Customer Reviews

Acer TravelMate 4500 TM4504LMi (LX.T5106.112) Laptop (1.8 GHz Pentium M (Centrino), 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, DVD-Dual Drive)

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

 

 

I purchased this based on three reasons.

- 4.5 star LaptopMag.com Review (of the older 4500)
- Tons of positive User Reviews
- After extensive research, it was by far the Best Value


You simply cannot get a laptop for around $1200 that has all this:
- 100G HDD
- 1G of RAM
- Windows XP Professional (Not Home Edition!)
- A decent Processor (Non Celeron!)
- DVD±R/RW

I am impressed by the quality of the material of this laptop. It is sturdy and you can tell it is well put together. I've heard negative reviews about Acer support. However, this was not a big factor in my purchasing decision. I contacted them via email about the laptop and they got back to me in about 3 business days. Their response was very professional and they answered my question to my satisfaction. I was surprised the hard drive came partitioned already. That shows that they really pay attention to the little things too.

I bought a TDK Bluetooth PC card for $15 and got a Bluetooth mouse up and running instantly. I was thinking I had to change a lot of the software and configuration when I got it but I didn't. It was ready out of the box. Wireless 54g was a breeze.

The only cons about it for me (and I'm knit-picking here) is the slow hard drive (sub 7200 RPM) which means slow boot times. UT2004 played well 1 on 1 but not multiplayer. If that bothers you, you will have to spend A LOT more money.

This is an awesome machine for people who are not sure what they want, or if they want the best of all worlds. The laptop looks sharp, battery life is good, it's not too heavy, and 15 inches of screen was adequate for me.

Highly Recommended!!!

I own this for 2 months and I am very satisfied. I had no problems and dvd runs and burns very well.

Battery runs up to 7 hours (no kidding, at low brightness)

Fast enough to do anything, 1gb ram is fantastic and 100 gig hard drive is awesome.

after buying and returning two laptops for various reasons, i have to say that the acer 4504 is by far my favorite.. and the 2nd benefit is that it was the cheapest of them all!

the screen is digustingly clear, the curvature of the keypad helps eliminate accidentally touching the touchpad, hinges are sturdy, etc.

**update, 7/25/05:
the silver case holds up much better than i thought... it looked like it was flaking off, like i've heard averatecs do occasionally.. wiped with an alcohol prep pad, and good as new!

switching between regular output/dual monitor output/external monitor is *too* easy.. i spent forever fiddling with it only to realize that fn+f5 was all it took

I bought this laptop since it had tons of features for a very low price. However, it's been nothing but trouble. The keyboard never worked right (lots of dropped keystrokes) so I sent it back and got another unit. That one also had the keyboard problem and had a line of bad pixels down the center of the screen.

Additionally, the software the comes with it for managing power settings and profiles is terrible, the speakers are nearly unusable for watching a movie (distortion and low volume), and the included battery started to show drasticly lower life after about a year.

I've had a lot of Dells and while they're not perfect, I'd buy one of them or a MacBook instead at this point.

I bought a laptop from Acer, repeatedly had problems with the DVD drive. They told me to mail it back to them for repair. Then, they mailed it back to me untouched. Then, when I called them on it, they told me to mail it back again and be without it for yet another week. This is ridiculous. I'm filing charges in small claims court for the cost of the laptop.