I have been using the Acer Timeline (14 inch, Aspire 4810TZ-4011) since yesterday evening and so far so good. Here are my first impressions:1. The delivery was quick and packaging was good.
2. The looks of the laptop are fantastic. Love the isolation-type keyboard. The screen hinges could have been more solid but for a lightweight machine appear ok.
3. The eject button for the CD, various ports, the card reader, are all very suitably positioned.
4. The colours of the screen are beautiful. There are setup options to adjust those to taste, but I did not need to use them.
5. The laptop was easy to set up. I loaded the battery for about an hour before starting, perhaps an overkill, and was rewarded with a blue light coming from beneath the touchpad.
6. Setting up Vista for the first time was much quicker than my last XP setup on a netbook. Feels natural so far.
7. Soon after startup I was prompted to create recovery disks, and made two DVDs with the system and one with software.
8. There is (was) a lot of preloaded software. I spent a good deal of time finding out what it does (on Google) and cleaning most of it up.
9. People who have complained from performance issues maybe should take care to remove the redundant backup software (two or three of those pre-installed?!), the trial antivirus and other FUD nonsense.
10. I registerted for a FREE copy of Windows 7 for Timeline owners, to be shipped in October (woot!).
11. Set up Skype (after combating for a while with the firewall settings of Vista), and made a call -the sound is good, the mic is well positioned, the camera works fine, even better after peeling off the protective plastic sheet :)
12. Tested a youtube video in HD and it did not play smooth, which was a disappointment.
Comparing this to my 4y old FS, the Acer Timeline feels about as solid, a lot more silent, cooler, lighter by more than 2 pounds, with 6 times the RAM, 4 times the battery time, and a newer processor -clearly an upgrade in every aspect.
The keys are spaced very well for me ... the keyboard has an excellent feel. The glossy black finish is a bit unfortunate, as they instantly show smudging. The trackpad mouse button does indeed require Thumb of Steel, but nicely accomodates leftand right-clicking without being separated into two buttons.
I'm amazed at how happy I am with the screen. I don't like the glassy displays, but as long as the backlighting is intense, it can be used in fairly bright light. That's the case with this screen. The resolution is very crisp. I have not had any need or desire to adjust the color settings.
Speakers are not great in terms of volume, but I just can't imagine docking a review for that quibble. The laptop is thin and light get some headphones!
The battery life is phenomenal, as advertised; the first time I've ever had a laptop that performed within 50% of the advertised battery life.
The CPU is probably a little underpowered for Vista, but not terribly so. I'm sure that I will be happier with Windows 7 when it comes out.
Now for Linux. I shrunk the Vista partition down drastically using GParted from an Ubuntu 9.04 live CD. After that was done and I rebooted, Vista determined that something was wrong and launched a repair process that took a very long time to complete (2 hours+). It then came up into Vista and I have had no problems with it.
I formatted most of the freed space to give over to Ubuntu. I was completely floored by how much worked immediately: sound, wireless, keyboard control of volume, webcam, USB ... wow. After upgrading to a slightly newer Linux kernel (2.6.30), wireless now comes up correctly after being suspended, and keyboard control of screen brightness works. I can't think of anything that doesn't work other than multitouch gestures on the touchpad. Battery life seems to be as good as when running Windows. Speed for the tools of my trade is great when running Linux: emacs, X windows, SSH, Firefox and Flash.
Unlike a previous reviewer, I am in no sense a "casual" user; I do software development and am always a power user of software. But not a gamer or graphics guy who needs PhotoShop. I tend to view my laptop as a window to development servers using X and SSH, and a window to the Web using a browser. For those uses, this little laptop is entirely capable. So both the casual and the geeky can find happiness with the Acer 4810.
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I have owned it for 10 days now.Just noticed !!! the DVD burner does NOT Burn DVDs... I did a full system recovery, and nope...just can't !!! I would leave three stars if I could change my rating because Acer warranty helpline is toll free, easily reachable and extremely courteous. I have yet to see if international warranty is worth something cause I took it back to France or do I have to mail it in the US...I got a lemon, it happens.
Let's forget this unusual defect, and focus on the rest
The positives :
I like the keyboard a lot (flat keys, well spaced, shiny surface...yes, fingerprints stay, and stays cool)
very silent fan
very bright screen with the led backlight, no prob to work outdoors
computer top, and screen don't get hot at all
two finger operations on the touchpad (zoom in and out with two fingers, keep scrolling with circular motion, backward and forward with right and left swipe)
neat design (overall), looks smart, feels sturdy
audio jack connections on the side
nice specs (320 gb of hd, 3gb ddr3)
great battery life
fast enough
stable system
audio digital output
hdmi and vga video output
it did reboot once on its own (crashed) when fast forwarding a video on vlc, but I cannot make it happen again, I believe it has been fixed by the windows updates (anyway, this would be a vista issue that would get solved by windows 7 upgrade, or did already get solved buy the automatic updates)
free upgrade to windows 7 (the form is in the computer box, whether the reseller tells you about it or not)
The negative
sound quality is nice, but not loud
no firewire port ! come-on, how do you connect your camcorder sure, you can by an adapter
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Any 4810T made before July has a problem due to thermal instability. When driven hard for a while the machine becomes slower and slower and just stops, showing 100% CPU activity, even with no user activity at all. This is caused by faulty peripheral drivers that cause the CPU to spend all of its time in interrupt service routines. The problem can be cured by downloading and installing the latest BIOS, driver, and application files from Acer's web site. However, if my experience is any guide, you will not find this out by talking to Acer's facetiously named Customer Care Representatives.I bought a 4810T-8480 from Staples on July 27, 2009, and received a unit that was manufactured on May 8, 2009. Needless to say, the unit had "sleeping sickness". Before I researched this problem on the internet I called Acer's customer-no-service twice, each time giving a detailed explanation of how the machine slowed down and stopped with 100% CPU but no activity: The first time I was advised to clear the internet state (a total non-sequitur, since when the phenomenon occurs one cannot do anything). The second time I was directed to clear out Windows/Temp and /Tasks, another time-waster. It seems impossible that these people have not heard of this problem, so why are they misdirecting customers from the solution? A conscientious company would be pro-actively notifying customers with these machines and providing them fixes.
Anyway, I solved the problem by downloading and installing EVERY driver and application update offered for my machine on Acer's site and especially by flashing the latest BIOS, which as of this writing is ver. 1.23. Acer attempts to discourage BIOS upgrades, and includes a dire warning in red at the top of the BIOS downloads which reads in part: "...Acer recommends that you should only update your firmware/drivers if you have been instructed to do so by an Acer Customer Care Representative." However, since it is clear that Acer has only Customer Don't-Care Representatives, that isn't going to happen, so ignore that warning and forge ahead. After downloading and running the upgrade you may have one brief heart-stopping moment when a pop-up appears that says that the installation may have failed and seems to ask for your input. TOUCH NOTHING and the BIOS flash will end with an automatic reboot.
Be sure to select the correct OS in the not-so-obvious pull-down box when selecting drivers and applications to download and install. In general, it won't hurt to attempt to install the wrong driver, since the install will either fail or just leave a useless driver, but of course you needn't download drivers for peripherals that you don't have, such as in my case Bluetooth. The one exception to that that I found was in selecting the web camera application: There are two, one from Chicony and one from Suyin, and no obvious way to tell which vendor's camera is installed in my machine. I guessed and installed Suyin first; it didn't work, so I installed the Chicony application over it, which did work. It might have been better practice to have removed the first application before installing the second.
I hope that this helps anyone who buys a down-level Timeline Lord knows you won't get any help from Acer!
Once the updates are installed, this is a very nice machine. The battery lifetime, if not quite the advertised 8 hours, is still impressive. It is cool enough to actually use on a lap. No, the slow-down is not inherent in the speed of the processor, which is perfectly adequate for most uses. It will never satisfy a gamer, but that is obviously not its niche. It's a great machine for a student to carry around all day, running Office aps, accessing the web, etc. If it weren't such a do-it-your-self project I would have rated it higher.
If you see any Acer reps or especially Acer execs, give 'em Hell for me!
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This review relates more to the AS4810T-8480, but as it is not sold on Amazon yet, I wanted to make sure everyone is aware of the problems I am experiencing on that model, as this might impact the entire product line.I received my new laptop 4 days ago. Overall it is great, and I'd love to post a positive review here. It looks great from the outside, the 6-8 hours of battery life is a reality (let's see how long it lasts before the battery worns out), keyboard is nice, etc... Also agree that the built quality is not perfect, but overall it is fine.
My major concern, is the overall system stability. I am not a heavy user, mostly internet surfing.
However, in the past 4 days, I have experienced a tremendous number of crashes, maybe 2 to 3 a day, just using normal programs such as Skype, Internet Explorer 8 and MSN Live Messenger... At somepoint, the CPU goes to 100% utilization and the system becomes very slow or totally unresponsive, so I need to do a forced shut down. I thought this was due to Internet Explorer, but experienced the same with Firefox yesterday...
I just tried to install a USB AT&T 3G key, and despite a successful installation, now I am unable to log into Windows because on the log on screen my cursor and keyboards are none responsive. I have just logged a ticket with their Support Team, let's see what they come up.
I have never had some many problems with a new laptop in the past and am considering returning it for a refund.
Again, I would really like to love this laptop, I think ACER has a great product here, BUT I cannot recommended it at this point, and hope I will be able to update my recommendation very soon.
UPDATE: just over one month after receiving the laptop and as I was about to return it after ACER's customer service proved unable to provide a solution, I updated the Intel VGA driver (as many of you suggested in your comments, thanks a lot my bad for not checking them out earlier!) and the BIOS, both being recommended on [..] and I am happy to confirm the issues have disappeared. The laptop is now fully functional, so I have decided to keep it.
In regards to other features of the computer, I would say that my main complaints are the lack of a hardware switch for the wireless, and the screen is a little too glossy for me. The speakers are a bit weak. Bluetooth could have been included but I knew about it so can't complain.
But overall I'm still happy with the Timeline, and would recommend it to anyone traveling a lot and not requiring high CPU power!
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