Acer TravelMate 8215

I have ordered this laptop:

http://play.com/Electronics/Electro..._Duo_T7200_2_GHz_Laptop_Notebook/Product.html

which should arrive 3-5 days. Ill let you know my thoughts and perform the usual benchmarks vs real-world tests.

What ill be using it for

- Coding (ASP.NET, C++)
- Browsing, Surfing, Email
- Movies + Series
- World of Warcraft (Needs to run this well)

If you have any questions or tests you'd like me to try out, post here and ill try my best to answer your questions.

Hold thumbs...

 

I was thinking about purchasing this same laptop soon. But I think I will wait until you post your review.

Please list all the pros and cons that you have found with this notebook. Thanks.

 

I've also been looking for info on this laptop - I hope it lives up to expectations!

 

Also I see that some people have complained about the TravelMate 8204 screen. Please post your opinion on the 8215 screen. I hope that they have made some improvements.

 

Laptop has been posted, so not too long now.

 

When do you think the review will be posted?

 

Okay the laptop has arrived and i have done some thorough testing:

It is a very pretty laptop, set in carbon fiber. This will definately turn heads in the coffee shop.
The primary stats are

- 15.4" screen
- Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz (4MB L2 Cache)
- 2 Gig RAM
- 160 Gig 5400 RPM Drive
- ATI x1600 Mobility 256M DDR3 Memory (512 w/Hypermemory)
- Realtek HD Audio
- Bluetooth, Smartcard reader

Its lightning quick - realworld testing here. Windows boots up very fast, windows navigation is slick. WoW runs really well, 1280x1024 res, all options on, i have yet to test out large raids where alot of action occurs and framerates tend to drop, but the capital cities produce 40+ fps.
The screen is deceivingly big, but perhaps a little dim. The build quality is good. No dead pixels and little leakage to talk about. Response time is good.

Battery life is about 2.5 hours under normal load, and just under 2 hours whilst gaming. Note that it comes pre-installed with power management software which has different profiles for the laptop under power and using batteries. Normally, on battery cpu and graphic performance is toned down slightly in order to save on power.

The laptop design is very sleek. The keyboard is arranged in a slight arc, and the ctrl button is in the normal place. Buttons feel good and responsive. The touchpad has no dedicated scrolling area which is good, as this is a deal breaker for some. The laptop is relatively light (around 3kgs), and is compact.

Benchmarks 3dmark, mobilemark coming soon.

Unfortunately it comes formatted with 2 FAT32 partitions, and together with ACER bloatware. I guess this is acer's fault and not the laptop, but this irks me. I had to spend hours getting a winxp oem installation (it doesnt come with a reinstall disk), but i like to setup my own pcs.

*Aside* I was experiencing a IRQL BSOD a few xp installs ago. Since then i have used an official xp oem install (not 9-in-1 ISO), latest catalyst mobility drivers 6.10, drivers from intel and realtek etc. The drivers from the acer support site were flagged under Travelmate 8200, so they may have been old. I know for a fact that the realtek driver is old. Since then i havent experienced a BSOD, so ill keep you posted.

Note there are a whole slew of features ive overlooked, such as the built in bluetooth, cardreader, webcam, etc as i was interesting in the core features.

Pros
- sleek compact design
- excellent windows performance
- excellent gaming performance (within reason, it wont run oblivion on full)
- built in bluetooth

Cons
- expensive
- dim screen
- comes preinstalled with FAT32 partitions and Acer eXXX management software
- no external volume control

All in all im very happy with the product, but the reinstalling and price may deter less savy customers.

 

Seems not too different from the 8204 then.
upgrades include Blueray drive, updated CPU, & 40GB extra storage.
I would say that another CON is that the drive is only a 5400 which is quite slow for a premium notebook. Also the sound is likely to be pants as well.

BTW, if you experience any buzzing noise whilst typing or otherwise, have a go at muting your line-in. That should get rid of it.

 

Does that mean that you can't scroll with the touch pad or just that the scrolling area isn't marked?

What about gestures? can you make Back/Forward with the touch pad?

 

hmm i have this nb also. some comments

expensive <- but cheapest for the specs u can get . so can't really complain
dim screen <- this i agree. just use the function keys to push ur backlight highest then.
no external volume control <- hmm. i thot using the function keys can increase volume?

 

I also have recently bought an Acer TravelMate 8215WLMi and am generally pleased with it, although I was surprised that it does not feel much faster than my previous notebook PC (an Acer Ferrari 3000).

The only problem I have with the 8215 is that, on occasion, the response slows down markedly (the mouse pointer moves slowly and jerkedly across the screen when I drag it, and response to key presses is very slow) and a horizontal line of interference flits arounds the screen randomly. At first I thought it was caused by interference from the mains supply but it still occurs if the 8215 is running off the battery.

After a while the flickering line and slow performance stop and the 8215 performance returns to normal.

Does anyone with an 8215 have the same problem? Any ideas? Is this likely to be a fault with my machine or could it be due to some of the built-in Acer "Empowering Technology" software going through a periodic routine of some kind?

Fellow 8215 users, do you experience the same effect from time to time? And, if so, is there a solution?

 

Not sure about this one, I've got an 8204 and I've never noticed any issues with the fact that the drive is 5400rpm rather than 7200rpm. Personally I think this mattered more on older, slower notebooks. I used to get video on my old Toshiba (P4 2.5Ghz if I recall) and it used to drop frames, even with a 7200rpm drive, my 8204 has never dropped a frame, despite having the slower drive, at least in my book that points to the processor being able to handle it better.

I guess it really depends what you are doing, real world tests probably don't have issues.

 

Drive speed is determined by size and rotational speed.

Higher rotational speed will result in higher data rate - heads flying over the data faster - and better "seek time" as heads also get to the data of interest faster (waiting for the platter to pass by). This is why a 100GB 7200 drive is faster than a 100GB 5400 drive.

Bigger size means higher bit density and also higher data rate - more data read as it's flying by at 5400 RPM, for example. This is why a 160GB drive will have a roughly 60% higher data rate than a 100GB drive.

There's all kind of benchmarking one could embark on now, but the basic real-world conclusion is that a 5400 drive with 160GB is just as fast as a 7200 drive with 100GB. If not faster. The seek time of the 7200 is better, but the 5400 makes up for it with higher data rate - which one is more important really depends on the application, handling large files will tend to be faster on the 5400 while handling lots of small files _should_ be better on 7200. In the end though these are differences more likely to affect lab tests than real world use.

There are no 7200RPM drives bigger than 100GB as far as I know, so I would consider a 5400 160G drive pretty much top of the line as far as speed is concerned.

I even heard from users of the new MacBook Pro that the 4200 RPM 200GB drive feels "blazingly fast". Surprising at first, but then, it should have a data rate equivalent to a 8400 RPM 100GB drive - better than a 7200 100GB drive. I never before considered a 4200 drive could be fast - bad experiences in the past - but tech is evolving fast and we never cease to learn...

I am disappointed that the screen is still dim. I have a TM8204 and that is the biggest (or only) issue with it. And I know it's possible to make high res screens that are bright - look at MacBook Pro or some Dells I have seen. Acer doesn't seem to care about that, shame at this price.

Edit: This post was bound to be outdated. As of May 2007 there is one 200GB 7200 RPM laptop drive from Hitachi and a few 5400 250GB ones. The wonders of technological advancement will never cease...

 

8204 Here

Visual Studio 2005 --> C++, C# , APS.NET

Photoshop CS2 , CS3

Join the Club.

 

Have 8215 WLMi and am generally happy with it.

 

one other difference is the L2 cache, from 2MB in the 8204 to 4MB in the 8215. 3DMark for my 8204 is roughly 4300. what's yours on the 8215?

 

make sure your 8204 is configured to use the UDMA Mode 6 (Ultra ATA/133) instead of the slower UDMA Mode 5 (default config).

 

I have purchased this laptop as well.
And like bobsmithers I did a rehit of the system. Doesn't make much sense to me, why Acer has preinstalled XP with 2 Fat32 partitions.

Anyway, I wish I had found this link several hours ago - would have saved me a lot of time - drivers for the 8215: http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/tm_8210.html

Realtek, however, has a newer driver for the HD Audio device available on their website.

Hope the link will be useful to others.

 

Hi, I got an 8215W a couple of weeks ago, but have experienced problems with it.
1) Firstly, security, one of the features that attracted me to the machine in the first place: I enabled the PlatinumPAS and PlatinumSecure (both in the acer eSettings app) for the security smartcards. Setting up the first smartcard seemed to go OK. When setting up the emergency card, I got a CMOS error, but it continued through the process.
Now, everytime I boot up, the PlatinumPAS does a check on the card I created and tells me that the smartcard is invalid, please insert a valid smartcard. I fiddle around with the smartcard I ran through the setup process and after multiple attempts (including reboots because of "System blocked" errors) it eventually deigns to accept the valid smartcard. Then later in the bootup sequence PlatinumSecure does the same thing; eventually asking me for my password while I try to keep the card inserted slightly farther in than the resting place.

Has anyone experienced something similar? To the experts, does it sound like a hardware problem or a driver problem?

2) The inbuilt VoIP phone won't let me open the programme, stating that it is available on ACER laptops only. It makes one wonder what the 8215 is designated, if not a laptop. I haven't even tried to solve this, because I'm more concerned about the security problem.

Response has always been good, I've never seen the problems that Fitzcarraldo has described previously.

Thanks for any hints on how to solve the smartcard problems in particular,
Best Regards,
ConorD

 

Hello to all...

can someone please tell me something regarding the Fans in the ACER TravelMate 8215.
My TravelMate 801 is very quietly. Every Time the Fan rotates, i know that there is a Process with 100% CPU Utilization. I want to know if the TravelMate 8215 is quietly too.

Thanks in Advance
Olaf

 

A few week's ago i bought a TM8210 LX.TEH06.069.
What about fan... my notebook is quiet. Fan is off when temp is <50'C. When temp goes to 55'C fan turn on (at this speed fan is audible-almost silent-but not loud)... then fan cooling CPU to temp 50'C and than again is turn off.

Before I buy this Notebook I worry about fan. But everything is OK
Today I receive a Zalman Notebook Cooler ZM-NC1000. This thing is great! It is very silent and my notebook fan rarely on

Sorry for my language

 

It doesn't seem that much better than the 8204 except for slight upgrades...

Here's my 8204 when I got it. Still running strong today (except for 2 minute startups)

 

How? I don't see any options for setting DMA mode in the Bios settings (hitting F2 when the machine starts up).

 

Having owned the 8204 and now the 8210, the biggest difference between the two is the quality of the screen on the 8210. It is much brighter and doesnt have the background noise issue that the 8204 had.

Apart from that, the other hardware upgrades are trivial. Apart from the screen, most users wont notice the difference between the two.

 

Althought the hefty price tag on this laptop, I would like to warn professionals (like myself - 15 years in the IT business, -currently IT Manager) that this laptop, is certainly not for professionals, mainly due to the VERY poor support delivered by ACER (please confirm that, if you are an ACER user reading this).

Previously I have owned an IBM and two Compaq Business model Laptops (A700, NW8000), and have experienced good performance / quality and excellent support.

This time I desired a blend of multimedia and performance, and thought that this model would be the ultimate machine.
Performance is barely ok, mainly due to the huge pile of memory resident programs that comes preinstalled. I then wanted to do a clean installation of Vista. After having waited 43 minutes i finally reached ACER support, -and was disappointingly told that they do not provide installation media. The best they could do, was that I could burn a backup of how the machine was installed from factory... (incl. all the bloatware !!!).

As regards to quality and Support, my laptop was delivered with a faulty keyboard (skips random characters). As I am working abroad, in Nepal, and have to go back there in one weeks time, I consulted my (excellent) supplier (proshop), and asked for a DOA replacement. They told me that ACER provides all support for their laptops themselves, and eventhough they called Acer, they were not allowed to send me a replacement.

Then I called ACER support again - this time I selected english language, as I thought, that the previous waiting time might have been due to lack of Scandinavian supportes. After having waited for 35 minutes, I gave up. Then later the same day, I called again, and after having waited for 52 minutes (that is from the log of my digital phone), I finally reached the supporter. As a professional, my computer is as valuable as my right arm, and I had therefore purchased a 3 year ACER ADVANTAGE warranty extension, which states that I will get priority handling of support issues, as well as international support. Well first the supporter, could not guarantee me that the laptop would be repaired within the 5 working days left, before my departure to Nepal, as he told me the keyboard (!) might not be in stock. I then asked him to check whether it was in stock or not, as I would hate to leave Denmark without my laptop (as goods cannot be sent safely to or from Nepal). However he told me that he was not able to check the stock, or ask the repair dept. I then asked how ACER is able to provide me the international support in Nepal, -and he could tell me (after having looked for countries on the African continent ...), that I could send it to Thailand, which is absolutely out of the question, as much of the goods to/from Nepal disappears in customs in Kathmandu

Nothing whatsoever was offered to remedy the poor situation I had ended up in. Now the only option that I am left with, is to use an external keyboard with my ACER TravelMate (not much of a travel-mate), until I return to Denmark in 2½ months time for summer holiday.

Apart from that, the nice-looking Bluetooth VOIP phone, that is delivered, is practically unuseable (the voice quality is extremely poor, eventhough sitting right next to my laptop).
The two keys on the keyboard for adjusting volume of the loudspeakers doesnt work at all (they work as up and down arrows though).
MSN Live Messenger v. 8.1, which was the first program I installed, reports that "Messenger has stopped working" every time I try to start it. I found out (not by waiting 50 minutes for support, but by searching 5 minutes on the internet), that this is a known ACER problem with their eDataSecurity bloatware. I then installed the patch for that (new version of eDataSecurity), -with no effect. I then uninstalled eDataSecurity, but still I am not able to run MSN Live Messenger. Can you imagine, that a company nowadays ships their top of the line laptop not being able to run the most common messenger software !!!

I have purchased all the accessories necessary for being as mobile as possible (Easy dock docking station, media bay battery, additional 120 Gb media bay HDD, and an extra power adapter).

The power adapter for the Easy Dock, as well as the separate power adapter was delivered without the 220V cable, -can you imagine 2 power adapters, without being able to plug them in.

My previous laptops had docking stations that I could plug the laptop on top of. This docking station is plugged into the backside of the computer through a 10 cm. cable, which means that the docking station takes up 25 cm. of space behind the computer. As I am now forced to use an external keyboard in front of it, I certainly dont have 25 cm. of available space behind my laptop. Furthermore the docking station is not centered behind the laptop, but is sticing out 5 cm. to one side. Terrible design.

Finally i have to spend minutes each time to get the cable to stick to the laptop, while the laptop is going ding-dong attaching and de-ataching my devices .... The reason for me buying the Easy Dock was to avoid spending time connecting to my accessories, but in fact I could have connected them all faster and much safer (an external HDD doesnt like a loose connection), than it takes to get the docking station connected.

Well, that was a lot of negative things about ACER support and quality of equipment. Is there nothing positive to say, -well nothing comes to my mind right now, apart from the nice looking OrbiCam camera on top of the display. The built in multimedia functionality was the main reason why I got fooled fooled to purchase a laptop this poorly designed and with TERRIBLE support.

 

Some comments on the questions in this thread.

The 1680x1050 monitor is OK. Not very bright like Dell, but ok.
I also have the problem with slow-down and mouse leaving traces, and the 3 year old Compaq NW8000 that I had before is guaranteed quicker than this 8215 ! Maybe the speed of it is reduced to keep down the temperature.
Fan noise is barely hearable, but the exhaust from the fan, gets VERY hot.
Got mine with Vista, but NO media for clean install, -actually, due to the service partition, it is impossible to do a clean install, without having to purchase original Vista CDs.
The nice VOIP phone never came to work, with either Vista, or the clean XP installation I did afterwards, with all updated drivers. Spent a lot of time on it.

 

I have an 8204, I am in Thailand, and Acer support is excellent here. Nothing wrong with the 8204 but I had the CPU fan replaced as it made noises. I was without laptop for 1/2 day - brought it in in the morning, picked back up at noon.
Acer support seems to be very dependent on the county. I have heard bad things about U.S. support as well. Nepal seems to be taking the cake though.

I did uninstall all of the Acer crapware immediately when I bought it - I don't understand why they do this, none of these provide any value. Maybe with the exception of system information.

 

The background noise issue was fixed by one of the Bios udpates. I don't see it anymore (and I could see it very well before) on my 8204.

The 8204 screen is still very dim though - shame. I live in a very sunny country so this is probably the biggest - and only - issue for me.

 

Well let me start with saying that its a little sad to hear so many people having trouble with their TM8215. I always thought that all the problems would have been solved since its a continuation model in their TravelMate series. To be exactly from TM8204. Apparently ACER is not listening to their customers. What a bad idea

Now im also one of them who have this beautiful TM8215. I have had mine for 5 months. I must admit that it was a very expensive machine compared to other brands. I chose this machine because it was way better looking than alot of the others. Even HP did not have a machine that could match the specs and look this good.

Overall i have been very happy with my machine. Its fast and works great. All though i am having some issues with the heat. Now ACER has made a very BAD design decision to put the cpu heat wents on the right side. This is where i put my mouse working at home. And i bet that a lot of people do that. After a couple of hours u can feel the hot air on ur hand and thats not very nice. Very BAD Acer!!!!
Make it right next time!!!!!!!!!

These days im having some cpu tempature/fan speed problems. After working on some rapports in Word and using the Web for some hours the fan starts spinning up and it gets louder and louder. And it keep doing that for a very very long time. Some times i have to close for IE and Word just to get it quit again.
Now i dont think that Word and IE a can use that much of power. So i got NHC(Notebook Hardware Control)to make sure that it never goes over 1Ghz when working with Word and IE and it actually helped alot.

Then new problem is that i cant play any game for more than 30mins. I started NFS-Carbon and after i think 40mins. NHC started complaining that the temp was over 80'C degrees. so i had to shut down the game and pc.
I started up again after 30min break, so it could cool down, closed NHC and started NFS-Carbon again. And this time after 1 hour the machine shut down with out any notice. During the entire time of game play the fan was spinning on MAX.

Now i have tried with some others games too. Like Battlefield 2140, STALKER, C&C3 and its the same with all games

It seems like ACER dont help their customers very much, so i thought il ask on this forum first. Maybe somebody can give me some good advice before i call Acer support.

Anybody knows what i can do??? Just to let u know i have have cleaned the wents and got all the dust out.
Somebody plz help me with this. I cant have a such expensive machine and not be able to play game just for some while.

 

Are you running Vista or XP? I could imagine Vista causing some trouble. Make sure to install the latest Bios from the Acer website.

Make sure the machine is on a hard surface and raised up in the air a bit. If it still shuts down when playing a game that means there's something wrong with the hardware and you should return it to the service center.

Under normal conditions, the machine won't shut down no matter what you throw at it. Fans may get loud, but no shutdown.

Normal conditions means bottom/side vents are not blocked, not dirt inside, fan operating normally, not used in extreme heat. Maybe some parts of the cooling system came off like it happened to another poster here.

 

Thanks for ur quick reply.
Sorry i forgot to mention about the OS. It came with XP Pro. And i have updated the bios.

I normally place my machine on my desk. And its definitely a hard surface Im not sure i understand "raised up in the air"??? How im supposed to do that?
Beside i dont think that would be a great position to be working in for long times. My last machine worked fine on my desk.
If it keep shutting down i will have to contact ACER. I just hate their service because it takes too many days before they complete a repair

 

sheiq, in that case, sad to say, it sounds like a clear case for the service center.
the computer should be totally fine on a desk. no way it should be shutting down, doesn't matter what you do with it.

 

Acer Travelmate 8215

New unit is sent to technical support every month, good job the support is free with the warenty. Purchased in July, 3 visits in 3.5 months. A total of 12 days to date and still no explaination as to why a new unit would need this. Hard drive replaced, optical drive replaced, sluggish, unstable and by far the most unreliable unit made by Acer.

The support is appalling. Customer service, a contridiction when you have to call them. They do not call you back when they agree to, do not acknowledge emails. Poorly trained staff. You pay your staff peanuts and you're going to get monkey's.

Monkey's would be cute and enjoyable to listen to. Acer customer service staff have given me the two most painfull customer service experiences of my life. This is quiet an achievement as I used to live in India and South-East Asia.

The Tech team have repeatedly failed to identify that the unit is faulty and are replacing parts one or two at a time. Enjoying playing travelmate ping pong with DHL with the travelmate spending more time in repair and travelling than being my mate.

Acer's policy of not replacing buy alway's repairing is an annoying quote that I hope you do not hear after you have invested two month working to buy their product. I have asked them what is their policy of providing units that works.

Customer escallations are even worse than customer service. Looking for a human side to this company is like trying to flirt with the borg:

Customer: 'Hi Sweet thing, hows it going?'

Acer Borg: 'Resistance is futile!'

Currently trying to email the president of Acer, Gianfranco Lanci. Not having much luck trying to guess his email, if anyone can help?

In the mean time Trading Standards and Citezens Advise are helping. Would be better if Acer's products work and their staff were oblivious to the idea of customer service.

Honest opinion. Don't do it, do not buy Acer the support is not their when the product fails. I have fonder memories of being in a car crash than I do of my Acer experience. Winning the iF product seal for design, I do not know who they bribed to get that.

This customer gives Aver a rating from 0-10 of minus the number you can think of. Gianfranco Lanci your product sucks.

I hope I can save someone having the same experience as myself.

 

A year later I finally found the cause of this fault! It's due to the ATI GPU software: for reasons I don't know, occasionally there are two instances of Ati2evxx.exe running simultaneously at boot-up. When the flitting horizontal black line appears and the laptop performance is like treacle, I press CTRL-ALT-DEL to get the Windows Task Manager to pop-up, click on the Processes tab and then find the instance of Ati2evxx.exe which has a high value in the CPU column, select it and click on End Process. The laptop immediately returns to normal. I have no idea why the ATI software runs twice occasionally, but it's clearly an ATI problem and this fixes it.

 

Does anybody know if it is possible to run a 2GB Ram stick in the Acer Travelmate 8215??
the manual says:
"256/512 MB or 1 GB of DDR2 533/667 MHz memory,
upgradeable to 2 GB using two soDIMM modules (dual-
channel support)"

I have updated to the latest bios.. version 3521.

The readme files does not say anything about this and i like to have buy 1 stick of 2GB. Then i would have totally 3GB and perhaps il give Vista a chance...

Or is it better to go with 1 stick of 1 GB and make the RAM run as dual channel??

 

Man i just dropped to say how i hate this laptop so much
so much untouched potential here

It has so manny issues and just now im experiencing the latest one...
i have sound glitches that slow the games and movies...

just check how manny BIOS version this laptop has and youll get the point

well i have the latest drivers from ATI/DRIVERONLY(modded cause Acer ones crash in games, ), latest drivers from realtek, Intel, latest BIOS, etc...

i upgraded my hard drive to 160GB(default is 120GB)
and i upgraded RAM to 2GB

So let me put you in perspective...

first this laptop has some serious heating problems, that one of the BIOS version supposedly fixes... you cant work full load, even ontop of a cooler...
the VIDEO card also has to be slowed down
typically expect temps to reach 80ºC full 2ghz and full video card power...
so you have to work on 1.5ghz and that will guarantee you 70ºC and 75ºC if you play games...

second the FAN design is very poor, the air comes from the bottom and gets out from the side... so you have to use laptopcooler... cause even in flat surfaces you have tuff time getting cool air to the bottom

Third
the screen...how come a 3000USD laptop has this screen? its so dimm...i have previous generation 1200USD Acer laptop and its much brighter than this on full setting

4rth.
Drivers and Support...the worst i have ever experienced in my life... they dont update the **** drivers even knowing some have serious issues(lock ups and slowdowns)

5th
i think Acer quitted supporting this laptop even knowing it is theyr top product on the travelmate series...
still has issues...
just check the BIOs readme files... one of says "Reduce VGA temp 20ºC"
how crazy is that?


im still trying to find the sollution to this sound slowdowns...ill keep trying realtek drivers...since the Acer ones result in serious lockups in some games after 1 hour play something

thats my 2 cents...
A very MAD CUSTOMER WHO INVESTED LIKE 3000 USD +RAM and 160GBHD