PC Comments

Well I was at a conference across from Comp-USA and stopped in and I saw this laptop and I said to myself I have to get this one. I did research and PC-World gave it a good rating. So one day after work i decided I wanted to gp play with it to see it in action. Well there was a sign right underneath it saying 10% off on all laptops. That was it and I got it cheaper than anywhere us had it. I love it so far and do recommend it to anyone as long as they don’t it to be real portable. It’s a beast. I was looking at the Sager but I wanted an Intel over AMD plus this has more multimedia options and the Sager is a gaming machine.

Whatever your work or entertainment aspirations, Acer’s new notebook can probably handle it. This desktop replacement’s enormous (20.1-inch) screen is bright and crisp, and its speakers are outstanding. A powerful workstation and an adequate gaming rig, it includes TV, Webcam, and bundled PC Card-chargeable VoIP phone features.

For a big unit, the 9810 has decent near-2-hour battery life and runs remarkably coolly. But it needs a detachable keyboard, to permit a more comfortable working distance away from the huge screen. And at a gargantuan 18.7 inches long by 15.1 inches deep by 2.7 inches tall, the 9810-6829 takes up 40 percent more space than the average desktop replacement configured with a 17-inch screen–so plan on doing some serious desktop reorganizing to clear sufficient space for it.

The 1.25-inch-thick screen is thicker than the rest of the notebook and has a built-in supportive foot to prevent it from toppling backward. Closing the lid entails manually locking two side latches. It’s no great wonder that the total weight is 17.3 pounds (19.2 pounds including the power adapter). The screen has the same native 1680-by-1050-pixel resolution that most other big panels have; this makes for huge screen elements, which in turn results in very grainy images from the integrated 1.3-megapixel Webcam, but extremely good readability.

Overall, the 9810 would be excellent for any stationary purpose, but especially for working in multiple windows. The keyboard is quite comfortable. The 1.5-watt Acer 3Dsonic stereo speakers plus 4-watt BasSonic subwoofer produce loud, rich sound.

We reviewed the beefier of two preconfigured Aspire 9810 models. Our test unit’s dual 5400-rpm 160GB hard drives are fast and can hold 320GB of content. Ports, connections and slots on the notebook include a card reader, an ExpressCard slot for next-generation peripherals, and serial and parallel ports for older peripherals. You also get a DVI-D port (for connecting an LCD monitor), four USB ports, a dual-layer DVD writer, audio ports (featuring a S/PDIF port) on the front, and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi switches with status LEDs. All of the connections except the power port are logically laid out, but it is squeezed in so close to the TV tuner connection on the back that you’ll have to turn the cord so both can fit.

In addition to having the usual coaxial adapter cable for connecting the notebook to a set-top box or other home cable setup, the 9810 comes with a hybrid digital/analog antenna that hooks onto the top of the screen to help pick up analog or high-def signals from the airwaves. Another nice multimedia feature: Instead of the usual clumsy USB box connected by a long cable, the receiver for the Windows Media Center remote control is a no-muss, no-fuss thumb drive.

The 9810-6829 can run any operation well and juggles multiple open windows like a champ. In gaming, its 256MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 dedicated graphics chip helped it achieve frame rates that were plenty fast enough for playing Doom and Far Cry without skips or artifacts. The Acer’s 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 chip, 2GB of RAM, and Windows Vista Ultimate operating system enabled it to turn in a strong WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 75, virtually identical to the the HP Pavilion dv9000t’s 74.

If you want the biggest, easiest-to-view notebook screen, the $2999 (as of April 11, 2007) Acer 9810-6829 is the obvious choice. You may also want to peel off a few more bucks to fetch a wireless keyboard and mouse. But if you already have trouble fitting a laptop on your cluttered desk, you may need to start by replacing your desk.

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I needed a gaming and college computer for daughter. Bought this for $835. Set it up with various games and set the graphics on high to test 8600 and found excellent results. The video card was fast enough with the dedicated memory to handle all the games she couldn’t play before with her desktop. The movie playback was NG, I first thought the HD dvd drive was defective because of stalling but instead installed Nero Showtime and found that everything was all working great. The soundcard and speakers (including the subwoofer) sounded great. The software onboard was typical crap. Vista in the video games gave no problem at all, worked well. The ram for the price is good enough but every body knows you can never have enough. The case is sturdy which is great, stops the motherboard flex problems that allot of other laptops have. Battery lasted 3 hrs. installing and setting it up till I realized it wasn’t plugged in, it let me know in plenty of time.

The Acer Aspire 5920-6954 just slips under the $1000 mark, at $999 (as of 2/7/08); it’s worth every penny. Except for business applications, which it lacks, this Vista Home Premium laptop has just about everything home-office buyers could ask for in a solid budget notebook.

The notebook looks different without being too flashy. It has a black-and-cream-colored case set off by blue accents, including a big, easy-to-press triangle-shaped shortcut key set in the corner of the keyboard like a high-tech sapphire (hence Acer’s so-called “gemstone” designation).

At 7.3 pounds, the Aspire 5920-6954 is the heaviest budget laptop we looked at, but it has a 250GB hard drive and a fairly nice 15.4-inch screen (it’s a bit too reflective). Though it lacks a few things like Bluetooth, the 5920-6954 is the most high-definition-ready unit here, including both an HDMI port and an HD DVD reader. It has a subwoofer for better-than-average sound and a handy volume wheel. The terrific keyboard boasts loads of shortcut buttons that do everything but take out the trash. One set, on the left side of the keyboard, launches applications. A second, right-hand row controls multimedia, including an instant-on button that lets you play music and movies without launching Windows. A button placed between the mouse buttons scrolls documents in all four directions.

Finally, this is the only sub-$1000 laptop we reviewed that had a dedicated graphics chip–an nVidia GeForce 8600M GS with 256MB of memory. Thus it was the only one powerful enough to properly play the 3D games in our tests such as Doom 3 and Far Cry. Its frames-per-second rates weren’t the highest we’ve recorded for a laptop, but are more than enough for smooth, glitch-free play.

Equipped with a 1.66-GHz Core 2 Duo T5450 and 2GB of memory, the Aspire 5920-6954 earned a solid WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 70, the second best on the budget laptops chart. The score is five points higher than the group average of 65, and it’s one point better than the average of 70 earned by the 16 recently tested all-purpose notebooks in any price range. Battery life was average, lasting 3.8 hours.

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