Netbooks Laptop

Last week I bought one 5810T through TigerDirect as a replacement of my current Hp 6820s. The Hp one is still working fine. But it has run out of the storage space. Plus I wanted a smaller/lighter notebook but still has number keys as in 17" ones. So Acer's 5810T fits my requirement perfectly.

When it finally arrived, it was, like some of the folks had experienced, a DOA :-(((,

After I pressed the Power button, I heard a couple of small clicks from the HDD and the DVD. The fan was running. The white LED light of the power button was on. The green light of the wireless was on (steady). The battery was being charged (orange light first then to turned to blue). But the blue light of HDD was on only for around one, two seconds. And nothing was on the screen (dead black), not even the initial system/BIOS information.

Roughly 5 to 7 seconds later, the notebook shut down by itself. Wow!! Then 2 to 3 seconds later, the notebook turned on by itself!! Amazing!! But still, there was no response from the whole notebook (Keyboard, touch pad, eject button,..., etc) and still no display at all.

I have tried to turn it on and off many times. And at one time the notebook finally decided to boot up. So I continued to follow the step-by-step setup process on the screen. But then the notebook froze in the middle of getting the O/S (shipped with Vista Home Premium 64bit) configured. Again, nothing was showing on the screen (dead black). And there was no response from the whole notebook.

Called TigerDirect then got a replacement 3 days later. The second one has been working fine for 3 days so far. I've reinstalled it with a Vista Business 32bit O/S. And to make the Vista Business 32bit working properly, I had to visit Acer.com to get 10 different drivers downloaded. The drivers/applications supplied with the notebook are only good for 64 bit O/S. I cannot use the 64bit O/S because Cisco's VPN client does not support it.

Anyway, I've copied more than 100 GB data (more than 200,000 files in total) from two different external USB drives. I did not run into any trouble when copying/moving these files, only the transferring speed was much slower than I anticipated.

So, it sounded good for my 2nd one, right? Sorry, not really. There are two serious QA related issue. The first is about its keyboard. The whole keyboard will just pop up from time to time. It seems to me this keyboard set is not properly assembled to the notebook's chassis. So the clicks around it will not hold the keyboard in place. Or those clicks are not long/big enough to keep the keyboard down. Very often I have to push the top two corners and the top edge of the keyboard so it will be back to its position ("click", "click", "click", and "click").

The second is there is a dent around the "eject" button of the DVD drive. And the surface of whole metal piece is no not smooth at all when I looked at the notebook form the side. I also found a small bump located on the opposite end, close to the "Power" button. Could it be this notebook was "squeezed" somehow before it was packed? The 1st (DOA) notebook does not have such issue with its keyboard nor is has any "dent" when I compared them side by side.

So I was so disappointing and wanted to return this replacement one as well. But I just don't have the luxury to do so due to the demand of my work loads. Otherwise, I will definitely ask for another replacement immediately. Oh well, I will continue to try to live with it till one day the keyboard refuse to go back to the position.

I had owned two Acer Notebooks in the past. One is Travelmate 602 and the other one is Travelmate 630. Also I have owned three different Hp/Compaq Notebooks plus an Apple Powerbook. I have never had such a BAD experience like this.

Acer used to make excellent notebooks. I guess this is not the case any more from my most recent experience. The Timeline series is certainly a product with very good potential to make Acer moving closer to their goal to be the #1 NB brand in the world. And from Acer's website you can tell they do have a big hope of the Timeline. It is really a shame that a good design turns into a lousy product.

What Acer needs now is to visit their contracted manufacturer, at KunShan/ShangHai China, which makes this series (Aspire Timeline 15'6 inch series). They need to review the assembly/testing/packing process seriously. I am not sure how much time Acer and the CM had done during the initial FAI process. Either the process is not being followed well in their factory, or the OEM supplier is not making/testing key components per the specification, then the QA/PE in the factory also failed to discover these (obvious) defects.

Brand recognition, Product Reputation and Customer loyalty all takes years to build. They could be all gone just by one simple mistake. Acer, I hope you are listening. Because your acer.com/us was not accessible for around one hour when I was writing this review..... Gee, what a (another) disappointment.

Apparently a lot of people have been having bad luck with this machine, but as a veteran Acer user I went ahead and bought one anyway (plus that battery life is just too good to pass up.)

So far, I love everything about this machine. The appearance is very sleek and attractive. At 15.6" it's a larger machine, but in no way does it seem "bulky." I'm impressed at how solid and well-designed it is (definitely lives up to all that "thin and light" hype.)

The display, of course, is just gorgeous (typical of Acer machines.) The keyboard has taken some heat in a lot of reviews, but I have no problem with it. It feels sturdy, is comfortable to work with and has presented no problem with functionality. Personally, I think it's one of the best I've ever seen as far as layout (if not construction.) The touchpad is a bit oversensitive (ie, you have to make sure your left hand is plenty clear of it if you navigate with your right) but otherwise works well, though the much-acclaimed "touchpad gestures" are more annoying than they are useful. The touchpad buttons are also adequate for standard functions, but if you're an Opera-user like me you'll probably find them cumbersome to work with for some of the browser commands. Still, overall I'm extremely satisfied with presentation and usability.

As far as performance goes, it's by far exceeded my expectations. I purposely purchased the model with a stronger CPU (1.4ghz SU3500 Core 2 Solo) and an additional gig of RAM, thinking even that wouldn't be enough, but this machine just FLIES for everything I need it to do. I've got NOD32, email and WMP11 running pretty much constantly, and I'll typically be switching back and forth between multiple browsers (with multiple tabs,) spreadsheets, documents, Photoshop, folders, etc. No problems whatsoever with it bogging down or even lagging, even in the powersaver mode. Right now, with all of the above running, it's idling at about 5% CPU and 1.7 GB memory (on battery power/low CPU setting.) I'm very impressed with it's performance.

Battery life is awesomeness in motion. When you disconnect from AC power, it automatically goes into powersaver mode -- it's a great feeling to hover over the battery icon and see "08 hr 20 min (99%) remaining." xD

The Vista actually isn't bad either, despite all the horror stories I've heard. After disabling UAC and a couple other services that cause it to prompt you thirty times when you try to delete one thing, I find that it's very smooth, stable, unintrusive and much more streamlined/intuitive than XP. I've encountered a few random bugs, but that's the OS, not the computer, and it takes time to get familiar with a new OS anyway.

A couple other miscellaneous things I like about this laptop: the cooling system is VERY efficient; it's consistently comfortable on your lap (even after eight hours,) and the air the fan blows out is barely even warm. The webcam is fantastic, clear and crisp (though admittedly I have little to compare to.) Speakers are excellent too, as far as laptop speakers go. The volume range is great, and the sound is super clear. I didn't like listening to music on the speakers of my old laptop (Acer Aspire 5100,) because you lost so much of the depth -- not so on this machine. There's very little bloatware on the factory install, and the included Acer apps are useful. Very fast restart from Sleep mode (or whatever it defaults to when you close the lid.) Fast boot, and fast shut down. (Seriously, it's the little things like that you notice bugging you the most after a while.)

In all fairness, it's not /entirely/ perfect. For one thing, I noticed a problem with it randomly maxing out CPU at 100% for no apparent reason, and the only way to correct it was with a reboot. This turned out to be two faulty drivers causing a resource leak (VGA and LAN) and was an extremely simple fix (downloaded the correct drivers from [...], ran the setup programs for each and rebooted. Took about five minutes.) but for someone who's not good with computers it's a terminal flaw.

There is some bloatware packaged with it (only four or five apps, not bad at all compared to some other machines) which you have to spend extra time uinstalling. And like I mentioned, the touchpad isn't perfect, and Vista takes a little know-how to get it running right. Also, the keyboard shows /every/, and I mean EVERY single smudge, as soon as you even /think/ about typing on it. It doesn't really look "bad," but it doesn't look good either.

Overall, though, these are all insignificant compared to everything else this laptop is capabale of. I absolutely love everything about it and am extremely satisfied. 5/5 stars in my personal opinion, but considering how the driver problem might impede the average user, 4/5 star recommedation to others.

This particular model here offers the larger hard drive (500 gb,) more powerful processor (1.4ghz Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500,) 4gb RAM and 64 bit operating system, which are all useful upgrades and make it perfectly suited to my preferences, but they're not really essential. I probably would've loved the computer just as much without them, but the price inlcuding upgrades was too good to pass up. It's even better for the base model (sold at Wally World, for example) -- it's really a fantastic deal considering everything you get.

Anyways, I'll shut up now. Feel free to comment on this review if you have any further questions.

Good luck to everyone in finding their perfect computer! Hopefully you'll be as successful as I am. =)

I purchased an Acer AS5810T and an Acer AS4810. Both seemed to be exactly what I was looking for: Great price, features, weight, battery usage (would have liked backlit keyboards). In particular, I was anxious to see if their new battery hour claims were true. The only good news is that they really will do 6-8 hours on a charge. Unfortunately, everything went downhill from there. The 4810's keyboard began to malfuntion within 2 or 3 days use. Keys began sticking in the down stroke position. I had to use a paperclip to lift the space bar and the "w" key back in their up position. During set up with the 5810T, Acer directs you to burn a restoration set of disks in the event of a failure in the operating system. The Acer software supplied to perform the task failed. I contacted Acer support and was directed to download and install their recent patches. Not only did their new patches end in a perpetual error message, they caused the overall machine to hang and/or crawl after their installation.

Maybe, in their rush to market, Acer prematurely released these machines without the proper testing of their software and hardware quality. A real disappointment and a waste of many hours trying to get NEW machines to work. With two out of two new machines disfunctional, I'd think twice before ever considering Acer. Both units are being sent back.