Customer Reviews

Acer Ferrari 4005WLMI 15.4-inch Laptop (AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology ML-37, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, DVD Super-Multi Dbl Layer Drive)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been on a look out for a notebook for about 6 months, so you can be sure I've researched the subject thoroughly.

At first I have skipped Acer Ferrari as marketing ploy, but having finalized my requirements and matching the existing models I've come to conclusion that (at least on paper) Ferrari 4005 is the worthy contender.

My requirements were:
-64 bit capability
-powerful video card with dedicated memory (at least 128MB)
-wide screen
-at least 80GB HDD and at least 1GB of RAM
-be light enough to be portable
-good durability, looks and ergonomics

Here's how Acer Ferrari 4005 fits the bill:
- it's one of the 1st notebooks to use AMD's Turion, 64 bit processor designed for mobility
- x700 mobile radeon (yes!)
- wide 15.4" screen (check! but read the cons bellow)
- fast 100GB HDD and 1GB RAM
- carbon fiber casing - light!
- durable - I actually dropped it once from about a feet - no trace/problem whatsoever
- looks stylish, but not too flashy
- love the keyboard

Ok, so there are notebooks out there that match some of this:
- You can get Asus barebone and stick _almost_ all you want in there, which is what I seriously considered, but if you match the features closely Asus becomes more expensive, while delivering LESS (and it's harder to get).
- Dell's are just too expensive.
- Toshiba, Sony, LG don't use AMD's processors (silly buggers) and while Pentium M is close in performance area and goes easier on the power/heat it's not 64 bit, and P4 is way worse in that respect than even non-mobile AMD 64.

Now the disappointments:
- I worked for a bit on an HP notebook and I have to say, its screen performed better in terms of color reproduction. For example looking at Hotmail Inbox you can't distinguish unread emails by the line color.
- It warms up noticeably during normal use. It can grow uncomfortable in heavy use - CPU and graphics card are the main contributors.
- The headphones volume is quite low (what's up with that?!)
- No advanced wireless config utility for built-in Broadcom 11g.

And that's all! Now back to the good:
- Amazing viewing angle - if you can see the surface you gonna see the image.
- Drivers for 64 bit Windows XP are available now.
- Speakers positioning and sound are awesome.
- Sockets positioning is very good. 4 USB ports!
- Videocard will run BF2 and/or Longhorn/Vista equally well.
- If you're wondering about the speed - run some tests, don't just rely on your feelings, you'll be pleasantly surprised!
- You can't see it on the pictures, but the finish is nicely soft to touch on the working surface :)

In short, I think this notebook is worth every dime!
This review has been typed using it.

I was using a Toshiba Qosmio G25 and decided to switch to this smaller and lighter Ferrari. The magazine reviews seemed good and so I fell for them and bought the laptop "sight-unseen". Big mistake. Reviewers can offer valuable first impressions, but they don't have to live with the laptop. I am a power user, having used and bought many laptops. The Ferrari 4005WLMI is a disappointment.

I run an e-commerce business from my home, so I needed a laptop that I can use for everything.

Pros:

-Small and light

Cons:

- Very poor screen in comparison to the Qosmio G25 or F25. The main problem is that the screen is not bright enough. At maximum brightness, it is simply too dim for power users like me. (I just bought a new Compaq Presario laptop from BestBuy for my mother for $625 that is brighter than this!)

- Limited viewing angles. There is no comparison to the Qosmio.

- The ultra-high resolution may allow for sharpness, but has been found to create havoc with your eyes. Had I been smart enough to do some research before my purchase, I would have found that the Acer hardware forums are steaming with Ferrari users who were impressed at first with the unique resolution but later discovered that they were always squinting at their screen. There really aren't any viable fixes to this problem.

- The speakers and sound card are far below what I would have expected from a laptop of this calibre. The speakers do not play bass. Expect the sound to be tinny. There is no fix for this.

- The wireless adapter is advertised as having Speedbooster and a boosted range over other laptops. This is not true. My Qosmio detected many more wireless networks.

- Badly designed keyboard. The Del button is far out of range and next to Backspace button. This doesn't make sense at all. In the most valuable real estate on the keyboard for commonly used keys (bottom right), Acer has placed two buttons: € and $.

- Many outlets are on the side, when they should be at the back. For example, the power cord comes out of the right side.

- The 64 bit processor runs Windows and other programs at the same speed or slower than an equivalent Pentium Mobile at 1.86ghz. My screen sometimes freezes for several seconds while processing. Do not get this laptop because of speed. You will need 64 bit programs that will take advantage of it.

Conclusion:

Some Acer Ferrari owners may disagree with this review. Most likely it is only because the Ferrari is an improvement over their last laptop. But you cannot review a laptop by comparing your old technology to new technology. The way to review a laptop for a personal purchase would be to look at all the laptops out there within a certain class and price range and compare them all.

When you buy a laptop, take a look at professional reviews, but don't take them seriously. Don't buy it sight unseen. Find someone who has had the laptop for a while and get their opinion. Every laptop has some defects or issues. Spend some time on Google to find the hardware forums where people are complaining. Once you are informed about the cons as well as the pros, you can then make an informed decision.

My advice to you is this: Forget about the Ferrari and get the Qosmio F15 or F25. They are around the same price, but the Qosmio is an audio-visual dream.

Good luck!

Overall, I am pleased with the laptop after several months of usage, it replaced a Dell 8200, it sure looks a lot nicer than the Dell but I wouldnt say it is radically faster, except maybe for the hard disk, but it is just incrementally better re g-wireless, widescreen etc. I paid a premium for this laptop, over 2200, and would not say that it is really worth a premium price, though it is a solid value at <2k. One item that many reviewers fail to note is the DVI digital video output of this laptop, this is a fairly unique feature for a laptop, and is a considerable factor in the price. In short, you can use it as an HDTV DVD player driving a large screen HDTV monitor, which is pretty cool, especially with some of the WMVHD HDTV DVDs out there.

two cons worth noting - the screen brightness is not up to par with some of the other laptops out there, it is acceptable at max brightness setting, but just marginally. It is also lacking a true line-in audio input, there is only mic-in and headphone-out, this is a consideration if you want to record stereo line-level audio.

Also, the hi-def screen will necessitate using the XP extra-large font setting with a 120+DPI screen res setting to prevent squinting.

Just got this speed demon last month. It flys thru all the app's that I have thrown at it. I purchased a 3yr all-inclusive warrenty from PC connection for $199! Great for DVD authoring, games and the net... Buy it you'll love it!

PS...the looks you get from anyone who sees it is worth the price of admission.

Cons:

1. Screen.

1680x1050 pixels on a 15.4" screen makes everything look extremely small. It's the most major thing that I overlooked during research. I can't use large fonts because as a web designer, I need to see the average pretty much constantly. I can't use lower resolution because I ablsolutely hate the blur that LCDs produce under non-native resolutions. Acer used a "creative" approach to compensate for this problem by enforcing large fonts.

It's a TN LCD with a below-average picture quality and low contrast ratio.


2. Support.

Took them 3 business days to reply to an email, a result of which was a suggestion to call a phone number: "To better assist you with this matter, please contact our telephone technical support line at 1-800-816-2237. Hours of operation are 7am-9pm CST Monday-Friday and 8am-5pm CST Saturday and Sunday, excluding holidays."

The guy on the phone was completely unhelpful and tried to claim that their version of Windows XP Pro SP2 that they provide on recovery CDs can not be considered the same operating system as generic Windows XP Pro SP2 that I had to install on a new hard drive, therefore they will not support it.

You can install your own copy of XP Pro and download the drivers from the website, but you will have trouble with Bluetooth. Despite the driver installation, windows will continue recognizhing Bluetooth as a "New hardware" "Acer Module" and this is one of the rare cases where "Searching for update on the Internet" solves the problem.

3. Windows XP CDs

Recovery CDs are a bootable and a dumb Ghost image split into 2 CDs. 3 in total (so much for the DVD drive?). You can't go through XP installation options - everything is preconfigured for you. According to phone support, the only way the recovery CDs will work on a new hard drive is if it is pre-formatted as FAT32.

4. Mouse.

Rough, unpredictable, low resolution junk.

5. Hard drive setup.

Default is FAT32 on the hard drive split 50/50 onto two partitions. You can convert it to NTFS manually.

6. Feed-through-a-crack Apple-style CD-ROM drive.

Never tested with mini-sized CDs. Afraid to.

7. External displays

Can't connect third display. Only one external device can run at the same time with the laptop screen, either DVI or D-SUB.


Pros:
1. Somewhat unique looks.
2. Overall physical design quality.
3. Loaded with hardware features.
4. AMD 64-bit CPU with a potential to provide 64-bit drivers for Windows XP 64-bit (currently available on 4006 model).

Counclusion:
All the effort they put into styling, they should've put elsewhere. Seems like the laptop was built for a rich underage kid. You should buy this laptop only if two conditions are met:
1. You happen to be young or have perfect vision to deal with the native resolution or don't care about large/blurry fonts.
2. You are a computer dummy and don't mind sticking to the default configuration or a laptop guru who never needs support.
This laptop is not for designers becasue of the low-quality display.

I can't really fault the laptop for anything other than sight and sound. Unfortunately these are really annoying to me.

Sound
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Realtek AC97 sound card, bound to be ordinary. The sound was way too quiet and even crackled when first used. Upgrading the realtek sound drivers took away most of the crackling and increased the volume, but still below par compared to colleagues laptops.

Screen
------
Sure the screen area is huge, but do you really need it? With default font sizes you end up squinting to see anything, and sitting closer to the screen. Which brings up one the most annoying feature of the screen bar none. It has an absolutely attrocious viewing angle. No matter how you orient your head to the screen, the lower areas will be brighter and upper ones darker. Areas outside directly in front of are washed out. The effect is most pronounced with dark areas (eg. games). Nobody can watch you from the side, it's all colour inverted. Also, fonts on the other side of the huge screen appear fuzzy (as others have said, using enlarged fonts is the default, so they are anti-aliased rather than crisp). Now add to this that the screen has no glossy anti-glare, high-contrast filter. The display contrast is also appalling. Again, this is mostly an issue with dark imagery eg. games.

Do not buy this laptop for gaming. For desktop stuff it should suffice. At worst, try before you buy. Don't buy sight-unseen or you'll be disappointed.

I am so happy and amazed with this computer. It's elegant, powerful, and loaded with all kinds of nice features. It's really an amazing step up from anything I've owned before.
The wireless pulls down signals much more strongly than any laptop I've used before (my previous laptops were top-of-the-line Dells), and the screen is big and bright with deep, rich colors.
DVD viewing and multimedia files are pretty phenomenal on this machine, as well.

If you're in the market for a laptop, it honestly doesn't get any better than this.

Having owned 4 Dell laptops, I priced another one. Having found an equivalent Dell would cost about $800-$1000 more, I decided to make a change. It took a while to weed out the Acer supplied software that slowed down the system and add another 16 applications, but afterward I found this Ferarri to be an excellent extremely fast computer. When 64-bit applications appear I believe it would speed-up further.
If I were to keep the Acer restore software (restore to basic Acer setup only, all else lost), It would cost me 3 days of reloading my software applications.

I have had this Acer for four years now. The first six months I had to replace the DVD/CD because the internal mechanism inside broke. The customer service was excellent in fast replacement. The computer is similar to a desk-top in the fast ability and storage of information.

Draw-back: The computer overheats very easily; I wish they would have included a stand for the computer because the bottom gets hot!!! The CD/DVD drive - most computers have a drive that comes out and you place the disc in; this computer sucks in like a vacuum. There have been times were it would not reject my disc. The screen, you cannot wash the screen; every time you do (whether it is with a lap-top cleaning kit or alcohol pads) the screen leaves marks. The speakers; this computer is not made for music, I did not buy the computer for this purpose, but I do enjoy listen to music; this computer is not made to do so.

This lap-top is a wonderful computer; however, the price is not worth the buy. I have had an HP in the past and this computer was just as good for the purposes used. The memory and storage is great but an external Hard drive can provide the same. There are many brands that are just like this computer and they are considerable in price.

I'm a college student and when I invest in a computer I would rather it be top of the line because it can be used for four to six years before requiring replacement. This computer was the top of the line four years ago and is still one of the top today. For college purpose of writing papers, wireless internet, blue-tooth capacity, and great memory; it suits well. However, for music and DVD watching this computer does not rate; the speakers and screen on this laptop were not made for video games, music, or DVD.

Look around before you invest your money!!!

The only good thing i can say about this laptop is that it looks good.They call it a amd turion 64 but it comes loaded with only 32 and you have to download the other 32 if you can find out where.The hard drive is configured for split fat 32 instead of ntfs.The resolution is 1680 x 1050 and that makes every thing super small and hard to read.I didnt think about resolution when i bought mine.I still cant figure out what this resolution is good for.Its not good for gaming or surfing the internet.The display screen is very dim set on the brightest setting.The bluetooth mouse seems to work only when it feels like it.The sound is terrible and has static.I bought mine sight unseen and am very disapointed with it.It has a very high price for such a low performing machine.