a 16.7 megapixel digital image.
Acer Core Duo 1.66GHz: .7 seconds
Dell Pentium M 1.6GHz: 1.2 seconds
Again very significant speed gains with the dual core.

Test 3: Resize a 16.7 megapixel image to 20x30 inches at 300 DPI
Acer Core Duo 1.66GHz: 2.0 seconds
Dell Pentium M 1.6GHz: 4.2 seconds
Whoa! Over twice as fast! I'll have to up my hourly rate.

Test 4: Convert 16.7 megapixel digital image to CMYK color
Acer Core Duo 1.66GHz: 4.4 seconds
Dell Pentium M 1.6GHz: 9.4 seconds
Wow again!

At least with Photoshop, the performance is scaling almost linearly with clock speed and number of cores! Less commonly used filters are not multi-processor aware and may not show as significant a boost.

I ran the popular Super Pi benchmark once by itself and got a result of 1m 22s. This was just slightly slower than the 2.0GHz Core Duo Super Pi times:

Notebook	Time
Acer Aspire 5670 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 22s
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi(2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 15s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s
IBM ThinkPad Z60m(2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 36s
Fujitsu LifeBook N3510 (1.73 GHz Pentium M)	1m 48s
Dell Inspiron 6000D (1.6 GHz Pentium M)	1m 52s
Dell Inspiron 600M (1.6 GHz Pentium M)	2m 10s
HP Pavilion dv4000(1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 39s
HP DV4170us (Pentium M 1.73 GHz)	1m 53s
Sony VAIO S380 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s

And once while watching a DVD, which did not skip, I got a time of 1m 34s.

This came as a surprise because according to windows task manager, super pi only uses one core, or 50% of the total available processing power. Still, it seems much faster than single core cpu's at the same clock speed. Unfortunately Super Pi won't allow itself to be run twice simultaneously, which would have been an interesting benchmark.

HDtune: this measures disk throughput and access time.

(view larger image)

The 3D mark 2005 results for thislaptop.

Notebook	3DMark 05 Results
Acer Aspire 5670(1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	1655 3DMarks / NA
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2092 3D Marks / 4462 CPUMarks
ThinkPadT43 (1.86GHz, ATI X300 64MB graphics)	727 3DMarks / 3414 CPUMarks
Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI Radeon Mobility x700 128 MB)	2530 3D Marks / 3749 CPU Marks
Quanta KN1 (1.86 GHz Pentium M, NVIDIA GeForce Go 6600 128mb)	2,4863DMarks / 4106CPUMarks
HP dv4000 (1.86GHz Pentium M, ATI X700 128MB)	2536 3D Marks / 3557 CPU Marks
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi(2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	4157 3DMarks / 4812 CPU Marks

Heat and Noise:

I hoped, being a larger laptop with an advanced processor, this would run very cool. Unfortunately under normal use the palm rest gets warm. Under heavy use like gaming or even DVD watching, the palm rest gets fairly warm on both sides, but never got uncomfortably hot. The underside can get hot if used on your lap, which seems to insulate the laptop. Under typical plugged in use, a quiet fan is running. With the laptop in front of me, I can still hear a quiet refrigerator 20 feet away. The fan will remain off most of the time under battery power, but then the 5400 RPM hard drive is noticeable. It seems a little louder than most.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

Acer Aspire 5672 keyboard and touchpad (view larger image)

The keyboard is a good layout with full sized keys and an extra row of navigation keys plus handy media keys on the left side. I've never been bothered by keyboard flex, but the Acer has one of the more "spongy" keyboards out there. Other than that it has good tactile feel and I am able to type quickly and accurately. The touchpad works well and includes a four way scroll button.

Aspire 5670 power button and shortcut button(view larger image)

Input and Output Ports:

The Acer 5670 is a well connected notebook with a good selection of ports that are nicely laid out. Two USB 2.0 ports are on each side, so a mouse can be used on either side without the cord getting in the way. Both a DVI port and a D-Sub VGA port is included for older and newer monitors alike. There is both a PC card and the new ExpressCard slot for expansion. A 4-pin mini-1394 FireWire port is included. There are no legacy (parallel, serial) ports.

Aspire 5672WLMi front side view (view larger image)

Aspire 5670 left side view (view larger image)

Aspire 5670 back side view (view larger image)

Acer 5670 right side view (view larger image)

Wireless:

With 802.11 a/b/g wireless, infrared, and Bluetooth, the Acer 5670 is a very well connected notebook. The wireless worked well and connected to a variety of local wireless hotspots with ease. The range was very good. I'm always surprised to find several networks available in many places throughout Fairbanks, Alaska -- not exactly your Silicon Valley.

Battery:

Acer overrides windows power settings with a comprehensive power management suite called Acer ePower Management. It lets you balance between performance and battery life depending on your preferences. Under normal light use with a middle screen brightness selected, battery life was around 2:15 with wireless on and Bluetooth off. With the maximum battery setting, 2:30 could maybe be squeezed out at a maximum, but only with fairly low screen brightness.

It was able to play a DVD for nearly 2 hours using the included Acer Arcade DVD playback software and Acers power management settings on maximum battery, but with full brightness.

There is usually a greater difference between DVD playback and simple tasks like word processing. Perhaps this is an early issue with the Core Duo not fully going into low power mode. I had hoped for three or more hours battery life, even from such a high performance notebook.

Operating System and Software:

Acer included Windows XP Home plus a multimedia suite for DVD playback and burning and other video and audio tasks.

They also included a bunch of software and utilities to provide better control over various things such as power saving setting and input devices. The Acer Empowering Technology suite has some useful features to manage data security and computer performance. These, as well as several drivers install upon first boot. While it's a nice feature to automatically install them, so much is installed it takes something like 20 minutes, which does not give a great first impression on what's supposed to be a rockin' fast computer. Plus, some of these tasks are handled by windows well enough so the software redundancy may not be necessary.

At the end of this process it prompts you to insert a DVD to burn a recovery disc -- another nice feature, but one I've often seen included and not requiring user input.

Conclusion:

I have to say I am very impressed with the performance of the Acer 5670 with its Core Duo processor. The performance boost from the dual core is anywhere from negligible to a full twofold increase, something that does not come often in the computing world. Acer puts together a nice notebook that's full of features and a pleasure to use thanks to a crisp screen and full connectivity. I would have liked to see a slightly sturdier build, but that is usual for me. The only big negative is the battery life. I've come to expect at least three hours from modern notebooks, and 4-5 is always a big plus. Running for only just over two hours under most use, the 5670 falls somewhat short. If performance is most important, however, shorter battery life is a small compromise. As a powerful desktop replacement with significant portability, the Acer 5670 excels wonderfully.

Pros:

• Very fast under some circumstances
• EXTREMELY fast under other circumstances
• Bright, sharp, saturated screen
• Good video performance
• Ports are well placed
• Great connectivity and built in webcam

Cons:

• Short battery life
• Somewhat mushy keyboard
• Build quality is not top-notch.

Pricing and Configuration: Acer Aspire5670 Pricing

 

Very nice review

I also had a first hand experience with the 5672, and I've gotta say the price is awesome for what you get.

 

Good review!

Just like to mention that the graphics card (x1400) is still not supported by many linux distros. I could get SimpleMEPIS to work on it while Ubuntu and Fedora Core 4 didn't help.

One other silly thing, they have nice 6 buttons on the side for multimedia control which include play/pause, stop, next, previous, volume up and volume down. God knows what was going on in the designer's mind when he didn't put a 'mute' button there and instead made it a Fn+F8

 

Interesting stuff fsacj. But iv've heard what I feared...
So... what's with this laptop Acer ??

First : who wants to buy a laptop that needs a cooler?
Next : what's the point of having a core duo on the road (along with a 9 cells batt.) if it can't goes over 3 hours. I dont' call that thing portabillity!

Again Acer Americas, I am very disapointed from what I heard! This hot stove you'll always have to plug in the wall could have been a hit. Don't you test laptop before you sell them ?

 

Gotta love when people post the same erroneous and ignorant facts to multiple threads.

This laptop doesn't need a "cooler", the "heat" is not bad even after hours of gaming it stays the same "warm" it is at idle. Personally I'd rather have a warm laptop with a SUPER quiet fan than a cool laptop that sounds like a jet engine.

The battery is an 8 cell. Several people have reported and I have personally experienced over 2.5 hrs of battery life under normal use. It is likely anyone getting much less hasn't "fixed" the USB 2.0 bug in XP before running the test.

Finally, please... go put your hands on one of these laptops before basing opinions on pure hearsay. Having gone through several laptops in the last few weeks before settling on this one I can say with actual hands on experience that I love this laptop. IMHO the only design fault is the absence of a mute button, which with the volume keys were the only media keys I regularly used on my old laptop.

 

nice review. the picture showing focus on screen compared to focus on reflection is probably one of the most helpful pix i've seen in a review ever.

good job.

 

This review pretty much puts it all a nutshell - along with some of the later comments.
I have owned mine for nearly 2 weeks, bought here in Malaysia (only get 80Gb HD, and no camera, to keep the local price low I guess) and I both love it and get horribly frustrated by it.
I travel a lot, and I have become so used to my bitset-to-ROM/RPC1 LiteOn burner on my aged Presario that I forgot about region setting for DVDs. I always have used DVD RegionFree as software correction as well, but of course that doesn't work with these Mat****a (how aptly named!) DVD drives. I am mortified.
The keyboard is very loose, compared with many competitors, too clicky by far.
These are issues that I wish that I had investigated further before purchase, but I had a sudden rush of blood to the wallet when I saw the undoubtedly beautiful screen and the excellent performance. I actually went to the shop to buy a new Presario, but was seduced by this Acer. Here in Malaysia there is no such thing as returning products in a certain time frame as there so often is in the US. So I will have to make the best of it.
I have saved the best/worst 'til last - the heat under the touchpad and keyboard wrist rest is ridiculous. I am roasting my wrists here just typing this comment, bearing in mind the ambient temp here is 30-35C!
So to summarise: that was a very fair and balanced review. This laptops specs are extremely good, and it is a very nice media machine (although ditch the AWFUL cyberlink Powerproducer, try the quality against VSO ConvertXtoDVD and you will be shocked! It is dreadful, and I do not exaggerate. Acer Arcade, meh, wants to be Front Row, but with no remote. Lame. Just use VLC. Other "Empowering Technology" stuff is quite useful. IMHO.) Stupid FAT32 dual partitions of 35GB each...well, I ask you! Fortunately a few hours with PartitionMagic has created my preference of NTFS 18Gb system and remainder as data/docs. Maybe I will even remove the "hidden" backup partition as well, as the extra 4 gigs would be handy, and I have the DVD burned safely.
So now I have it the way that I want it. It Photoshops like a powerful desktop, which I wanted it for, it plays my media beautifully as long as it is the correct region...or ripped, grrrrr. The screen is still one of the nicest that I have seen, but now I have to stop venting in order to rub salve on my poor red, frazzled wrists.
So near, and yet so flawed. But I'm stuck with it, so off to buy a laptop cooler pad I go. Ho hum. Think carefully on this one, folks.

 

Nice review. Pretty Pictures. The screen comparison is innovative.

* * * * *

 

Anyone know what you need to use the SPDIF output on this laptop? I've tried using a 1/8" to RCA adapter to hook it up (using coax cable) to my receiver, but no go...

Nevermind - I figured it out.

 

Grrrreat review Andrew. Nice pictures.

I also enjoyed the screen pics, as well as the detailed fan noise analysis. Something you don't see in a lot of reviews.

Chaz

 

Nice review + nice spec! Really suprised me that the performance of X1400 is ~ x600. It would be great if they introduce x1600 into this machine.

 

for those that want to know the answer, there's an optical connection through the 1.8" headphone minijack. you need a special adapter and/or cable. I bought a 6" cable for $7 at Radio Shack. It has switchable connectors on both ends: 1.8" or standard toslink. the item is on clearance and therefore not available at some radio shack stores.

 

Thanks for the kind words and additional thoughts. Someone mentioned to me that the webcam might use an internal USB 2.0 port, which currently saps power on the core duos because of a Windows usb bug. This might explain why the battery life didn't vary as much between idle and power use as most do. I think on my dell I can get just over one hour or four depending on my use. After the bug is fixed, if it shows a similar difference between DVD watching and simple tasks, I would expect over three hours, and possibly cooler operation during idle.

 

Nice review. The Dual Core chips really have awesome performance numbers!

 

Awesome review..i think im gonna have to go with the 8204 due to my needs for power...

(that screen pic switching the focus is hands down the best picture ive seen in a review...)

 

fsacj brings up an excellent point regarding Super-PI. If it is a single-threaded CPU-dependent application, then what factor/s contributed to the increased performance (even beating a 2.0 GHz PM)?

 

Nice review. Now you make me want a Core Duo lappy. What to do? What to do? Or better question, how do I explain it to the wifey?

 

Probably not the processor that is heating the palm rest. Usually processor and GPU are in the back of the machine. Look underneath and see what components are under the palm area.

 

Nice review and laptop. In the list, you missed one particular advantage: a slot loading DVD burner. You don't see that everyday in Windows notebooks.

The photographs are awesome, what camera did you use? I'm assuming a dSLR.

 

True, I only mentioned the drive in the text body.

My camera is a Canon 20D, which I use professionally. I thought of using my Canon S1 IS (worth about $200) for the next review to show nice photos can be done with any camera.

 

I'm curious about one thing. fsacj wrote that the machine came with XP home. I've talked to MS here in denmark, and they said that XP home doesn't support multiple cores including core duo.

Was the test done with XP home or XP pro? or do XP home support core duo?

 

where are advantages of sloat loading CD/DVD? that you can not use small (8cm) or credit card CD's/DVD's?

 

Nilsn: I thought the exact same thing. But "my computer" reported XP Home and task manager reported two CPUs. I think it's XP Home 2003,, maybe that's the difference.

martynas: Some actually can take all types of discs. Not sure about this one though. They also don't have a tray to damage, and they look neat.

 

I likethe slot load thing, but there is a good/bad to it. I nearly ejected a DVD into a sharp object (giant paper clip) the other day. The tray would have pushed it out of the way.

Given the choice, I prefer the slot load but only by a tiny bit.

 

There are some changes to the Core Duo that speeds up floating point calculations. Here's a excerpt from Intel's site.

Intel® Digital Media Boost Features

The Intel Core Duo processor features micro-architectural enhancements for improved floating point capability, including instruction optimizations and performance enhancements for existing Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2). In addition to enhancing the performance of existing Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (SSE2), there are 13 new instructions that further extend the capabilities of Intel® processor technology. These new instructions are called Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSE3), first introduced on the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, with their implementation fully optimized specifically for the Intel Core Duo processor Architecture.

These instructions accelerate activities such as complex arithmetic, graphics, and synchronization of multiple threads. The Intel Core Duo processor also features other floating point performance enhancements such as a faster integer divide and updated micro-ops fusion. These new micro-architectural enhancements lead to improved throughput and performance.

 

I had exactly that same problem, I had a small cd containing the drivers for a USB to Serial Port adapter. I had to use another computer to burn the files over to a regular sized CD.

Plus, initially it took me about 15 mins playing with the drive before I realized that a tray was not going to eject. I thought I had a defective drive.

 

Cool review. I love the focus on screen vs reflection pics!

 

Why is the 3D mark so low? I notice that the Lenovo Thinkpad T60 has a 3D WinMark of 2092 and the 5670 is 1655. They are using the same ATI x1400 128 mb GPU. I realize that the Core Duo in the Lenovo is faster but when you look at the results for the Asus V6va and HP dv4000 (both using the x700) their scores are practically the same. This even when the Asus is running at a faster speed then the HP (processor speed difference is about the same as between the Lenovo and Acer). I'm wondering if the Lenovo is using faster system RAM than the Acer (667 vs 533) since the x1400 will use system memory in addition to it's dedicated memory up to 512mb. The difference in speed between the memory would practically account for the difference in the WinMark. Would the memory speed make a difference in performance in this case or am I all wet?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, rarely you will find small CD/DVD's used in the marketplace. The slot loading DVD drive can be an advantage because it means you don't have to worry about cleaning the lens.

 

well I use them as emergency boot CD's (with windows xp, that boots from CD into RAM, and don't require HDD to boot - it's useful when you need to get information from NTFS disk). They are small (size of 1.44 floppy), and easy to cary around in your pocket

Of course, sometimes there is possibility to use flash drives to boot, but CD's/DVD's are much cheaper

Here are some samples of CD's/DVD's, that I use (sorry, but in lithuanian):
http://www.acmemedia.lt/?p=catalog&r=6&manuf=&id=483&ext=1
http://www.acmemedia.lt/?p=catalog&r=4&manuf=&id=163&ext=1

Of course, there are pluses and minuses for each side e.g. slot-loading devices are sturdier, than try-loading

 

fsacj wrote: I think it's XP Home 2003,,

Whats that?

 

badass Review man, i wish some one would put one like this out there for other notebooks i'm interested in buying

Thanks...

 

I'm trying! I like doing them and I do it about as fast as they can send them. I should have more time for it in 6 weeks when I finish school for good.

 

I have this notebook and I am only a tad disappointed with it's performance with some games. Since I basically wanted a notebook for a gaming as well as for doing work, would I have been better off to get the Acer 1694WLmi which comes with an X700?

 

The X700 is a more powerful card, but the X1600 is even more impressive. You would find it on the Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi.

 

Ok, but the 8204 is alot more expensive I believe. The reason for my question is that I tried the 1694 and played HL2 with pretty much everything maxed at 1280x800. I can't do that with mine, I can barely play medium. Is there a way I can make my notebook perform a bit better?

 

@Intensecure: for getting your dvdplayer regionfree just use dvdidle pro. works like a charm!

 

We got one of these at work last week.

First the good news - we dropped a 2.13 Yonah in and it ran with no problems, and no real change to the heating. Didn't test battery life.

Now the bad news - like most notebook manufacturers (with the exception of Dell) Acer have not done a very good job on the BIOS. Specifically enumeration of complex PCI bus configurations (multiple PCI busses hanging off of the root PCIe port on the ExprssCard) completely confuse to the point where it cannot enumerate all the devices, leaving ! marks on some of them and even attaching some of them to other PCIe root devices, which is impossible! Unfortunatly this is a very common problem and has been addressed inside the PCMCIA working group, but many manufacturers claim copatibility without actually going to the interoperability sessions or doing much testing. Most users will probably not worry about this use case, and hopefully Acer will fix it with a BIOS upgrade.

- Tim

 

Nice review. Thing looks great, and I can't believe how well these new duo cores perform holy crap~!

Yours is only a 1.66 too~!

Only thing that would hold me back if I were buying a laptop would be the build quality.

Other than that, wow nice laptop~!

I like your pictures, well you are a photographer haha

 

Great review! I feel even happier about this great notebook. As a first time notebook buyer I'm very impressed with the 5670 as a desktop replacement. While I can't say I'm happy about the lack of driver disks or the use of FAT32 partitions on the XP Home version, now that I know about the Acer Euro FTP site I expect that it will be pretty easy to reformat and go to XP Pro.

All in all, I don't think that the 5670 can really be beat for the price.

sibelius

 

Man, this laptop review is seriously amazing... I'm definitely gonna buy the Acer now... to hell with teh graphics.. I just play Need For Speed: most wanted these days anyways!

lol... cool photos.. love it... by the way... would doing a seperate review on the 5672 (2GB RAM, 120GB HDD) be allowed? it'd be interesting to see what kind of a difference the extra 1GB might make... especially if your a heavy user like me... (once I had 9 Firefox windows with approx 8 tabs each open, iTunes playing, Netbeans 4.1 running, and a couple of chat windows). I'm amazed how the AMD Sempron I use works... lol... it sure does start choking after a while!

Oh, by the way... here;s a desktop shot when it's rarely clean!


Link to larger image

Comments...?

 

Hey guys,
I left my wonderful Aspire 1664 for a superb Aspire 5672 and I'm quite happy for the deal.
I'm having some problems with the suspend to disk feature (FN+F4). Sometimes it works but most of the times it gives me a crappy message that goes something like ("Not enough resources to execute the API"... I get the message in Italian, sorry for the translation if it's not correct).
This really sucks because I develop a lot and often hibernate the pc with dozens of open windows to start from where I left.
Has anyone had the same problem?
May it be due to the ePower Management?
I was thinking of uninstalling that huge Empowering Technology package but I must admit there are some interesting features that I don't dislike.

thank you guys,

Steven
ariaeterra(at)hotmail(dot)com

 

I just close the lid and when i open it and hit a key it comes back to where i left off

 

I'm afraid that's a Standby, not exactly a suspend (hibernation) operation.
In standby the power is still on but the devices are all turned off. In this case the data is kept in the RAM and there is still a power consumption.
In Hibernation mode the RAM content is dumped to the Hard Disk and the power goes off completely.
Closing the lid puts the pc in standby by default but if you go on the advanced settings you can change the behaviour of power button, lid and FN+F4 and select between shutdown, standby or suspend.

 

I've gotten a similar message on occasion. I thought it had something to do with Itunes running, but I have not bothered to trouble shoot the problem and figure out all that is involved. I can't even say if it does or doesn't happen on the time... might have nothing to do with itunes... but I have seen it.

 

I finally solved this issue!
go to this thread...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1287708#post1287708

 

I bought this laptop (Acer 5672) and used it for a while with basically no problems. It really is a solid, nice looking laptop for the money.

However, after I wiped the drive, installed linux and some other things to check compatibility, I threw in the restore DVD (the one I had to burn since it doesn't come with any physical restore media), and to my amazement, the laptop refused to boot completely from the optical drive. I called Acer tech support, and they sent out a set of 5 CDs for restoration. The computer still refuses to install, although now it at least gets past the boot stage. I get an error that says "Partitions uneven" and then "Boot.ini not found" or something similar, then it prompts for the first disk, and then restarts. This process repeats indefinitely.

I cannot get a Windows XP, Partition Magic, or Norton Ghost to boot. I know it's probably a driver issue, but just the fact that re-partitioning my drive breaks EVERY AVAILABLE RESTORE OPTION is enough that I'm going to return this laptop for a full refund. I just can't believe how utterly stupid the whole mess is. It's like building a house where the color of the wall paint will determine if the doors will open.

 

Great Review. This laptop really has every little gadgets out there. Thanks for the tests and results. I would like to add the following: (perhaps it is just mine)

1) My screen id very sharp too but it has weird noticable horizontal lines all the way down (is this normal?)...
2) The fan is not quiet (compared to LG, Sony, and Toshiba) and is always always working
3) Hard drive noise is a bit less than the fan
4) Hard drive read/write are extremely quiet (compared to Toshiba)
5) No USB port in the back
6) 2 USB ports on both side... too close to the front; wires (mouse, portable hd) or usb stick are always in the way
7) Fan exaust is on the right - to me, this is bad design for right hander; it keeps your mouse warm at all time instead of you coffee.
8) Finally, another design problem: the camera lense is damaging/ scratching the laptop base (under the mouse pad) when the cover is closed. I have to close it with the lense facing out.

Enjoy!

Steven

 

Sorry for the bump on this review...but I just got my 5670 recently and love it
!! Got an awesome compusa clearance deal ($830 bucks) for a version with 120 GB HD, 2GB ram, ATI RaDEON 512 MB (128 dedicated). The feature that really got my attention was the 128 MB dedicated video ram which is quite rare afaik for laptops...

So far the only quips I've found is the rather low battery life and the fact that the laptop does get a bit hot on the right side. Other than that, this is a great laptop!

 

G'evening.

I've been looking at the 5671, and am impressed with the specs offered for the price (€1199)

Windows® XP Home Edition , Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2050 1.66GHz (FSB: 533MHz),
15.4TFT WXGA 16ms CrystalBrite, 1024MB DDR II RAM (2x512), 120GB HDD (5400rpm S-ATA), Super
Multi DVD-RW Double Layer (slot), 8-cell LiIon, 56K modem, Wired & Wireless Lan 802.11a/b/g, ATI
X1600 128MB/512MB HM, DVI, 1.3MP Camera, 5-in-1 card reader, AZB

Now, I've read the review, and am considering purchasing the 5671 if, ofcourse, the fact that the processor is a T2050 instead of a T2300 and that there's an ATI Radeon X1600 instead of an X1400 in there doesn't make a big difference. (performance and battery-life wise)

I've googled the T2050 processor and read that they're pretty decent, and the X1600 is the next X700, which was a good card (better than the one in my desktop, an X600) so I'm thinking gaming is a definite possibility. (My desktop runs just about anything I throw at it, even Oblivion, though that's at near-lowest settings and the framerate doesn't exceed 20)

What I really want to know is, will this laptop fall to pieces the minute I start it up? The 5672 is great, apparently, but the 5671 uses a couple of different components, so I'm a bit worried.