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39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
Acer Timeline -- Just the right size and performance for a casual user
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...
Published 14 months ago by Alexander Georgiev
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Great machine, horrible support
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...
Published 12 months ago by Harold McFarland
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39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
Acer Timeline -- Just the right size and performance for a casual user, July 3, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
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.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
Great laptop for linux, awesome battery life, July 10, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
I have had my Acer Aspire 4810TZ for all of three days now, and am quite happy with it. Some observations:
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 left- and 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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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
A lot of positives - even though my DVD burner is defective, July 13, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
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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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Great machine, horrible support, August 16, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
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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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
Great hardware, but very unstable system - UPDATE!, June 28, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
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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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Nice, July 25, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
I purchased the 4810T laptop with the 3500 single core processor. It has 2 driver upgrades that MUST be done or its a mess. Easy and explained on Acer support site. Then it runs well for any non-gamer, I have had 8 programs running at once with no problem, no noticeable slowing, no crashes. The battery life is 5 or more hours with heavy use, close to 8 with some caution. I cannot imagine why anyone with the su3500 is having any problem with vista unless they did not update the drivers, or change vista settings to run for performance. Very pleased with this laptop!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
acer aspire timeline, October 10, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
A word of caution for anyone buying an acer aspire timeline computer either the 15.6" or 14". You will not have the lockups some on here are claiming they had if you use windows xp or windows7 and you do a clean install of the OS. If you update the bios and all the drivers that will help significantly too. Remember also, a 64bit os is better then a 32bit if you have 3 gigs or more of memory.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Great computer for most basic tasks Great Battery Life, September 4, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
I bought this computer as a step down from my last laptop. I had a dual core HP that went south due to a bad nvidia chip. This one looked great for what I use a laptop for (web browsing, email, office productivity). It does ok with web video but stutters on HD youtube video. Standard definition youtube plays fine. I had researched this purchase. I came to the conclusion I wanted more than a netbook but didn't need the 17" desktop replacement notebook I had used in the past. I feel this was the perfect choice. The battery life is 8 hours minimum with low screen brightness and web surfing. Under heavier use and brighter screen you are looking at 5-6 hours minimum. The major drawback to this system is that it needs immediate technical attention from the start. You need to upgrade the LAN, Video driver, and BIOS from the Acer website immediately. Your system will slowly develop 100 percent cpu usage when idle if you don't. All is fine after the update. The other major negative is all the pre-installed software. I spent quite a bit of time getting rid of all this junk. Bottom line: Buy if you are a light computer processing user that needs a long battery. You shouldn't be scared off by updating drivers. Avoid it: You are game player. Power user (video encoding, photoshop). Scared to death of updating a driver and BIOS.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Sweet laptop, July 15, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
Looks better in form and factor than my Dell XPS 13 inch. I bought it for my son for his school. Now I am envious. 8 hrs of time against 3 hrs for my dell. Seems pretty durable. Timeline has a beautiful LED screen which is so cool to look at. Downloaded HD pics from my 12MP Canon and I can't believe how awesome they were. Superfast computing on a SU2700 processor. Maybe it is due to the fact that this baby is using the new DDR3 memory and has a frontside bus of 800. Most laptop has the old DDR2 and a bus of 667. Wireless N is a bonus. No regrets at all. I am dumping my 1 year old Dell XPS on ebay and am getting a new timeline for myself. This is the best bargain by far on superthin notebooks. NO tax too. Can't beat that.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Buyer Beware!, October 25, 2009
This review is from: Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop (Personal Computers)
I purchased this computer after several rounds of research, including looking at C-net and Amazon and other user reviews. I was excited about the computer's light weight and long battery life as I was looking for one that would be easy to carry for work trips. I was not disappointed on these fronts. It is light as a feather, has a great screen, wonderful feeling keyboard, and incredibly long battery life. I really wanted to love it!!
When I got the computer, I had heard that ACER installed a lot of redundant software and adware that I would probably have to delete. I was ok with this given the other features and the reasonable price. I thought I had deleted all the unnecessary items. Apparently, I didn't go far enough. After a few days, I noticed that the computer would get slow and basically freeze, especially when I had more than one program running. I expected it to be a little slow given that processor, but I didn't expect to do a forced quite almost every time I used it. The problem seemed to be getting worse, even though I only added a few pieces of software. I certainly wasn't doing heavy computing either - some word documents, a two-page powerpoint and some internet surfing - not necessarily at the same time.
Given that it was only a few weeks old, I brought it in to the place of purchase - Office Depot. They were nice and ran one of their free diagnostics to basically tell me they didn't see anything wrong except for some MALware . . . which weres the ACER-loaded programs. I had not purchased any sort of protection plan, so for another $169, they said they could fix my problem. I doubted that and passed on their offer. I called ACER.
When I called the technical support line, I was of course transported halfway around the world. The person I spoke to recommended that I run the recovery program. I asked her specifically if it would reinstall all the ACER software or if I would just get the Operating system (Vista). She assured me I would only get Vista. She was, of course, wrong, and I was back to square one with all of the ACER software back on my machine. I called the ACER tech support line again to ask them to walk me through each program and tell me which I could uninstall without affecting the performance of the computer. They basically refused and directed me back to the technicians that they said could help me for A FEE. I tried to understand how they could possibly charge me to help me fix the problem they themselves had created. I then realized why this bargain computer is such a bargain - the purchase price is clearly just the beginning. I again refused their offer, given that I thought that approach was absurd and I would probably again get the wrong answer.
I then did a little research on line. Apparently many others have had similar problems. One user traced their problem back to the ACER Launch program. I found it on my machine and unistalled it. It crashed my computer. After I rebooted, I was able to unistall it successfully.
Things have been working well so far. I am hopeful that, now that I have all of the ACER crap removed, it will perform as I had hoped. If it doesn't, I will bite the bullet, pay the money and buy a MacBook.
This does teach me a lesson that you do get what you pay for . . . and always buy the service plan, especially for a computer that is not as reliable as other brands.
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