Laptops

Acer TravelMate 3012 Review (Part 2)

Review Part 2 – Software toys.

Go To Part 1 of the review.

The Acer TravelMate 3012 comes with a variety of software tools and applications. Many of these are accessed from the ‘e’ button below the screen. Pressing this button brings up the Acer ‘Empowering Technology’ panel.

The panel covers:

Other software that ships with the 3012 includes Cyberlink PowerDVD, NTI CD & DVD Maker, Adobe Reader 7.0 and Norton Antivirus.

The nice thing about the other shipped apps. is that they don’t install by default but rather you can choose to install them later if you wish. I like this idea much better as, for example, my Dell laptop shipped with McAfee security suite on a 90 day trial. I didn’t want McAfee as I use Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition at work. McAfee was a real pain to remove from the Dell, requiring about 5 reboots. No problems here if you don’t want any of the software you simply choose not to install it.

One final cool piece of software is the Acer GraviSense application. This is an innovative utility designed to protect your data by automatically “parking” the heads of the hard drive in the event that sudden motion is detected. The Acer GraviSense can also be set to activate an alarm in case your notebook is moved by an unauthorized person. In anti-theft mode, if the laptop is moved a password must be entered before it can be used again.

In practice I found most of the software to be pretty useful. The Gravisense thing is pretty cool to play with to see just how much you have to move the laptop for the software to notice!

One problem I am having at the moment is with the ePower Management. This application overrides the standard Windows power management interface in favour of a more complex array of controls. These cover the basics such as backlight brightness and standby/hibernation times but it also includes the ability to turn on and off bluetooth, WiFi, Firewire and the cardbus interface as well as throttle the CPU. The problem I’m seeing with this is that often it does not recognise when you switch from running on mains power to running on battery. As a result the CPU isn’t throttled down and I find myself running out of battery power pretty quickly. I just have to remember to check the status manually each time I plug in or unplug the power.

Anyway, enough for now on software. We’ll cover something else next time!

Go To Part 1 of the review.

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): Acer, laptop, TavelMate, Computing, technology, Dell]

Acer TravelMate 3012 Review (Part 1)

I’ve had my TravelMate 3012 for a full week now and I have used it a LOT. I commute to and from London every day so it gets a fair amount of use on the train as well as being used while I’m in the office and at home.

I’ve decided to break my review down into manageable chunks and post each part over a period of time.

What you get in the box

Firstly, what do you get in the box with a 3012WTMi? My basic model shipped with the following:

Everything was well packed within the box, quite exciting to unpack it all! Other reviews mention a bluetooth VoIP headset with this model but I didn’t get one in the box.

The first time you boot the 3012 it runs through a series of setup and install screens. A series of Acer applications and utilities are loaded. The initial setup takes quite a long time and you have to reboot several times along the way. One thing that surprised me was that after all the setup the screen wasn’t set to the native res of the TFT instead being left at 1024 x 768 rather than 1280 x 800. Easy to change I know but would have thought that this should be part of the initial install.

The setup installs a number of applications but I shall cover them and what they do in part 2 which will soon follow.

Go to Part 2 of the review

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): Acer, laptop, TavelMate, Computing, technology, Dell]

Acer TravelMate 3012

I’ve had my Acer TravelMate 3012WTMi laptop for less than a week but I think it’s great!

I do plan to post a review of the Acer over the next few weeks. I know that there are a number of other reviews out there but they don’t tend to cover extended use.

I have a question for anyone that might have a 3012. Several other reviews mention that the TravelMate 3012 comes with a Bluetooth VoIP headset, but my laptop hasn’t got one, nor is there any mention of it in the manual. Does anyone have one?

In my earlier post I mentioned that I had been considering a UMPC rather than a laptop. Someone I know bought a Samsung Q1 while it’s pretty good, as far as I can tell, it does not have a PCMCIA slot which I need.

Go To Part 1 of the review.

Go To Part 2 of the review.

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): Acer, laptop, TavelMate, Computing, technology]

New Acer Laptop

This post is a bit of a double recommendation really.

Firstly I just bought myself a new Acer TravelMate 3012WTMi laptop. Although I’m only just unpacking it now I’m already over the moon with it! It’s small and light enough so as to be portable but not so small as to be unusable.

When I decided to get a new laptop I knew what I had in mind. It had to be small and light as I do a lot of commuting and would be using it on trains. I also needed decent battery life and it had to have a PCMCIA slot for my 3G Datacard. I was amazed at just how many of the smaller laptops now come without the PCMCIA slot, most of them now shipping with just a CF slot.

Up until now I have been a big fan of Dell laptops, the previous 3 laptops I have had were Dell. I really liked the Dell X1 but this only has the CF card slot. No good to me!

I briefly looked at getting one of the new UMPC‘s and toyed with the idea of the Samsung Q1 but the reviews of the UMPC platform in general have been pretty poor.

So a friend suggested looking at the Acer. Acer wasn’t really a brand I had considered for laptops before. I’ve had some Acer monitors which have been pretty good so I decided to check it out.

The specification of the 3012 was exactly what I was looking and more to boot. It’s powered by Intel’s new Core Duo processor and supported by 1Gb of RAM. The hards drive is a spacious 80Gb, more than enough for me. The screen is 12.1″ Widescreen with a res of 1280×800, again this is ideal for me. It also includes a 1.3 mega pixel webcam which is a nice addition. Finally it had the PCMCIA card slot that I desperatly needed.

So I shopped around for a while, getting prices, looking at the excellent reviews and decided that the Acer was the one for me.

This is where we come to my second recommendation. A friend told me about a new company called expedIT that he had used recently. So I gave them a call and asked them for a price for the Acer model I wanted. The guy that I spoke to there said that Acer wasn’t a brand that they stocked but that he would see if he could get a price for me.

About 15 minutes later the guy called me back and gave me a quote. It was the same as the best price that I had seen on the web but what made me buy it from them, other than that they had been recommended to me, was that they actually took the time to find out about the product that I had enquired about and had come back to me so quickly with the price. What’s more they were able to promise the delivery within two days. Sold!

As promised the laptop arrived yesterday and I’m just getting to play with it now. I’ll probably follow up later.

Matt

[Technorati tag(s): Acer, laptop, TavelMate, Computing, technology]