Acer Ferrari 4005WLMi

I bought my Acer Ferrari laptop in October 2005 - plenty of time to have forged a decent opinion of it. My ratings are based on my opinion of the machine NOW, compared to the speed and performance of contemporary computers.

I wanted something that had enough power to play games and do anything else I wanted. When bought, I had intended it to be capable of becoming a desktop replacement - that didn't happen, as, being a bit of a hardware ...
.../> Overall, I consider the Acer Ferrari a good buy, and nearly one and a half years down the line, it is still a very capable machine.

Oh - one last rather important point. I've installed Windows Vista Ultimate edition on this machine, and, although it's not as perky as my desktop with an E6600 Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM, it is perfectly usable, and all devices have Vista drivers available!   ... more

I bought my Acer Ferrari laptop in October 2005 - plenty of time to have forged a decent opinion of it. My ratings are based on my opinion of the machine NOW, compared to the speed and performance of contemporary computers.

I wanted something that had enough power to play games and do anything else I wanted. When bought, I had intended it to be capable of becoming a desktop replacement - that didn't happen, as, being a bit of a hardware junkie, the desktop machine has continued to get more and more powerful.

Anyway...back to the Acer. I was so excited when it arrived. You see, since getting my first 8-bit computer in 1983, I've never actually had a brand new, complete computer. I've either got hold of second hand PCs, or I've built my own desktop machine from scratch - I prefer it that way. That's obviously not feasible with laptops though, so I had to buy the finished item.

My main requirements at the time were:

- 64-bit processor; AMD were, in my opinion, king of home CPUs at the time, so I wanted a proper mobile chip - the Turion seemed the way to go.
- dedicated graphics memory; nothing too huge - just something that would be able to play most games of the time comfortably.
- 1GB RAM
- as much hard disk as possible.
- wireless networking built in.

After much searching, I finally plumped for this machine. I had a personal recommendation from a friend at work as to the standard of these machines, and so I decided that as long as I paid by credit card, I didn't have much to lose.

Only two things have ever physically gone wrong with this machine. One was the bluetooth mouse, which although it came with it, is really a peripheral, and therefore probably shouldn't really affect the rating of the laptop itself. In the end, I bought another mini-mouse, and have been perfectly happy with it. The second was the PCMCIA release catch, which snapped off. That was most likely my fault though, as I tried to put the PC back into it's case with it sticking out!!

Regarding the laptop itself, the screen is rather nice. Although it does lack the ability to display any decent sort of contrast, making it not suitable for photo editing. For any work where a ultra-reliable rendition of pictures is not paramount though, this display is just fine - and that includes gaming.

The machine comes with the OEM reinstall disks, that allow reinstallation back to the manufacturer's original disk content. I've only used that once, mainly due to rather a lot of messing around on my part. Interestingly, although the computer just comes with a C: drive, if you resize it, and partition a new drive alonside it (so instead of just one 100GB drive, you have two 50GBs for instance), when you use the reinstall disk, it only goes over the C: drive, and leaves the other one intact. Handy for ensuring that data can be preserved in this scenario.

The wireless operation of this laptop has been flawless. It never drops, whilst my fiancee's Sony Vaio has been known to. The touchpad is one of the most accurate I have used. The only thing lacking from it, which some of the newer laptops seem to have, is the scroll areas to the right and bottom of the pad.

The laptop has two pushbutton controls at the front of the case, which allow for very quick and convenient enablement/disablement of bluetooth and the wireless connection. They also illuminate to show when each is active. At the front of the case is also the multi memory card slot, supporting most memory cards (though not Compact Flash). Headphone and earphone sockets are also conveniently located near at the front, as are the stereo speakers.

There are three USB ports on the right hand side of the laptop, along with a further one on the left hand side, which is plenty for a portable machine.

The included software is excellent for getting started with the machine, although I did not find myself wanting to use all of it. It comes with Works 8, Autoroute 2005, Money, MS Word, NTI CD/DVD Burning software, Encarta 2005, and more.

When I got the laptop, it's fair to say that it seemed to work at a blistering rate. With the advent of dual-core processors however, it's not significantly fast any more, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that it is a more than capable number cruncher.

I have to admit that I didn't buy this machine for the Ferrari branding...I bought it because I liked the technical spec. The rubberised keyboard rest area is nice. It does help reduce fatigue when using the machine for long periods. And the carbon-fibre top of the case caused more than a few comments from people.

I wasn't so keen on the sound that was made when the machine started up though - a sound of an F1 car zooming past during a race. A little embarrassing to say the least. And I wasn't that keen on the F1 calendar wallpaper either. But that is just me, and I guess that a lot of people probably did buy it for the F1 branding, and will appreciate these additions.

Overall, I consider the Acer Ferrari a good buy, and nearly one and a half years down the line, it is still a very capable machine.

Oh - one last rather important point. I've installed Windows Vista Ultimate edition on this machine, and, although it's not as perky as my desktop with an E6600 Core 2 Duo and 2GB RAM, it is perfectly usable, and all devices have Vista drivers available!  

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