Acer TravelMate 4400 Review (pics, specs)

by Charles Jefferies, Philadelphia Pennsylvania USA

Overview + Intro

The Acer TravelMate 4400 series notebook is a thin and light notebook, designed for the person seeking desktop power in a portable package. It encompasses many features that a desktop has, including a variety of ports, a large screen and hard drive, and a powerful graphics card.

The notebook I am reviewing for you here is the TravelMate 4402WLMi. Acer notebooks are non-configurable, so what you see is what you get. That's a good thing in a way, because it helps keep the price down. Mine came with the following:

• Microsoft Windows XP Professional w/SP2
• AMD Turion 64 ML-30 (1.6GHz, 1MB L2)
• 512MB (1 DIMM) DDR SDRAM PC2700
• 100GB 5400RPM Hard Drive, ATA-100
• ATI Mobility Radeon X700, 64MB VRAM
• 15.4" WXGA Display
• DVD Super Multi Drive
• 8 cell Li-Ion battery
• ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Chipset
• 6 in 1 card reader
• 802.11b/g WLAN
• 1 yr Ltd. Warranty

Why Purchased

I was in the notebook market for quite a while. I needed the notebook to have a 64-bit processor, a fast 3D graphics card, and plenty of storage for my digital photos. I considered all of the following notebooks:

• HP Pavilion zv6000
• Gateway 7510GX
• Acer Ferrari 4000
• Acer TravelMate 4400
• HP Pavilion zd8000

I dismissed the zv6000 because it had a weak graphics card, and I also dismissed the Ferrari 4000 because it was simply too expensive. I also got rid of the zd8000 because it was 10 lbs and not practical to bring to work everyday. That left me with the Gateway and the Acer 4400. The two had very similar specs, but the Gateway had a better screen and the Acer had a better video card. So, I went to Best Buy to see the Gateway. I found that it was merely a rebadged emachines, with plain-Jane styling, plus it was a bit on the heavy side as well. So, that left me with the Acer, and that is what I bought.

Where Purchased

I did a quick Internet search for the Acer 4400, and I found that it was cheapest at www.zipzoomfly.com. I paid USD $1,269 for this notebook. What a deal! It is hard to find a desktop with those specs for that price! For $1,269, I couldn't resist. I don't know why I even considered the other notebooks.
Zipzoomfly provided excellent service. The notebook was well packaged, came in a very short period of time, and I was told about its progress via email -- very convenient. I would definitely order from them again in the future.

Build Quality and Design

The Acer 4400 has a very pleasing design. It has a sort of understated elegance, with the light silver case, black trim around the display, and the metal-color silver running around the touchpad. And it is none too busy either, has just the right amount of lights and buttons. Very clean and refreshing.

Overall build quality is superb. It feels very solid, made from high-strength plastic that doesn't flex or bend. For a notebook with a lot of power like this one, it doesn't seem too heavy at 6.6lbs. I don't like using this on my lap however, because my knee would block the fan. But it is entirely possible to use it on your lap if you want to -- just don't block the fan. I suggest getting a lapdesk or something to put it on, because the bottom tends to get hot after a while.

The screen has a little flex to it, but that is understandable because this is a fairly large screen at 15.4". And the screen doesn't wobble when I push it, the hinges are very solid and hold it in any position very well.

See for yourself

Keyboard: notice the 5-degree curve in the keyboard

Acer 4400 keyboard (view larger image)

3/4 view (view larger image)

Detail view: the power button and media buttons are up top (view larger image)



Right Side: Only the DVD burner over here (view larger image)

Left Side: Vent, S-video, Firewire, 3x USB, IR, Card Reader, PC Card slot (view larger image)

Top view (view larger image)

Front: Wireless indicator light, microphone port and headphone jack, battery light, on indicator (view larger image)

Back: AC in, Ethernet, 56K, USB port, ezDock connector, VGA, vent (view larger image)

Display

The 15.4" widescreen WXGA display is very bright. In fact, I use it at half brightness most of the time. Acer ships it with half brightness; use the eManager to bring it up to full. I compared this side by side with my HP, which has a Brightview screen, and it was very similar in brightness levels. I found no dead pixels on the entire screen. The WXGA (1280x800) resolution is perfect for me; anything else would be a strain on my eyes. This is a typical non-glare TFT LCD, but I have no regrets for not getting one of the extra-bright glossy displays. The backlighting is very good: an even amount of light gets to all areas of the screen.

However, compared to my desktop monitor, which is a standard 17" flat panel, the widescreen is not nearly as vibrant. The colors seem a bit dull, but not washed out. Still, it is a very good screen.

Speakers

The speakers in this notebook are typical: tinny and no bass whatsoever. Interesting enough though, they don't distort at high volume. Definitely go out and get a nice pair of headphones like I did or a pair of external speakers. Think about it: who buys a notebook for speakers?

Processor and Performance

Equipped with the AMD Turion 64 ML-30, clocked at 1.6GHz and utilizing a 1MB L2 cache, this notebook is very quick indeed. It rips through basic productivity and virus scans, and has no problem playing Counter-Strike: Source or Far Cry either. I clocked the boot up time to the logon screen at 21.2 seconds, and the shutdown at 10.1 seconds. That is even faster than my 7200RPM SATA desktop!

Acer put a great hard drive in the Acer 4400. It is a 100GB 5400RPM Ultra ATA-100 drive. Very nice! It is quiet too, and the clicking noise when the hard drive is being used is audible but subtle and not very noticeable.

The specs said this notebook would have 2x 256MB DIMMs installed; however, I was pleasantly surprised to find that mine had a single 512MB DIMM. I added another 512 and now I have 1GB. It is very easy to access both the hard drive and the RAM slots; they are located in a single compartment on the bottom of the notebook, right underneath the touchpad area and to the left of it.

When I open multiple applications at once, they are all opened very quickly. When I do a virus or anti-spyware scan, it completes very quickly, faster than my Pentium 4 3.2GHz desktop. Even if the processor is running at 100%, I can still do stuff without a problem.

I play a variety of games on this notebook: Far Cry, Half Life 2, Counter Strike: Source, Knights of the Old Republic II, Star Wars Battlefront, and a little of DOOM3 (just the demo -- I play the game for the graphics).

I found that I could run Far Cry very smoothly in "High" quality mode, keeping the textures on medium and the filtering on "Bilinear" for best performance. Battlefront runs at the highest setting beautifully as well. I use the recommended settings for HL2 and CS: S, as they seem to work the best. It auto-selects "High" for all of the options except for Anti Aliasing and Antistrophic Filtering. You can enable AF in CS: S if you want though, I haven't had any problems. In the source video stress test, at a WXGA resolution and 8X AF enabled, I got an average of 56.7FPS!

DOOM3 is breathtaking on this notebook. I run it at "High" with no problems. This notebook has no problem playing the latest games, and the ATI Mobility Radeon X700 does a wonderful job of rendering the reflections, shadows, and lighting effects.

Benchmarks

We use Super Pi to get a benchmark of processor speed. The Super Pi program simply forces the processor to calculate Pi to a selected number of digits of accuracy. Calculating to 2 million digits is our benchmark:

Comparison of notebooks using Super Pi to calculate Pi to 2 million digits (plugged in):

Notebook	Time to Calculate Pi to 2 Million Digits
Acer TravelMate 4400 (AMD Turion ML-30, 1.6GHz)	2m 11s
Fujitsu LifeBook N3510 (1.73 GHz Alviso Pentium M)	1m 48s
IBM ThinkPad T41 (1.6GHz Banias Pentium M)	2m 23s
Compaq R3000T (Celeron 2.8GHz)	3m 3s
Dell Inspiron 600m(1.6 GHz Dothan Pentium M)	2m 10s
Dell Inspiron 8600 (1.7GHz Banias Pentium M)	2m 28s

PCMark04: 3104 PCmarks

PCMark05: 2457 PCmarks

3Dmark03: 4383 3Dmarks

HDTune:
Min Transfer: 27.9MB/s
Max Transfer: 41.5MB/s
Temperature: 59 degrees Centigrade

Comments: 3Dmark03 ran smoothly, even the CPU tests, and I am quite impressed. PCMark05 also ran prettywell too. Minimal processes were running in the background, and the hard drive was defragmented before hand. I had the notebook running all the other benchmarks before I ran HDTune, so that might explain the high temperature.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is particularly interesting. It has a 5-degree curve to it, making it more ergonomic and easy to use. It puts your hands in a more natural position. You can tell this is a European notebook because it has a dedicated euro key. I love the keyboard, it is really attractive and has a nice touch to it, not too soft, but it isn't that firm either. There are 4 media buttons next to the power button at the top, all user-programmable. They have a nice feel to them and don't make any noise when you press them. I do wish that there were dedicated volume control buttons, but it's not a big deal. You can use the Fn key + arrow keys to adjust the sound, and F8 to toggle the sound on and off.

The keyboard does not flex in any place, not even in the corners, and I found typing on it very enjoyable.

The touchpad has a good feel to it as well, although I think the mouse buttons are a bit loud and could have had a better feel. I found them a bit mushy. In-between the two mouse buttons is a 4-way scroll pad, although I haven't been able to get this to work. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Connectivity

This notebook has a variety of ports, almost as many as a desktop!

• USB 2.0 (4)
• Firewire, 4-pin
• S-Video
• VGA
• PC Card Slot
• Infrared
• Acer EZ dock connector
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 56k modem
• 6-in-1 media card reader

There is no parallel port for printers, but most new printers use a USB connection, so I don't view this as a problem. And you can always buy a Parallel to USB converter cable.

Wireless

This computer came with a Broadcom 802.1b/g mini-PCI wireless card. The Acer SignalUp technology works well, and maintains the wireless connection, even through walls.

Battery

Acer claims that the Acer TravelMate 4400 has a battery life of 3 to 3.5 hours depending upon configuration. Lets see if that claim is valid: Doing nothing, with the laptop on "portable/laptop" mode, and the screen at 40% brightness (set to shut off after 5 min), I clocked the battery life a little after 3 hours. This is pretty close to Acer's claim, so I'd say it's valid.

It is interesting to note that the fan was on most of the time when it was on battery at medium or low speed -- I thought it would go off because of the reduced power usage, but I guess not.

Operating System and Software

This notebook came with Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP2 installed. It is the full version, and not altered by the manufacturer in any way. I very much appreciate this -- I don't like when manufacturers send their computers with all the so-called operating system "enhancements". I was also very happy to see that no free Internet sign-ups, free music downloads, or trial software came preinstalled. Normally, if you buy an HP or a Dell, it is preloaded with all that and it's really annoying. This came preinstalled with a small but very useful software bundle: CyberLink PowerDVD, NTI DVD Maker 7, and a 3-month subscription to Norton Antivirus 2005. Acer also includes its eManager program, which can be used to adjust the screen brightness, put it in presentation mode, or launch the Acer eRecovery program. I found that to be quite useful, a nice touch.

A recovery disk is included, along with the Windows CD and the included software CD's.
Some people might think Acer skimped on the software, but I like how they sent it with only a few applications that are actually useful. I don't want a whole bunch of software I don't need.

Customer Support

I sent an email to Acer, and Igot a responseback 2 days later. But an actual person wrote the email, and it wasn't just copied and pasted, so that was nice to have personal attention. The representative also included their full name, not just their first, so it would be easy to get in contact with them.

I have not yet called them on the phone, but I am a bit disappointed to see that their technical support is not available 24/7.

The warranty on this laptop is a 1-year limited international traveler's warranty. That means that if you go to another country and it breaks, you can get it fixed there. That is nice if you travel a lot (hence the name TravelMate).

When I ordered my Acer from Zipzoomfly, there was no option to upgrade the warranty. However, I noticed that a few other vendors, such as Newegg, offered extended manufacturer warranty options. On www.newegg.com, the extended warranty pricing is as follows:

• 2 yr extended warranty: $349 USD
• 3 yr extended warranty: $399 USD

That sounds a bit steep to me, but if you want the extra protection you have to pay for it, no way around that.

Complaints

No notebook is perfect, no matter where you got it or how much you paid for it. This one is no exception.

My first complaint is that it came with the hard drive divided into two 50GB partitions. I want the whole 100GB avaliable, not just half! Also, it came with a FAT32 filing system on both partitions as well. FAT32 is not efficient and it has security flaws, and shouldn't be used on a volume as large as 50GB. Before you put anything on it, convert the FAT32 to NTFS -- it will speed up the computers performance.

What else I don't like about the notebook is that it runs quite warm. The hard drive and memory are located right under the touchpad and to the left of it, and that causes the whole area to get hot enough that it is bordering on uncomfortable. The CPU and GPU sit right under the keyboard on the left side as well, so that area gets warm (but not hot like the touchpad) as well. I think this has to do with the fact that the notebook is only 1.3" thin, so there are not many places for the heat to go.

Also, the fan is always on, and isn't that quiet. Although it expels a good deal of heat from the notebook, it could definitely be quieter. It is noticeable even when there is a fair amount of noise in the room (TV on, people talking, etc). When you start doing CPU intensive apps, it gets noisier. Even at idle, the fan noise is noticeable from any part of the room.Using any sort of general application causes the fan to spool up to a higher speed. In case you are wondering, the fan has a low-pitched whine to it, in addition to the sound of the air rushing out of it. The whine increases with it's speed.

The display needs to show colors more vibrantly. They aren't washed out, but the screen would definitely benefit from a higher contrast ratio.

I really don't care about the battery life, but I must say, that for a thin and light laptop with a mobile processor, I thought it would get better than 3 hours. I think 4 or 4 would be ideal. Intel Centrino notebooks seem to have better battery life, but keep in mind that this notebook has the Turion ML-30 processor, which uses 35W of power. The Turion MT class processors use 25W, considerably less than the ML class. For comparison purposes, the Intel Pentium M uses 27W. If you require longer battery life, look for a Turion notebook with an MT class processor.

My final complaint would be the speakers. Nobody buys a laptop for speakers, but I think Acer could have at least put in better ones.

Good things

• Low price
• Styling is beautiful -- very clean and refreshing look
• Awesome keyboard
• Powerful Graphics card for 3D gaming
• Fast and efficient Turion 64 processor
• Large and fast Hard Drive
• XP Professional
• Easy to access RAM and Hard Drive
• Solidly built; high quality plastic
• Sturdy display/keyboard doesn't flex
• Lots of connectivity options
• No junk software included

Conclusion

The Acer TravelMate 4400 is an excellent notebook, encompassing desktop power into a beautiful thin-and-light design that won't break the bank. The ATI Mobility Radeon X700 does a wonderful job at rendering 3D graphics, and the Turion 64 breezes through CPU intensive applications without a hitch. Granted, it has its shortcomings - the fan could be quieter, and the battery life could be better, but you can't have everything, and no amount of money will buy you that. But if you're looking for a powerful computer that stands out from the crowd, take a look at the Acer TravelMate 4400, it won't disappoint.

Pricing and Availability

 

great review chazman!!!!

 

Great review! It seams like a very nice notebook for such a low price. I like the high end specs and then to realize it is a value/budget notebook looking at the price, that's just great! I would have expected just a tad better 3Dmark03 score though. closer to 4700 as I have seen in another review of the 4401lmi (same but with a 15.0" screen). The performance loss due to 64MB Video Memory instead of 128MB seams to only be relevant in synthetic benchmarks though, as games in your review seams to run just incredibly well judging from your descriptions!

I'm going to look into this one! BTW, I would buy the extended warranty directly from ACER instead. It is $124 for a total of 3 years warranty!

 

hi ..thanks for a great review ... i am a bit of an acer fan since i bought my aspire 2001 more than a year ago. i guess they still use fat32 until now, dont' know why.

you said that the HD was quiet, i would like to know what is the model number of this hard drive

thanks

 

Well, I dont know the model number, but the name of the C:\ drive is HTS541010G9AT00. Yea, the hard drive is quiet, the clicks are still there, but not pronounced.

And guys, thanks for reading my review and thanks for the compliments!

 

hey ChazMan, great review most definitely, unbiased and honest. For the price to feature ratio this would be another Acer product that's easy to recommend for those that want to do a bit of gaming as well.

 

Nice review Chazman! I though the 1.6 ghz Turion would be a bit slow, but guess I was wrong. I'm still wary about the keyboard though, but I've never tried it myself so I can't pass judgement on it.

 

The keyboard is not too bad, actually...the angle is not great enough to affect any typing, most of the keys are where they should be, other than minor differences it is quite easy to adopt.

Nice review Chazman!

 

Hi I'm wondering if the Turion has something similar to Intels speedstep?

 

Yes, it does have something very much like intel Speedstep. However, the AMD's power management is much more sophisticated. It scales the CPU speed in 100MHz steps. On battery, the Turion clocks itself down to 800MHz, but will jump back up to a higher speed when running a CPU intensive application. I have never had a problem with it.

 

Does it come with Acer's GridVista for dual display capablilities?

 

It does have Acer GridVista, and the Acer eManager as well. I have not yet tried the GridVista yet, but it looks pretty neat.

 

Has anyone been able to find the service manual for this notebook? I'm thinking of buying one and swapping in the Turion ML37 I'd bought for my HP zv5000z that its BIOS rejected.

Did it come with PC2700 or PC3200 RAM? (Probably PC2700. Acer might be better than HP about PC3200 support?)

Nice review. Have you tried undervolting yet with CrystalCPUID or RightMark? That should help cool the notebook, though there's only so much you can do with a 5400RPM HD and X700 GPU in there. Undervolting really only helps when the CPU is under heavy load, at light loads the standard PowerNOW! power management is extremely good.

 

It uses pc2700, but cpuid, and a bunch of other programs report it as pc2100. the bandwidth/read/write speeds all match pc2100. Im going to call acer about this.

It does support AMD turions ML28 up to ML40. Also supports AMD mobile semprons. Says it in the users guide.

Yeah, I noticed on battery it seems to be a lot quieter now than when i did the review, dont know why. Didnt have any impact on battery though.

I think Acer ships it with HOME/OFFICE DESK mode, thats why it runs hot. Turn it down to portable laptop to get it quieter. I didnt know that when I did the review.

Actually, the processor undervolts itself. It is 1.454v on ac, but goes down to 1.00v on battery - a word, impressive. And it stays at 800mhz on battery.

 

So, are you still satisfied with the laptop overall? How about the fan noise and heat issue? I'm looking at buying one right now... Thanks.

 

Absolutely! I love this laptop. I mostly use it to surf the web, some digital photography, and watching movies.

Sound is great, no hissing or anything - the stock drivers acer sends with the laptop suck - theres little clicks in the audio when listening to something! be sure to download a previous version of the Realtek drivers - I use 3.58. Popping is gone and the audio is flawless now.

Movie watching is very nice too - use external speakers or a pair of headphones for the full experience.

DVD burning is very fast - 10 to 11 min for a full single layer DVD+R. Haven't tried burning a DVD DL yet.

I installed XP X64 pro - works great, although there is no noticable performance increase yet. I'd hold off right now - save yourself the money.

So, basically, this is a great laptop!

I figured out how to fix the fan too. Put it on "Portable/Laptop mode - then it runs at 800MHz mostly unless you are doing a CPU intensive application. Then the fans run at a low speed, barely noticable. But it stil gets hot regardless, i think it's due to the HDD. Definatley get a Laptop cooler!

Oh, and get it at www.zipzoomfly.com. They have it for much cheaper than newegg, and I dont think newegg packages things very well - zzf packaged mine with air bags all around it! Very safe!

If you are really looking to game, i would look for something with a 128MB card - 64MB is kinda small for today's games. But if you do casual gaming or have a desktop - then by all means, get this laptop!!!

 

For information, and @Chazman421 as follow up to your question about Travelmate 4400 and Aspire 5020 bios in the 5020 review thread:
Yesterday I noticed that on the Taiwan Acer download site a BIOS v1.11 and v1.12 is available, for the TravelMate 4400 as well as for the aspire 5020:
http://csd.acer.com.tw/SI/Download2.nsf/NotebookWeb?OpenView&Start=1&Count=240&Expand=69#69
They also give a revision history (kind of) for both BIOS 1.11 and 1.12.
As BIOS 1.11 solved the 'slow memory' problem for the AS5020, probably this is now also the case for the TM4400

 

Wow, thanks a lot! I'll try it and let you know if it fixes the problem!

 

OK, I installed the v1.11 BIOS (I had 1.09 previously) - went smoothly

Yes! It finally fixes the memory issue - now it runs at proper 333MHz DDR, not 266MHz. Very happy!

Thanks Jos.

 

Hi ChazMan,
have you tired to adjust the video RAM in the bios? I have read somehwere the RAM is shared and you can up it to max. 128MB. I also read this improves gaming performance a bit.

Let us know if it works for you ;-)

K<o>

 

Hi everybody,
thanks for the review. The TM4402WMLI sounds even better than the Aspire 5002(WMLIi) which misses some of the connectivity, has a slower hard drive and a glaring screen.

The glaring screen is my concern. Has anybody compared the two screens and can confirm, that the TM 4402 is like the TM 4101, nicely anti-glare coated? What else can you say about the screen? All comments welcome.

I'm in the process of buying one or the other.

K<o>

 

The TM4402 has a matte non-glossy screen.

It's pretty nice, haven't noticed any ghosting during gaming, no dead pixels, evenly lit...could use a higher contrast ratio, but it is still pretty nice.

Brightness is nice, it's not one of the brightest, but it's not dim.

Great laptop!

 

Yea, I looked in the BIOS, didn't see anything. I'll take another look to be sure though.

I installed the latest ATi Catalyst drivers (5.8), and they enable hypermemory. So far, I have seen that some of my games, like battlefront, are a bit smoother.

 

Hi Chazman
Have you tried running 3dmark05 on this laptop ? If, yes could you post your score ? Also, Have you tried running Age of Empires 3 or Battlefield 2 demos and how was the performance if yes ?

 

Hi ChazMan421,

I have the 4402 as well, and love it! You mentioned that you installed the 5.8 Catalyst drivers but whenever I tried I get a message saying they could not be installed. Note I was trying the Mobility Radeon version from ATI. I just tried the desktop version and got the message like "INF not found, please install standard VGA before upgrading". How did you do it exactly?

On a similar note, I flashed my bios today without incident. http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/fo...nam.com&central=1&words=all&keywords=&pupv=pu
No notes regarding issued addressed by this release, but it was the first download available from the Acer website for the 4400 series!

P.S. I also ran 3D Mark 05 today, and got a score of 1042.

 

I got the 5.8's going on my own. I used the DH Mod tool V2.2 to make my desktop drivers work on my notebook. Modest performance increase, 3D Mark 05: 1157.

 

Yes, I have run 3dmk05 - got 1211 oc'ed w/ catalyst 5.7 (omega). OC was 371/350.

Havent done age of empires yet, but i did try the bf2 demo breifly, worked pretty well on medium settings. No noticable lag. Far Cry ran great on "High" (except i had the filtering at bilinear and textures on med.) and it looked fantastic. DOOM3 ran well on high settings too.

As for the issue of installing the ATi catalyst drivers, here is what to do (I did this two days ago when I installed the latest 5.8 drivers):
a> download the ATi catalyst 5.8 drivers from the ATi site. Extract all the files to the default location (usually C:\ATI) - just start the install to do this.
b> download the modding tool from driver heaven here:
http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/
There are also instructions on how to mod the files using the mod program on that page. Read and follow those, it's pretty straightforward.

Have fun!

 

Great review and follow-up info, Chazman! You have almost convinced me to buy one for myself.

Hehehe, although I don't know if its a good thing since I had originally set my budget to US$ 800-850.

 

just got mine today, check it with zero Dead Pixels <3
everything looks nice, only issue it do run warm at right side of computer like ChazMan421 mention in his review, other than that, everything is perfect

 

You can download the ATI Mobility Catalyst 5.8 drivers directly from this link:
http://www.ati.com/online/mobilecatalyst/index.html
By this direct link, you bypass the atimcatw.exe program which says that your Acer notebook is not supported.
But these drivers work without MODding on any ATI Mobility adapter. And as this worked without problem for my Aspire 5024WLMi, I suppose it also works for the TM4400.

 

I was wondering if those who bought this laptop could tell me what website they got it off of and the quality of packaging it came in. Also if you could please add which store your would recommend buying this laptop from. Thanks

 

I ordered my 4400 from www.zipzoomfly.com.

The packaging was excellent - the laptop box was surrounded by air bags on all sides, then inside another box - awesome job by zzf.

I recommend ZZF - great prices (should be around 1100), and fast, safe shipping. However, just to note, there are no returns...but don't buy something you plan to return, right? lol

 

Zip zoom fly seems like a good store...but I am concerned about the memory. It says 2x256 memory, but in your review you were lucky to have 1x512 memory i think. Was it just luck? or did they make a mistake on their website? I have looked at newegg.com and saw that they sell their's with 1x512 memory. The only thing keeping me from ordering from newegg.com is that I have no knowledge of how the quality of their sent packages are. And by the way, thanks for the fast reply chazman

 

Ah! Sorry for not getting back sooner!

I believe most TM4402's come with 1x512MB - a lot of other TM4402 users have reported getting theirs with a single dimm.

 

I bought this notebook and i found it amazing... i managed to update my BIOS driver and Catalyst too... i am having one problem tho... My quick access buttons stoped working... those quick start buttons like the "e" for eManager and Wireless button too

None of them works... i think it was after i did windows updates from website...

I did BIOS update to see if it resolved but it didnt..

Anyone had the same problem??

 

Try this:
Start > Run > msconfig > then go to the startup tab, and make sure the launch manager is set to start with windows (check the box "LaunchAp")

If that doesn't work, then reinstall the launch manager from one of the recovery discs.

Let me know if that works!

 

There was a similar problem with the Aspire 5020 (which is almost the same as the TM4400). It was resolved by LaunchManager version 1.0.8.3 which is available from Acer Europe
( ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_3020_5020/driver/).
This will probably also work with the TM4400.

 

Thanks for the tip guys

I followed Jos tip and it solved my problem... i had to download launch manager from Aspire 5020.

I tried from that FTP to download laungmgr from Travelmate 4400 but it was outdated from the one in 5020... and it didnt work out.

 

Hello again. On another post, chazman reported that he had problems with this laptop overheating when playing games. This overheating, according to his post, causes either the videocard or the processor to slow down to a very low speed. Has any of you, who own this same laptop experienced the same thing? If so, is there a way to fix this problem? Chazman said that he was going to try to use the omega drivers and see if that would help...but he never got back on it. Thanks for your time.

 

Hey will this site deliver to australia??...
the price here seems so cheap!

 

Hey guys, I'm thinking about buying this particular notebook, but I'd like to upgrade the RAM to 1GB.
Any recommendations as to which brand/model of RAM i should buy?
A link to a particular newegg.com RAM item would be nice.

 

How about here?

Corsair is one of the best memory brands, and DDR333(PC2700) is exactly what the Acer TM4402 uses.

 

That's good RAM, Corsair is a reliable brand.

In my TM4402 I had 512MB PC2700 of Patriot Signature. Just shows that a lot of different brands will work, just don't buy generic.

Chaz

 

sweet, same 1 i decided to get.
Well wish me luck guys, this is the first laptop i'm going to get. I hope everything goes smoothly.

 

Good luck to you!

Let us know how it works when you get it!

You'll definitely see a performance increase between 512MB and 1GB - I know I did.

Chaz

 

I have been considering a laptop for the past few weeks. I am leaning toward this one since it fills a few of my basic requirements.

AMD Turion processor and a decent video chipset.

I am somewhat leery about the lack of video memory in the machine but I am happy it is at least dedicated. While I see a bunch of laptops out there that have both these things, I cannot find any by reputable brand names: HP/Compaq, Toshiba, ASUS, Dell, Gateway, Alienware, etc.

Has anyone noticed a laptop out there (besides the Ferrari) that has more video power and an AMD Turion and is made by a good company? Thanks!

 

The TM4402 has only 64MB of video memory. That will cripple your gaming performance in newer games such as Far Cry and FEAR. I recommend getting a 128MB card for gaming.

Check out the MSI-1029. It is about the same price (under $1,300) as the Acer, and it has a Turion 64 and a 128MB X700. There are several threads in hardware discussing it, I recommend checking those out.

 

ChazMan, any possibility of removing the optical drive and replacing it with a slot-loading dvd burner? Also, were you able to resolve the heat issues?

 

You can use a cooling pad to cool it down, worked pretty good.

I believe it is possible to remove the optical drive - there are several screws underneath it on the bottom of the notebook. If you take those out, the optical drive should slide out easily. As long as the slot load drive has the same dimensions as a regular drive, it should fit. But, I make no gurantees.

 

well folks, got my 4402 a week now, and i must say its a dream.
I added in the Corsair 512 RAM to it for a total 1GB, changed from FAT32 to NTFS, and this thing flies.
As mentioned, it does get abit hot after awhile, but I can live with it. The speakers really suck though. I expected them to sound a little better (and louder). The screen is not all that super either...definitely not when compared to my samsung 21" lcd
Other than that, I'm happy. Its heaven relaxing in my hammock surfing the net on this thing. Oh how I love wifi