The Acer Guy

A single reply sparked this off.

It was a by-product of the Aspire 5920 has Bluetooth/doesn’t have Bluetooth debate.

Andy (you get full credit) wrote in with a question and spilled the beans on one of those secrets you usually stumble across when you’re a) least expecting it, b) drunk, or c) just not switched on enough to write it down.

But a blog’s live and unpredictable so I thought I’d start a page to collect the most original ideas. If anyone knows of a Digg-style voting plug-in for WordPress, let’s get it up.

Oh, and write your tricks here.

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You might have noticed that the layout has gone a bit crazy.

It’s all my fault. I tried to add a little something to make it better and made a royal mess of things. Naturally I’m also not able to straighten it back so unless I have some generous offers from you guys, it’ll be like this till Monday earliest.

Apologies and embarrassment all round.

UPDATE: BIG THANKS to Tony who sorted it all out. You’re the man!

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I know I know, you hate it when I go all corporate on you.

Don’t know if any of you have been following the “HP sues Acer” farce. I know I for one am guilty of not paying as much attention as perhaps I should yet the way I see it, these sort of things have a tendency to muddy the waters for everyone from the companies involved yet more importantly the users who lose confidence (rightly or wrongly) in the brands whose products they’ve worked damned hard to pay for.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t read the small print in “Murky-Tech News” allow me to bring you up to speed courtesy of what is perhaps the best flow chart ever created.

This I found a couple of days ago over on The Register.

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Some of you might have noticed a funky little thing at the bottom of each post.

The reason I did this was that I will be going on holiday soon and I don’t want to interrupt the flow of your conversations by having to moderate everything…

So now the conversation is entirely in your hands

UPDATE: There is a downside to this of course. The number of comments has increased and I’m not getting to see all of them in my in-box. You live and learn… I’ll try and see where the hole is.

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My wife doesn’t let me loose with the fun stuff all that often so it’s good to see that some users are putting the Aspire 5920 to good use!

I was following a discussion over on Notebook Forums and came across this video. Like the comment says, it’s not really a pic of the laptop but the speed which games run on it. I’ll think you’ll all agree that it’s pretty damned fast.

Anyone play anything else?

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One of the questions I was recently asked is whether the Aspire 5920 has a 6-cell battery or an 8-cell one.

“Generally”, 8-cell batteries are identified as follows: 19V 4800mAh
while 6-cell batteries are like this: 19V 4000mAh

I say “generally” because for example one of the batteries supplied with the Ferrari 1000 is 8-cell yet is 5200mAh.

As a general rule, lower priced (entry level) models nearly always have smaller, 6-cell batteries (please don’t make me regret saying that!)

The Aspire 5920, is supplied ONLY with an 8-cell battery.

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A while back CNet published an article damming the Aspire 5920 for both its looks and features. I still think the article was so bad I’m not going to link to it but if you don’t remember or really need to check my sources, have a read of what I said in response.

Anyway, one of the unexpected results of Jing’s review (below) was this picture which I guess pretty much refutes CNet’s claim and sets the record straight once and for all.

Thanks again Jing

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I have decided to turn the tables completely. After all, blogs are about opinions, feedback and free dialogue so what better way to support this than asking someone who actually bought an Acer laptop to reviews it and publish it here? No journalist bias or marketing spin. Just the facts…

Jing Yeow was fast enough to get his hands on one of the first Aspire 5920s in the UK and kind enough to agree to write his thoughts down for The Acer Guy so my thanks to him first and foremost.

I haven’t been able to download his photos yet as my net speed is painfully slow at the moment but I’ll update the article and post add them the moment I get back to the office.

The photos are all Jing’s too.

Enjoy.

The Acer Aspire 5920G is the flagship model for the new Acer Gemstone Series. It has a fresh new design modelled on (yes you guessed it) a gemstone and takes advantage of the latest notebook technology, including many features attributed to the new Centrino Pro platform. The Aspire model seems to be a model for the mainstream consumer who requires value for money as well as placing high importance on design.

This is in part a response to HP’s excellent design credentials when it comes to producing stylish notebooks the consumer requires, and you can recognise Acer has taken a few ideas out of their consumer line with the glossy black finish on the outer notebook.

The reason why I chose this notebook was because it reached the top mid range of my budget. I could have stretched to £999 if I had to, but soon realised for the money spent I would be getting the same notebook at a higher price and in some cases, fewer features than the Acer 5920. Before deciding on this notebook, I had looked extensively at the HP dv2500t series as the design suited me perfectly, but it was let down by price and hardware. It costs just £100 less than the Acer. Whilst the newer dv6000t costs £100 more than the Acer Gemstone, but again with no turbo memory and only a 8400M dedicated card.

Essentially it boiled down to a portable HP, or a feature packed Acer, and the Acer won by miles. This is a multimedia machine, and if that is important to you, the Acer fulfils a lot of needs.

I purchased this off a UK retailer online as they were the first to stock this model of notebook. It cost £799.97 which was the reviewed price, which is great value for a notebook of this specification and price point, but where Bluetooth was in reviewed samples, it failed to make it to the final release, meaning there is a dummy Bluetooth button just on top of the unpressable dummy button below it on the left hand side of the notebook.

The exterior is a beautiful rich glossy black, which looks hard wearing, but remains hollow in the very centre where there remains some flex, none of which affect the screen due to the distance of the outer-shell to the screen. The edges of the notebook are hard plastic that offer no flex at all and is reasonable protection for the screen in a backpack.

The interior is very pretty when first viewed. The design is impactful and the colour scheme is a creamy white depending on the light conditions. Admittedly under artificial light this can appear more beige, but it is relaxing on the eyes.

The keyboard is extremely comfortable to use. The travel is short, which user preference would class as a love or hate feature. There is no flex on the left hand side of the keyboard, but significant flex on the right hand side of the keyboard, around the 7-8 numerical keys and all those below. However, this has no impact on typing regardless of speed on key impact.

The mouse pad glides smoothly and is a synaptics device. The mouse buttons are a much different breed. They are loud and would be heard in a quiet room when one wishes to be covert. You will need to learn to use the touch pad to click if you wish totally silent operation.

The notebook itself is very sturdy and rigid. The plastic inside offers superb protection for the components, and provides ample space for the wrists. No flex or creaking here. The left hand side of the notebook stays warm through basic tasks such as word processing, or viewing pictures, but can get wildly hot when gaming.

I have noticed that newer games tend to put more stress on the Nvidia 8600M GT and thus increase the heat. Older games, such as Sim City 4, put less stress on the GPU.

There are buttons on either side of the notebook keyboard, performing a variety of quick functions. Significant to note is the Wireless Lan button. Notice this is a button, and there is little chance of it becoming worn out like the “switches” on other notebooks such as the Vaio, or the PSP wireless switch which can lead to one not being able to connect to the other devices.

The downside is that the touch sensitive control cannot (to my knowledge) be reprogrammed. For example, the “record” button only opens the pre-installed NTI CD/DVD Maker 7, whilst I am sure many would prefer it to launch Nero or perhaps Ashampoo alternatives.

The media flow line actually a small part of the notebook, that rests above the keyboard and only lights up when charging, CPU processing or when Caps of Num Lock are turned on. The light does not flow throughout the whole keyboard surface as you may have seen in some promotional videos.

The speaker grill is a stylish silver and remains my favourite feature of the notebook. I have heard the speakers on a Toshiba Quisio and whilst it matches it on clarity, the quisio was extremely weak on bass, where the Acer 5920 easily surpasses it.

Playing games becomes incredibly immersive with directional sound, and surround sound “effects” that work adequately. Personally I think these are much better to have than not, but they are nothing to shout about.

Battery Life is an aspect of this notebook I have not tested extensively. Whilst watching Wimbledon, I decided to leave the notebook on whilst writing parts of this review and surfing the internet intermittently with screen brightness on 50% and wireless enabled (Default Balanced ePower Managements settings away from Mains).

The result was 2 hours into the Federer/Nadal Final with the notebook reporting 36% battery life remaining (However accurate that is). I didn’t test it till shut off, but from that I can estimate near enough 3 hours of battery life on the road. I have it confirmed that the battery is a 6 cell. This may even be longer with power saver that would have reduced the CPU speed and downed the screen brightness a tad. The screen is unviewable with 0% brightness, and I recommend 40% if you want it to remain useable without straining the eyes too much.

The screen is beautiful to look at…if you view it dead on centre. The colours are vibrant and outlines sharp from the glossy CrystalBrite screen. I would have preferred matte as reflections will be your worst enemy if using this notebook with you back to sunlight. Viewing angles horizontally are decent.

Text remains readable at 45 degrees off-centre but the colours darken at around 20 degrees from centre. Vertical angles are much worse with colours appearing washed out immediately when viewed above, and darkening just as quickly when viewed below centre. Backlighting is generally even, with a little leakage at the bottom which is not noticeable unless viewing a screen.

For those of you who use Skype, this notebook is the perfect companion. Its video functionality is especially good and doubles up as a adequate still camera, taking low-res, but visually distinguishable shots. The dual microphones also do a good job of video conferencing as it detects sound/voices from sources over a metre away clearly according to a few Skype Test Calls.

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The Aspire 5920 has picked up another recommended award from PC Pro magazine.

The verdict?

A new processor, new Nvidia graphics and a competitive price make it a great buy - if you like the styling.

I like the way the styling of the Acer 5920 has upset the establishment to the point where it becomes something to consider when choosing or judging it. We’re all used to the usual grey and silver notebooks and you’ve got to admit it took balls to introduce something as bold as the Gemstone series.

The other comment concerns me in particular.

While not quite as groundbreaking as Acer’s website might have you believe, it’s nonetheless an interesting chassis and contains some notable features.

Obviously my style of writing didn’t go down well with the guys from PC Pro, and we could have quite a debate over it, but if it gets an award, then who cares? What I wrote on the site was obviously true…

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Have any of you read The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual? Right now I’m halfway through it and can confirm all the hype you may or may not have heard about this book.

I’ve read quite a few books on blogging and have followed some pretty in-depth courses but this really does put what I’m trying to do online into perspective.

I know many of you don’t even read these “non-issue” stories as what grabs your attention (or Google’s) is the OrbiCam issue, but there’s a conversation going on within this blog that’s very difficult to stop.

You guys have a lot to say, some of it nice, a lot of it critical, all of it relevant – and I have done everything possible to promote and maintain conversations with everyone who ends up on this site.

However I’m now going to push the boat much further out.

It’s very easy for me to link to journalist/professional reviews of Acer’s products. All it takes is a Google search for the specific product I’m looking for, a quick look to see if the destination page is any good and there’s your link.

What this method lacks though is authenticity. By that I mean what a real customer would say about the product he or she has just bought.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a guy asking for the release dates of the Aspire 5920 in UK. He then went on to buy the notebook and I invited him to write his opinion of it, which I promised to publish.

So yesterday, when his mail arrived, we made history. As far as I know, this is the first, “customer review” of a notebook. Certainly it’s the first for a UK-delivered Aspire 5920.

I’m waiting to see if I can download the accompanying pictures but promise to have his full review up in the next few days. Let’s hope this is the first of many….

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