Acer Aspire 1690 Battery Posted: October 11, 2014 @ 2:03 am |
On a recent trip to the Middle East, I was looking to purchase a laptop to bring back to the UK in order to use it for University. At first I considered some sub-notebooks such as the Sony TR and Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook. After discovering that all of the sub-notebook options had integrated graphics, I decided to sacrifice some portability for power and started looking around for what may be classed as a DTR (desktop replacement) laptop.The selection of laptops available which met my requirements was limited at the time. (Pentium-M CPU, 15.4″ widescreen and at least a Mobility Radeon 9600). The Acer Aspire 2012WLMi emerged as a good choice with a significant advantage in that it came with a one year international warranty as standard. Another option open to me was a similarly configured Acer M6N (with 64MB Mobility Radeon 9600). However, in the end I went for the Acer due to the fact that for the same price as the M6N, I was getting a 64MB Radeon 9700 and a DVD-Burner (the M6N was a fixed configuration with a DVD/CDRW combo drive) There has been a lot of interest in the 2012WLMi recently due to its affordable pricing in North America and Europe.In North America, the Acer Aspire 2012 currently comes in two configurations, the Aspire WLCi and Aspire WLMi models. The difference being that the WLCi has a 40GB hard drive, integrated Intel Extreme graphics and a DVD/CDRW combo drive while the WLMi model has a 60GB hard drive, 64MB Mobility Radeon 9700 and a DVD-dual drive (more about this later). The optical drive is in fact a Matsushita (aka Panasonic) UJ-820S which is a 4x DVD burner, but it also supports writing to DVD-RAM disks, thus making it a DVD-Multi-drive. This particular drive is tray loading and is also used in some current Toshiba laptops. I have not burnt a DVD-RAM disk myself; however I am confident that the drive will have no problems with the task.I have not had much past experience with notebook CD/DVD burners, however performance seems adequate for this type of drive. Burning a full 700MB CD took 7:17 at 16x which is a little slow, however it is bearable. DVD burning with the drive set to 4x was disappointing with a 4.3GB burn taking over 27 minutes, this is usually how long desktop drives take to burn at 2x.
Unfortunately, there are two other downsides to the drive. The first being that the drive is a little on the noisy side when spinning up and operating at full speed (this can be solved by using a utility such as Nero DriveSpeed to limit the maximum read speeds in order to reduce noise)The second downside is that Acer has implemented it as a fixed optical drive, meaning that it cannot be removed in order to save a little bit of weight. However, this is a very minor fault because most people would use the drive on a regular basis and the weight saving would only be around 250-300 grams.Acer supplies four recovery CDs with an instruction booklet as well as Norton Antivirus 2004 on a separate CD. Unfortunately the recovery CDs do not allow the user to customize the Windows XP installation much at all, it is a simple restoration of a pre-made drive image. This does have the advantage of making the system restore process faster (drivers and such are already included as part of the system image).An upside is that on the first recovery CD, Acer has conveniently provided separate drivers for all of the system components, so users who wish to perform a fresh installation of the operating system do not have to hunt around the internet to find drivers. I could only detect very slight flexing of the keyboard if the keys are pressed down very hard, with normal usage I think it would be extremely difficult to detect.The Synaptics touchpad is comfortable to use and has a nice scroll feature which allows the user to scroll a page by using the right-hand side of the touchpad, however it does tend to attract dust. The mouse buttons are the main problem, they are quite stiff although they do loosen up a little to a more comfortable level after some use.The laptop in general runs pretty cool, although lots of disk activity or gaming can push up the temperature significantly. I find it quite acceptable to use on my lap for non-gaming use. Battery life while gaming is also very reasonable. Using the “Always On” power profile which runs the processor at 1.5 Ghz all of the time results in between 1:30 and 2:00 of solid gaming.I’m a lucky lad. Not only am I sat in front of a portable superb-looking laptop, but I’m also looking at a desktop replacement. Because of my new Acer Aspire 1691, I can finally throw away my desktop computer, space wasting pile of junk. The sleek Acer 1691 tops my old desktop in every single respect. It’s amazing how laptops have come down in price, back in the day laptops were a luxury, but now laptops are a necessity for anybody looking for a new computer. Not to mention that a laptop is worth something when you come to sell it in a couple of years time, so for me, buying a laptop as opposed to a desktop was a no-brainer. It’s not like I sacrificed a lot of power for portability either, take a look at this beast, and keep in mind that I can take this notebook anywhere, anytime! Here is a small list of what the Acer 1691 has in strore: And that’s just for starters too! I must admit, I almost went for the Turion version of this Laptop, the Aspire 5021. On first glace, the 5021 looked a lot better — it had a 100GB HDD and 128MB of VRAM for the X700. Were it not for the complaining I’ve heard concerning the crackling speakers and the RAM running at slow speeds on the 5021 I might have gone for that instead. However, after doing my homework it appears that the Pentium M is better for long wireless surf-sessions, and who can refuse DD2 RAM? It’s future proofed, and it’s not out of date as soon as you’ve bought it! Considering the price of just under 700-British pounds from Comet.co.uk (approximately $1240 or 1000 Euros) I’m a happy bunny with this laptop which I’ll be using for surfing here, there or on top of that hill, playing games on when I’m bored of surfing on top of that hill, and typing out long pieces of writing for other peoples entertainment using this beautiful keyboard. I’d say it fits my needs like a glove. So let’s get cracking with the 1691 review! Oh, such a beautiful screen. If your other half catches you looking at this lustfully, which, no doubt you will be, then she might kick you out. Then again, that’s another advantage with a laptop — just take it with you, and leave your other half without a computer! 15.4 inches, widescreen makes this one a perfect choice for all your word processing tasks as well as all the entertainment you can throw at it. DVDs and Games in widescreen is a wonder to behold. The 1691 came with the 1280 x 800 resolution, and looks fantastic. Don’t forget about Acers CrystalBrite technology though, which can easily be compared to the famous Sony Vaio screens everybody raves about. A black gloss which makes everything that little bit more pleasing to look at. I haven’t noticed any dead pixels, but at the same time I’m not going to go out of my way downloading tools that searches for them. If my eyes cannot see them, then I don’t want to be introduced to one because then I’ll be able to see it forever more! That’s right, that sound did just come from my laptop! Something I find myself telling friends and family a lot, because they don’t believe that such sound can leave such speakers. Pump up the volume with the keyboard, and hear music in its finest form. I know for a fact that speakers or big headphones will make music sound better, but you tell me when it’s practical to lug around a pair of speakers with you. It’s not. So these speakers will do nicely for everything I want them to do. I must say that the speakers sound perfect when playing games such as GTA San Andreas on it, the radio stations, the beeping horns and the angry pedestrians come across well through the speakers. Bass-rich music isn’t something you want to be listening without a pair of headphones though, but I’m pleased on the whole. I knew benchmarking my Acer 1691 would depress me somewhat. When tested on 3DMark05 I got a not-so stunning score of 1486, a score close to the model number! However, you have to bear in mind that these tests are testing things at all of the best graphics, with all the best resolutions. It might not be able to handle future games with super-high settings (which is what 3DMark05 tests) but it can handle most of today’s games on high settings, and I’d imagine the future ones will run flawlessly providing you turn those settings down. I then decided to run Super PI on it, which is a nifty little program that times the calculation of Pi to various digits of accuracy. With most processes in the background turned off I managed to get to 2 million PI in 1 minute and 51 seconds.People that are taking this laptop to university, or anywhere that’s required for long typing sessions will not be disappointed. For three years I’ve been using a desktop keyboard, and, because my life sees me writing extremely long documents on a day to day basis I was worried that any laptop keyboard might not suit my needs. Fortunately, with the Acer 1691′s keyboard, I was pleasantly surprised. Three years of desktop typing took a mere three days to forget and learn how to use this keyboard with ease. I type fast, I don’t even bother looking at the keyboard — and I very rarely miss a letter out. Your fingers will just glide over the keys, and pressing the keys quickly and not being able to hear the keys is something of a luxury for me. I have noticed a little bit of keyboard flex on the left hand side, but as long as you type with care (which is something laptop owners should learn) then I don’t see this posing a problem. Take it from somebody who types a lot — you WILL NOT be disappointed. The laptop came with 802.11b/g wireless Lan, which works flawlessly with my D-Link wireless broadband router. It allows me to surf anywhere within a generous range, and share files with other laptops and linked up computers in the vicinity. Also, being able to print pictures wirelessly is a luxury I can get used to! On the label it states that the laptop has some kind of Signal Boosting technology, and while I cannot see any software on the computer allowing me to boost at will, I’m always in range even through thick walls — so it must be working constantly.
In addition the laptop comes with infrared which I have used to transfer files to my mobile phone. It was painless connecting up with the phone, but infrared is one of the slowest methods of transfer known to man — it took me around twenty minutes to get an MP3 on! The laptop comes with a bluetooth light, but in this model there is no bluetooth built in. You’ll have to pay a larger sum of money and buy the 1692 in order to bag yourself bluetooth.This laptop comes with XP home installed, along with Acer-exclusive features like the power manager, and a nifty little thing called GridVista which allows you to split your screen into sections which is great for watching various charts and feeds for share dealing. Unfortunately I can’t think of many uses for GridVista other than that, but for the right man, GridVista will be a godsend. In the pack I got quite a few discs bundled — a three mouth version of Norton Antivirus, Microsoft Works, NTI CD and DVD maker 7, and various recover CDs. Not much in the way of useful software here, but I’m sure people buying a laptop will have their own CDs just itching to be installed!I’m touching wood as I type here, but I haven’t had to bother with the customer support at all. Judging by the sounds of people complaining about Acers support, I don’t want to be speaking to them anytime soon either! The warranty covers you for one year parts and labor, which you can use around the globe thanks to the travelers warranty passport. I never took any extra coverage out, but you’re allowed to buy extra coverage if you want it later on. If I’m careful though, I should be able to avoid the customer services at all costs. Yeah, I’m still touching wood too..! As with virtually every laptop, you aren’t buying it for Bose-like sound quality. Of course, occasionally you will need to use them. I suppose they are serviceable, but they are fairly quiet and audiophiles certainly won’t be sticking with them. I would recommend good headphones as the output signal is pretty good. The speakers themselves are small grills at the front of the base, almost invisible. The headphone and line-in jacks are located on the front as well, which is an excellent idea. On my previous laptop, it was on the side and left a wire trailing over the keyboard!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
