Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810T-8480 14-Inch Aluminum Laptop - 8+ Hours Battery Life
 List Price: $699.99 |
Product Details
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Product Description
Customer Reviews
Requests a bit of fine tuningPros
1 Horrific specs at a great price
2 Battery life of 5 to 6 hours
3 glare & thin
4 Decent screen &ergonomics
Cons
1 Does not perform well out of the box, wishes bios/wifi updates, bloatware removal
2 acer website is very vague for picking up the right drivers etc
Influential machine and fantastic battery life
I bought this laptop this past October. The biggest selling point, for me, was the price. I needed a new laptop with great freestyle life, so when I found it for a great price, I ended up purchasing it. I did not have great expectations for this laptop, but it has surprised me with its power and reliability.
The most desirable thing about the Acer AS4810 is the battery life. Running Windows 7 on the "Anticyclone Performance" setting, the laptop can run for a little over 6 hours.
I don't play games on this laptop, so I cannot annotation on that. I do, however, watch a lot of high definition video. Using the right codecs, such as CoreAVC, the Acer AS4810 has no enigma running high definition video.
Overall, it's a fantastic laptop.
3.5 Stars
This is my first Acer computer, aesthetically speaking; it is the nicest looking laptop I've seen so far and one of the thinnest -- measuring at a sheer 1" thick. The 14" screen, weight and dimensions are just a fraction more compared to an humdrum Netbook, but you get much much more. For one; you're not getting an Atom processor but an Intel Centrino Sum2 Solo CPU. Yet small, but it also comes with an integrated DVD Burner (almost unheard of for its expanse) as opposed to having an external unit dangling around. These are only a few good reasons why I bought the section, but...the ultimate deal was the long battery life! Acer claims that it can weight more than 8 hours. Reading my reviews here on Amazon (also from various other sources) most reviewers seemed to have stood by their claims. So for this, I am pleased to sacrifice the trade-off of not purchasing a Dual Core or Core Duo2 CPU system but in place of opted for the ultra low voltage 'Solo' core for its battery spark of life.
Although the 8480 was deemed versatile for most apps but it wasn't user-good-natured "out of the box". Acer did not update their Timeline series with the latest BIOS and necessary drivers before rolling out to the masses which resulted the computer in a persistent 100% CPU spike and ultimately rendering the unit to freeze and therefore a self-conscious-shutdown/restart is the only solution. For this, it has caused a large number of disturbed day to day average-Joe and the typical novice consumer-frenzied letdowns, not to insinuate, the numerous negative feedbacks as to why their newly purchased computers did not add up to the mfg exact.
Most of you reading the reviews by now should know what you must do to get the unit running in tip top condition, for those of you who safe haven't, here's what you MUST do before using the notebook for the first time:
1.) Have 3 blank DVD discs ready for fiery and making the recovery discs because Acer (and most Manufacturers these days) does not require any.
2.) Go to Acer's support site and choose your model, but here's the trick; in between the top part of the page and the drivers' deign part of the page, there is very tiny drop-down box for you to choose your Operating System -- institute sure you choose the right one. For example: choose "Windows Vista Serene Premium 64Bit" if you are using this OS. Most people tend to miss out on this part because it is pretty strenuously to see on the page.
Update to the latest Bios (there are two released simultaneously; one is the uniform and the 'OE' stands for "Olympic Edition"
3.) Update to the latest Video Driver
4.) Update to the latest WIFI driver
The rests of it are facultative.
Upon my updates, the unit has performed flawlessly, there are no more 100% CPU usages but in the 10-30% group and applications seems to run much smoother like it supposed to. The one thing that still hinders is the 'Zizz Mode'; if you closed the lid and reopen it, the unit tends to freeze up a bit and takes interval for it to completely come back to its original state. This happens mostly if you have a browser opened at the without surcease of closing the lid. Acer needs a new BIO for this, or perhaps Windows7 will rectify this dilemma.
Pros:
*Lantern Weight
*Thin
*Battery Life (8+Hours)
*Screen resolve and bright enough
*DVD Burner (Integrated)
*4GB DDR3 RAM
*320G Hard Drive
*HDMI mooring
*Keyboard (quiet, very nice play and solid feel with no plunging/caving while typing -- unlike my Toshiba Satellite)
*Mouse Pad (very alive and non-erratic)
*Design/Beauty
*Very solid feel -- no flexing or creasing of any type a organize
Cons
*Single Core processor
*No 'Caps Lock' counterglow
*No 'Number Lock' light
*Tiny Power Button -- negligible meaning it is designed to work only with the tip of your fingernail (needs to press twice to power ON or hold for 3 seconds -- only if you are using the AC cord with the Battery detached, otherwise only just press once with Battery attached)
*No Express Card slot
*No eSata
*No Phone jack (couldn't use Windows Fax)
Battery-operated life & weight worth the hassle!
Pros: A twice hanker (real time) battery life, super light pressure for 14" screen laptop w/internal DVD player, & smooth screen w/ great colors. Aluminum chassis & metal lid vs. molded paste. Wireless easy to set up. Great price + Windows 7 upgrade.
Cons: Speakers - tin check out unless I use headphones then really improves. Bloatware and a bunch of driver updates and potentially bios too. Acer buyer service reps no help for soft or hardware issues and their web sheet for driver updates is a mess.
I did extensive research before purchasing at Service Depot for $549 mid October. I primarily wanted a laptop (not netbook) that was this arrange or less and that would last at least 6 hours while travelling, if not more. While I use Office software, it's secondary so while not super indecorously, still faster then my last LT which was 4 years old.
There were some very helpful reviews on Tiger and Amazon about what needed to be updated to baffle crashes. Thus, I was willing to take on the hassle of having to load a bunch of driver updates and potentially spark the bios (which I have not yet had to do). I did most of the driver updates but not all of those related to the wireless or other optional features as there is no supporter on Acer's site to determine if they are relevant.
I did have some freeze ups until I turned off the sleep r. Most were then eliminated but I updated the bios to 1.28, and most drivers, as many reviewers at other sites said it was needed. So far so orderly but the Acer site is very un-user friendly for finding the latest driver. They fair keep adding new ones in no particular order. Also, before using wireless, say off the Windows Security Functions (as much as it lets you) assuming you are using Internet Shelter Software.
While the customer service is very weak (compared to Dell - most of my computers including fashionable XPS One) or Gateway (4 years ago)), they did send me a free pick-up CD set (since I was unable to make them after wasting 5 DVDS). I like the feel of the full magnitude key board but am not a touch pad user so cannot comment - use a wireless optical mouse. Loudness could have a bigger range so louder option.
Finally, yesterday I Euphemistic pre-owned the free software to upgrade Windows 7 and was fairly simple (esp since did not add much software except Role prior). Acer update disk helps - only problem was at end after instal was done. The new OS did not recognize my DVD drive; needed to finish the process by inserting Acer disk back in after Windows. Restarted once and it was there which was a likeable surprise as there have been problems reported about this on the Windows 7 microsoft blog.
TOO SLOWWWW!
As you had Known Windows Vista is the worst OS ever, some laptop works well enough with it, but the laze about really not. And this is not one of them, The only two reasons for me to buy this laptop were the huge battery duration and the chance to receive a brand new copy of Windows 7.
This copy hasn't reach, i will wait for it to install it and then see if all the problems has gone or still remain.
