Now days Notebooks are really getting cheap, if one plans to buy a Desktop for office for some personal Day to day uses, its really recommended that he/she should go for a laptop / notebook… I got my hands to one of the best budget laptop / notebook, available right now on the market, the Acer 4710z.

Acer 4710z

Acer 4710z

 

Intel Dual Core T2080 @ 1.73 GHz (1 MB L2 533 FSB)
1 GB DDR-II 667 MHz
160 GB SATA
Intel GMA 950 (Mobile 943 Chipset)
14.1″ Wide Screen 1280×800
DVD RW
1.3 MP Web Cam
Inbuilt Mic and 2 stereo Spks
Wireless LAN / 5 in 1 Card Reader / LAN / Bluetooth / IEEE 1934 / USB 2.0 / Supporting EXT Skps / 56.6k Modem

Read the Full Config here

Price

INR Rs. 33,500/- all inclusive (Kolkata, India)

Quick Look at the Product.

Design is good and compact, as you expect for a Laptop… Though personally I think the white keyboard though looks good but will get dirty as you daily use it…

Port management is good, 4 USB ports are distributed at both sides… Head phone slot is given at front, which was nice to see as it makes the head hpones easy to plug in, but again this creates a small problem while plugging in the bigger external speakers … lol…

Performance

Screen was good and bright enough… It does have issue if you directly get the sun in front of the screen otherwise, good performance for the Wide screen Display… I run 720p HD movies, run quite fine, though gives little issue with 1080p movies as you expect with GMA 950…. It is not ment to play such high HD content (Note usually a full movie of 1080p is around 14GB in size and minimum of 1920×800 Resolution)…

Is there any Difference between 15.4″ and 14.1″… ?? Not really, I dont see much of a difference on screen size with Dell 1520 and this one side by side… when both set to be running at 1280×800 !!!!

Processor is T2080 Dual Core non 64bit one… for this segment it is more than enough…

Acer 4710z T2080

GMA 950 is Vista Ready (not DirectX 10 for GMA 950) runs at Direct X 9.0L (DX 9.0C is for Windows XP and 9.0l is for Vista under non DX 10 hardware) Mode…

Acer 4710z Vista Ratings

I plugged my vg1930wm with its external display out put, and run the LCD at 1440×800 resolution… Run fine with no issue at all….

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The Built in 1.3 MP Web Cam is really good quality.. as one would expect from a 1.3 MP CAM… the only issue is Indian ISP bandwidth, all though you may over come the speed issue with now days 2 MBPS Broadband connection but with this 1.3 MP video and Voice chat, you will eat up a lot of Bandwidth so data charges will be really high… !!!

Acer Web Cam

So though the CAM quality is really good but in real time we really cant use the cam because of the high cost of Bandwidth :-( ….

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Once my good friend Bobby, told me that they have stopped making laptop’s, now days, they are now only making NoteBooks, because if you call it a Laptop, people would put it upon their lap and would burn them self and end up suing you… So now days these are all noteBooks…

Quite true in this case also, I run some test on it to see the temperature limits…

Acer 4710z Load Test

As you can see while under load of Pi Test, Temperatures shot up at close to 58c… Run the Test for a long time… System run stable under 60c all the time… So though little hot but no Stability issue…

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I tested the Battery by playing a 720p HD Video from DVD… now under vista with Screen brightness Set to 40% it gave the Critical Battery warning on exact 1 hour and 51 mins….

Software Sector

As I said its a Budget Notebook for mainly office use… so apart from gaming I have run quite a lot of softwares under it to test…

1st glance hey no OS, dealer will install Linux, so I asked him not to do any such, I would install by my self… I installed Fedora and Ubuntu, all run fine apart from WLAN and the bluetooth, no driver at Acer Web site… this is a let down… I installed some music players like WinAMP and VLC… No issue with VGA or sound, worked well…

Now it was the turn for Windows… XP to start with… Beware, I faced immediate hiccups, SATA/RAID driver cant be found under Default Windows XP SP2 installation source… !!! so HDD not was not detected by the installation media… It was not a problem for a Pro user, as for me too, it only delayed proceedings, as no Floppy drive so I had to go to the Acer Support Site to Download the ACHI (SATA/RAID) drivers for the Model 4710z…. and then I had to use N-Lite, to integrate them with Windows XP… !!! And then I had to Burn a Bootable CD to install Windows XP… No issue for me, but certainly it was a halt for average home / office users… After installation only point to note was that the Bluetooth didnt work with Windows XP, even after tried to install driver from Acer Support site for Windows XP version of Bluetooth driver, it still said, “installation cant progress becasue only Vista is supported” !!!!!

But once again, this Lappy is Windows Vista Ready, So at next OS test for Windows Vista No issue at all… all went smooth with Vista’s Default un-touched installation… With 1 GB RAM Vista run quite smoth and good with this model…

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As I said this one is one Home or Office use budget Laptop… so it perform great with Office apps under Vista…

MutiTasking…. ??

How about some Pro Apps, Little Image editing, Run PhotoShop… run Well… Installed Ulead Video Studio 10 plugged my Handy CAM with its IEEE 1394a… Run Quite fine on Single click DVD Making for a miniDV… Installed Pinnacle Studio, even there too though encoding time was more than a Desktop C2D or even High End Lappy like Dell 1420 / 1520 or Such… but it did the job well…

While Video Editing I Surf the Net / used Office apps, Chatted in Yahoo, no issue… that app run Fine in Background while I run my tasks in Fore ground….

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So My Verdict ??

Pros

  • The Cofig is Good (Dual Core / 1 GB / 160 GB / Vista Ready / WLAN / Modem / Bluetooth / DVD RW)
  • 14.1″ I would say makes it light and gives better battery life too
  • Price of INR Rs. 33,500/-… really good price even compare with Dell 6400….
  • Fully Vista Ready…
  • Can run 24×7 for those Torrent hungry people !!!

Cons

  • The Battery life isn’t that great…
  • No Native support for Windows XP
  • No bundle OS, so you have to find your own
  • No support for Linux at Acer Support Web Site..

So I would say really good deal for Rs. 33,500/- …
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