I have recently purchased this laptop with vista preinstalled. For a laptop of this size it is not heavy .
There is a built-in camera at the top of the machine but personnally I have not used this.
The 17" screen is great to work with , it is very clear and the colours come over vividly. The pixel resolution can go upto 1440 x 900 and supports multi window viewing using acer gridvista. For external displays it has svideo (tv) and VGA port. It also has modem ethernet ports. although it is also wireless.
I have had no problems connecting to the internet and can surf very quickly.
It has a 5in1 card reader on the side,(that takes sd, mmc, ms ms pro and xD) there is a small piece of plastic in there that looks like a wheel. At first I had problems pulling this out at it is hard to grip you need to use your nails..
It uses realtex audio and the sound comes over incredable clear. The inbuilt microphone is very good and you do not have to lean over the laptop for it to hear you. I have been using the vista voice recognition that comes with vista and I do not need to speak loud for the mic to pic up my voice
It is not a slow laptop and is incredable quite. It has 4 usb ports and although I have heard rumours that vista does not recognise pen drives I have used one and have had no problems.
Several keys on the keyboard are dedicated keys eg you can turn the internet on or bluetooth with a touch of one button you can also set it to go into your e-mail this way or to start specific programs.
My laptop came with 1 gb ram and because I enjoy playing the odd game I changed it to 2gb. The drawback is that the memory comes with only 2 banks and they are used on purchase so to upgrade you must take out at least one and replace with higher amount. Also at the moment 2gb ram is fairly expensive I was quote £230 for 1 2gm ram. specifically for the machine.
my laptop runs using nvidia geforce go 6100 (which is fully directx 9 compatable) and I have been able to play games like, si d meiers railroads, with no problems although in some cases you may have to keep the graphics down to have smooth gameplay. If you enjoy games like sims 2 this machine handles it easily. Although I have not been able to get the game city life to play using vista. eventhough there are patches out there for it. my machine came with directx 10
You touch pad is failrly sensitive and you only need a light touch
The battery life is quiite capable of running for 2 hours and you can change power setting on the machine to extend battery runtime
My laptop did not come with a recovery disk but there are facilities to make your own ones on disk. You can back up the hard drive on the machine itself but this takes up 16gb or more. I have noticed that the hard drive has been partitioned into 2. The button on the dvd drive is indented and does take some time to get used to using. There is a mini pci card bay underneath the machine plus a pci express mini card bay and a pci card slot on the side.
I only paid £500 for the machine and feel the money has been well spent. I know I have not covered all aspects of the machine but hope this helps someone when deciding if it is the one for them.
If I think of anything more to say about the machine, good or bad, I will add this at a later date.
More details
Memory / capacity
Good
Ease of use
Very easy
Range of Extra Features
Good
Instruction manual
Satisfactory
Manufacturer Support
Good
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