Acer Laptop Aspire AS5002LMi-XPP AMD Turion 64 ML-30 (1.60 GHz) 512 MB Memory 80 GB HDD SiS Mirage 2 15.0" Windows XP Professional

Comments: I ordered this a a trial to see if it would work for our hospital. It's 64 bit processor, disk space and memory were all in our spec range, but its price was way below what I was expecting. I've put this one through its paces all weekend, and have been quite pleased with everything, once I reloaded Windows on it in the way we use it at the hispital. Although the machine came with Windows XP Pro preinstalled, Acer distributes the system arrived with the hard drive divided into two 40GB partitions (which I understand the reason for but don't care for myself), and had both partitions formatted as FAT32 drives instead of NTFS (which made little sense until I played with the restore utility, which is a Win 98 application that doesn't understand NTFS). Serious users will want to reformat the system with a regular XP Pro CD and then use the system disk that comes with the machine to load the drivers. After doing this, I was able to bring up a database server (MySQL), IIS, Delphi and Mono, and the system worked flawlessly and pleasantly fast. The wireless connectiity is great - it worked well anywhere on the property, right up to around 400 feet from the closest AP. It also seamlessly picked up connection to the public Internet at the restaurant where I went to lunch. Very fast, reaonably cool, comfortable keyboard, interesting touch pad (although I will always prefer my mini USB mouse), sat literally on my lap for 2.5 hours on battery with no problems. Great buy. John Johansen, Information Services Coordinator, Ojai Valley Community Hospital.

Comments: I purchased 3 of these, one for myself, one for business, one for a family member. They are simply a fantastic value. Pros: Strong processor, good battery life, huge hard drive, DVD burner, extremely light, wireless adapater has great range Cons: Weak display (Mirage 2 might as well be a 2-d adapter only), color saturation on screen When I got this, I was extremely impressed with it. Battery life was well above the indicated 3 hours for light use. My programming environment ran snappily. Upon moving into a color-sensitive graphics environment, I immediately noticed how poor the color saturation and fidelity of the LCD panel was. After some tweaking, it displays nicely, but the fact that the laptop doesn't ship with color tables speaks poorly of the product. Overall though, it's the only "con" that wasn't expected. (Who _didn't_ know Mirage2 sucked?) I highly recommend this product as a 2d-only desktop replacement. It's extremely solid.

Pros: It arrived quickly and undamaged, works quickly, and has a great internal wireless setup. Works great for everyday use. Speakers aren't so bad either.

Cons: The screen is dark, not nearly as bright as I would have hoped. You can still see everything but the screen has to be positioned perfectly (viewing angle sucks). Battery life is weak.

Overall Review: Would buy again if they put a better screen on the machine, otherwise it works well.

Pros: Looks pretty... Easy to use... No dead pixels, nice software for Windows, but no recovery disk. Newegg got it to me on time before Christmas.

Cons: It came without the Norton Antivirus OEM; I had to buy my own. I had just turned on, or rebooted my Acer Laptop when this message came up immediately. “This system has recovered from a serious error.” Got the death notice from Microsoft notifying me, “Unspecified error!”, and a box below it with an “Ok” inside. The only way I could stop the constant stream of small windows was to task the Windows Task Manager (Control, Alt, Delete) where I found the CPU was quite busy. It blamed an overheated CPU, bad Memory sticks, and the overheating.

Overall Review: It has an AMD Turion 64 Mobile MT30 Lancaster 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 754 Processor. This processor is noted to run cool. When its fan takes off running, it blows unusually hot air out the side. This laptop needs a Seagate (Cool) 5400 instead of that bottleneck 4200rpm hard drive and it needs more ram in order to accomplish multitasking simple web pages and Word Documents. the restore utility is a joke.

Pros: -Huge Hard Drive for a laptop -Quite a champ of a processor, video & audio encoding are a snap. -Solid amount of RAM (on a single chip as well so can buy another 512). -XP Professional -Solid look and feel

Cons: -Comes formatted with Fat32 because of the recovery utility.

Overall Review: This is a great laptop. Bundeled software does nto concern me as there are free options available that are better than the ones that are typically for sale. Also the FAT32 issues is easily solved by: RUN -> cmd convert C: /fs:NTFS convert D: /fs:NTFS If you're looking for a laptop that does everything but gaming you can't beat this one for the price.

Comments: Okay first off this is not a $xxxxxx laptop. When you compare it to other laptops in the $xxxx catagory, you'll find three things. Most don't come with a dvd burner, most only have one to two hours of battery life and its the only 64-bit processor in this catagory. 2 Steps Forward: -This laptop runs really cool. It doesn't generate a lot of heat. -The built-in 802.11 works real well I've had no problems with linksys, d-link and other brands of routers estabilishing a connection. -Price for performance. For what you pay you get a lot. 2 Steps Back: -A 4200rpm hard drive means s...l...o...w... performance. -Two 256MB modules of memory take up both slots rather than one 512MB module. -Poor graphics. Even for a budget machine I expected a little bit better. 1900 marks on the 3d2001se like the other guy. I was hoping for twice that. Which means very basic games only. This a good machine for mp3's, dvds, office work, emails, home photo editing, power point presentations. Price for performance I give this machine a 92%. I've still never had a problem with Acer laptops. If you want faster look at the Ferrari series by Acer. They have a Turion with a carbon-fiber body and much better graphics. Although you're going to spend twice as much.

Comments: well dont let the pictures fool you this thing is big and nice. I had not bought a retail computer since 2002 and i forgot all the programs they load to it. I wanted to do a fresh install of the OS but i would lose all the drivers. this thing underclocks it self to 800mhz when its idle. i tried loading GTA:SA for the PC and it runs slow even on the lowest seting Acer will have to improve the video card it only get 1900 points in 3dmarks2001se even my fx5200 gets more with a slower processor and its shared ram it says 128mb but i have it set to 64 since i need system ram. Acer also partitions the hard drive so it looks like 2 40gb ones for data and the OS. screen is good and so is the keyboard, im not usedto the mouse pad so you might want to pick up a USB mouse. it burns cd fast it only took 20 mins to burn a dvd with 4x rated media. battery last 3 hours. FINAL words (out of 10 performance:7 features:7 value:9 get it if you will only use 2d programs its a shame that they put such a good CPU with slow parts so the rest of the system is a bottleneck...like pc2700 ram, 4200rpm hard drive and intergrated graphics, now i know to stick to my regular desktop even tho its 3 years old it still fast for me

Pros: Great speed, load times, configureability. The internal wireless was a bit weak but still a good laptop. If you're looking for a solid work laptop this one is great just don't expect to change the display size.

Cons: If you take the resolution above it's native, it does scrolling. Meaning that your desktop size doesn't change and when you move your mouse to the edge is shifts your desktop.

Overall Review: If Acer would fix the scrolling issue of the screen I'd give this a 5 egg score.