Acer Ferrari 4002WLMi review

[786ARS]

Recently due to the faact that my old laptop's backlight died, and the insurance company cant being bothered to fix it, I ended up with a Ferrrari Acer 4002WLMi :) with the following specs:-

1.6Ghz AMD Turion
512MB Ram
80GB HD
X700 mobility 128mb
Windows Prof. x64 (free upgrade from Windows Home)
15.4" widescreen display
Inbuilt 8x DL DVD burner

Now to the review:-
From the second you open the box, yopu know that you have purchased something worth your money. The box has images of the Ferrari Logo, and the laptop. In the flap at the top of the box, there is a handle, and something that tells you how how to thke the stuff out.
The stuff in the box is:-

1x laptop
1x 2piece charger
1x recovery disks
1x warrenty card
1x manual
1x starting up guide
1x bluetooth ferrari mouse, using a usb recharger
1x Cleaning Cloth
1x Battery

I liked the way that there wasn't an abundace of paperwork and that a cleaning cloth was supplied, something that should be supplied with any piece of portable equipment that has a screen.

Once I inserted the battery and opened the laptop, i was amazed at the size of the screen. It was a massive widescreen which is perfect for playing films.
When I turned it on, it showed a picture of a ferrari then went in to the startup of agreeing to microsoft's code of conduct and etc. But when you log into you username, it makes the wonderfull sound of a ferrari speeding along a F1 circuit. The x64 windows loads up extreemly fast.

When you buy a new laptop, 9/10 times it comes with loads of rubbish which you spend ages trying to uninstall. Not with this. Itr immediatly starts installing stuff you would actually need, a very good dvd software, anti virus and etc. Unfortually, there was a problem with my antivirus, whcih made my computor freeze. But after 2 or 3 restarts i rectified the problem when windows told me it was a hd prob, which i fixed in comand prompt.Then I was done.

Now the real test, gaming. I installed SW battlefront I on it, and it completely blew the socks of playong it on my old toshiba with 2.5Ghz and a GeForce4 440 go. THe game was played at highest settings and still played perfectly. Another good thing about the gaming is the curvature of the keyboard, making it easier to press buttone and issue commands. The widescreen then multiplied everything by 10. Unfortuanatly i dont have any benchmarking brogramms installed yet eg. no 3D mark etc

Portability with this is not a problem for me, but i weigh 190lb and i am 6'1".
But for somene who was closer ot average stature, they would find the weight slightly uncomfortable, but managable. The laptop doesn't get too hot, and the noisiest thing is the dvd burner when you isnert or remove a cd. However the main reasons why it fares averagly are 1. short batt life, approx 2.5hrs on low settings. 3.5 max and 2. the size. with such a massive screen, it is quite a large laptop compared to an ibm thinkpad and the like.

Final verdict:-
8.5/10 Its great for gaming and films, but i feel it should have had a slightly more powerfull processor and more ram, and tried to convert it into a desktop replacement, rather than a portable with a very short battery life.

[786ARS]

please leave feedback for my first review

[faulkner132]

Solid. I like that you mentioned there wasn't junk software on it, but what do you mean by "Itr immediatly starts installing stuff you would actually need, a very good dvd software, anti virus and etc." and "Unfortually, there was a problem with my antivirus, whcih made my computor freeze. But after 2 or 3 restarts i rectified the problem when windows told me it was a hd prob, which i fixed in comand prompt."

Maybe elaborate slightly... I know saying there was a HD problem with a new computer isn't a good thing. Overall though, I like that you mentioned the battery life and how it fits for what you want to use it for.

Thanks for the review.

[786ARS]

sorry, i have a couple typos, my mistake. What exactly happened was that there was a program built in by the manufacturers. It activated when you first turned on the computor and starts setting up stuff by itself. I was suprised because this didnt happen on my old toshiba. What exactly happened was it said it had 14 things to install like antivirus and dvd software. Then when it started installing the anti-virus in command prompt, it froze, making me restart the computor manually. I did this twice, untill on the fourth time, i used task manager to cancel the setup. when i cancelled the setup, a information bubble appeared over an icon in the system tray in the bottom right hand corner of the scree saying that there was a hd prob and i should run checkdisk. i did and it rectified the problem and re-started. then on re-start, it installed the antivirus without a hitch. In other words:- It had a minor HD prob which i fixed with checkdisk.

[786ARS]

Any other ratings?

[Jaggannath]

Chill out 786ARS, the fact noone is asking questions means you've answered our questions pretty well, and therefore it must be a pretty good review ;) :)