misteRate.info

Overall Rating

powerful, good hd playback, light and fast
this is my best buy of the year

Pros is

- First 4100 is dual core and even it is 1.3Ghz it is sufficient enough to play my HD movies 720p, it plays without any lagging, use about 40% both cpu

- secondly keyboard is very good design, it is like apple mcbook keyboard which is bigger key pad than others for easy typing. and it feels very durable

- those two finger touch pad makes my web surfing easier
I use two finger to zoom in internet pages for easy reading, back and forth pages, scroll up and down

this is very handy for notebook use ( I barely feel the need of mouse )

- HDMI output is big advantage to connect to my 50inch plasma tv and display is just great as you see in notebook

notebook display is brighter just like sony Vaio

Cons
- only thing I can complain is the 2 buttons below touch pad is little hard to press
but I utilized keypad more than botton so this doesnt bother me much

Overall this is best buy and I am very happy

no need to pay extra 1000 more for expensive slim laptop like sony or mcbook

overalll it has everything I need and does every thing I need to do

Overall Rating

Sweet little laptop, running Ubuntu 9.10 64bit on it
[...]

I really like this little laptop, I think it is as thin and light than the 13″ Macbook Pro but looks better, the lack of a internal DVD really saves space and power. It has a great color and finish, not a fingerprint magnet. The screen bezel is matt black too, nice. The keyboard is solid and does show fingerprints but if you let them get a little dirty through a little bit of use you will not notice.

Like my review title says, I can’t speak for Windows 7, I ran it long enough to make restore disks (it needs 3 DVDs and a fourth one for a drivers) The fourth drivers disk is to restore drivers without restoring the whole system. The 3 DVD or hidden partition will put it back to factory defaults along with all the bloatware. It also has a hidden partition that has a full Windows restore on it too. From what I did use of 7 it seemed very responsive.

You can pick up a nice external USB DVD burner for about $50 from Amazon. I used mine only to make restore disks and install Ubuntu, after that I will not need it again until a new release of Linux comes out. As many end users know, once you get the programs installed you want you will rarely use the DVD drive. If you feel you will needing the CD/DVD drive allot this is probably not a good choice for a laptop and I would suggest the 14″ Acer Timeline that has a DVD drive built in.

The LED screen is very bright and crisp, I run it at 30%. The speakers are small but not bad considering what this laptop is, I have heard worse, I’m OK with them and I think the small speakers are done to help with energy efficiency. The mouse pad buttons are a little stiff but the rocker feels solid and seems like it will last a long time.

OK onto Linux, it seems just as or more responsive than my old 2.13 GHz dual core laptop.

WARNING: 1. This is for people that are not experienced computer users or familiar with Linux. If you allow Ubuntu (Linux) to have the entire drive (easiest), Ubuntu will wipe your hidden restore partition too. If you have not made restore disks because Acer does not give you the actual Windows 7 disk, then you are out of luck if you want to put Windows 7 back onto the computer.
2. If you put Linux on it then decide to go back to Windows and do a restore from your restore disks it will not boot. One way to fix this is to remove the hard drive from the laptop and hook it up to another Linux rig and use the disk utility (I put the drive into a external USB case). Use the disk utility and delete every partition on the drive. Now put the drive back into the laptop and use your restore disks to and it should work. I had to do this with my old laptop with Vista so I could sell it.
Another way to fix the MBR using a actual Windows disk, run the Recovery Console and do a fixmbr command.

What works from the install without tweaking. After running Ubuntu 9.10 live to make sure the WiFi (intel) worked I gave Ubuntu the whole drive and installed it. The Wifi connects to my WPA2 protected network without a problem. The special mouse pad off/on button works, the fn key volume and screen brightness both work as does the WiFi on and off special button. The flash card reader works fine too. Ubuntu is reporting about 6 hours for the battery (kills my old acer linux laptop of 2hrs) but I have only cycled the battery once so far. I plan on using a timer to check the battery life after I cycle the battery 3 full times to break it in properly.

What does not work right under Linux. The suspend fuction does not work, it goes to sleep but when you try and wake it it shuts down. Not a real big issue because Ubuntu starts up from cold in about 30 seconds to the log in screen and 15 seconds later I am on my desktop. This is a known bug for the timeline series and Ubuntu has a case/bug number already assigned to it. I hope it gets fixed in the 10.04 release coming out in March.

What I did not test and don’t care about, the camera,microphone and video out. I hear they work though from what I read at the Linux forums. The mic and video out should work from basic install, Ubuntu set my mic to mute as default. The camera will need a program installed (from the net) to get it running under Linux.