New Acer TravelMate 8200 Dual Core Napa Notebook Revealed (pics, specs)

Its from TrustedReviews.com and the new link is:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=2324

Cameron

 

Gah, sorry about posting about the same topic over and over but this is getting annoying.... I've read the review... and all it says is that it works to let you use VoIP away from the laptop. But WHAT is it? Its a hand-free thingie... fine... but is it a chip that lets you plug in a microphone and it beams your voice to the laptop? Is it a microphone itself? Can I plug in a microphone headset to it?

Don't just tell me that its a hands-free device that lets you talk away from the laptop. That has already been described in the review.

Sorry for getting rude, but everyday I go online excited to see what it really does.

This, however, isn't that important cause I'm gonna get this laptop whether or not that little card works well or not

Thanks for all your help!

 

Sorry the review didn't have the information you required. to be honest I think that it has a built in speaker and microphone, I don't think it has numbers on it, so I am guessing you will have to use the computer to dial numbers, I think its just so you don't have to be close to your computer when talking to someone. I am pretty sure it would have a couple of buttons on it to stop a call, put it on hold, volume up and down. I think its a pretty basic device that will not have any ports on it to plug in external microphone or speakers. Although none of this info is confirmed, its just my guess.

Cameron

Edit: I guess you might be able to use it for MSN and as a microphone, just a thought.

 

Right,

I'm the Technical Editor at TrustedReviews, so hopefully I can shed a bit of light on the Bluetooth hands free device ;-)

It's not the most advanced thing in a world, but it is pretty much a phone earpiece and mic. About 1/3 of the PC Card (the part furthest away from the connector) flips out much like a flip on an old Motorola Startac phone and this is where the mic is located.

There are three buttons, power, bluetooth and speaker as well as a volume up and down switch on the side. There wasn't any software or drivers supplied with the review sample so I can say how good it works, but we've got another supplied with a different notebook from Acer, so expect some better info in that review in a couple of weeks or so.

Hope this help

/Lars

 

Lars,

Since you're here...

Do you have any idea when the model you reviewed is likely to be widely available in Europe (ideally UK)?

Cheers

 

Thankyou so much!

 

Lars,

One criticism of the TM 8100 was that the display was a little dim. How did the display on the 8200 compare? Was it comparable to a Dell matte display, for example, or better/worse?

Thanks for the input!

 

The 8204 I saw has a brighter screen than my 8104 on a side by side.

 

is the top real carbon fiber? from the pic it doesn't look like it? i'm sure it is a type of carbon fiber composite isn't it?

 

It's Carbon ,fiber all right, you can see the weaves and the checkerboard pattern.

 

I'm not advocating this seller, although I'd be interested in thier rep since I don't know anything about them, but I thought I'd draw your attention to the note at the top of this page

http://www.bytewizecomputers.com/products/9/42/403/11736

The note reads:

Coming Soon - Preorder Now!

This item has not yet been released. You may order it today, and we'll ship it to you when it arrives at our warehouse. This item will be available in 9 days (Saturday, January 21st, 2006).​

P.S. I just put in my pre-order Should arrive around Feb 1st since I didn't splurge for express shipping.

 

if it is carbon fibre why is it as heavy as the 8104? 6lbs.

why cant they ever put a lid over the various connectors at the back.

 

The carbon fiber is just a portion of the lid if you look at the pictures, not the whole case. More for show than weight, although I don't think 6lbs is bad, maybe because I was orginally shopping for a 17".

Covers over connectors BREAK

 

Most laptops still use a metal alloy to cover the back of the LCD for protection.

 

is the sony sz all carbon then? its 3.8 lbs

 

http://theacerblog.is-there.net/the-acer-travelmate-8200-is-officially-here/

Another nice review to look at.

 

You can now go onto the ACER website and look at this laptop.

All your questions will be answered...

U.S. Specific
http://us.acer.com/acerpanam/page4....aram=US&LanguageISOCtxParam=en&crc=1074370188

Global (and more detailed)
http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/tm8200.htm

 

The Battery capacity got increse a lot from a 4800mah to a 7600mah. between that and the camera is where most of the weight increase came from.

 

Look harder, you should find better price than this.

 

virtual tour works on neither link..funny

 

The Sony SZ is a 13.3" widescreen. Hardly a fair comparison in terms of wieght.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2706

The Sone FE is a 15.4" widescreen, at 6.17lbs, and would be a more fair comparison. Incidentally the specs are here:
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/8770.jpg
and IMHO are inferrior to the Acer, slower CPU, slower HDD, integreated Vid Card... WMMV

 

will there be any cheaper versions with less ram and hard drive space?

 

In the UK, yes but so far there is only one model listed for the U.S. site.

 

Check out the Acer Aspire 5670.

http://theacerblog.is-there.net/the-acer-aspire-5670-is-in/

http://theacerblog.is-there.net/acer-aspire-5670/

Note the huge difference, IMHO, is the video card. The x1400 is about half or less as powerful as the x1600.

 

you are comparing based on weight alone not features

 

I am? I'm pretty sure you are comparing on weight alone. If you want I've got a programmable calculator that is only a few ounces.

It simply ridiculous to compare the Sony SZ's 3.8 lbs to the Acer 8204's 6.6 lbs since the 8204 is a 15.4" laptop and the Sony is only 13.3", regardless of if the lid, the chassis, and everything else might be made out of carbon fiber.

IF the laptops were the same basic size, features would mater because the necessary heat sinks, size of the hard drive, battery life, etc. absolutely effect weight.

 

what you are saying is puerile...if it were true the 8200 and the sz premium would have different features (the former would have more than the latter) but thats not the case...\\\

wheres your calculator?

 

I think what he is trying to say is, A Hummer and a Porsche might both have the same Horsepower, both have might leather seats, and both might have a navigation system....but the Hummer is still heavier....to most people that wouldn't be too surprising since the Hummer is a big fat SUV and the Porsche a small sports car.

First and foremost you have to compare size. Only if two things have the same actual size would it be fair to compare such things as weight.

 

OK, I'm hooked. This Acer Travelmate 8200 looks like the ideal machine. But I wanted to confirm that it will do what I need before I lay down the hard earned bucks....

I need a laptop that will do the following (I'm a programmer and I will use it predominately as a desktop replacement machine most of the time).

1. Must be able to drive either a Dell 24" LCD Widescreen display or Dell 30" LCD Widescreen display. Resolutions on these appear to be 1920 x 1200 or 2560x1600. The bigger the better. I don't care too much about the internal video resolution as most of the time I'll be driving an external screen.

2. Must have a port replicator or some form of docking station. I don't fancy plugging in dozens of cables each time I want to take it to Starbucks to work on it.

3. Must have a uber cool, high speed processor. This one looks like it don't get much better in this department and a friend of mine who is a Mac guy put me onto it because apparently it has the same specs as the current Intel based Mac systems.


So does anyone know if this beast can live up to these expectations?

Myles

 

Sounds like you could save your dough and go with the Aspire 5670. It has a lower resolution LCD, an x1400 instead of x1600 graphics card, but everything else seems to be the same (or can be configured to be the same)
The x1600 has a max external resolution of 2560 x 1600.
I'm not sure what the x1400 max resolution is, but I'm sure it's similar to the x1600. The biggest difference will be the gaming performance.

 

...a good analogy, better might be a Porsche Cayenne to a Porsche Boxster. They are both fast, but if you want to carry four full sized adults only one is the right form factor.

Performance wise the may be similar, excepting the video card where the 8200 kills the SZ, but a 15.4" screen is a pretty big feature to have over a 13.3" screen and to blithely disregard.

 

I am torn between the TravelMate 8204 and the Aspire 5670?!

Besides the 5670 having only 1.66 instead of 2GHz on the processor and the RADEON X1400 instead of the RADEON X1600 graphics is there a big difference?

I want to use it as a desktop replacment development machine (XP Pro, MS SQL, IIS, VB, .NET, HTML, ASP, etc...) but also be able to play my MP3s and DVDs (on a plane, etc... I have a home DVD player!).

I am not at all into gaming... so super high end graphics (x1400 v x1600) doesn't concern me all THAT much as long as I can get a decent hi res for coding and the occasional DVD play mentioned above.

Also, what is the Acer extended warranty like? Does anyone know or have any past experience?

My budget, including the warranty if it's worth it and taxes is about CDN$3000...

Thanks!

 

This is easy... The 8204 will be faster than the 5670 for compiling, etc... just as you'd expect. There are plenty of benchmarks out there to compare just what the speed difference will be.

As far as DVD playing goes. DVD's are only encoded at 480 vertical lines of resolution. so, anything more than that and the vid card is just scaling it up. In other words watching a DVD on a UXGA vs VGA should be significantly different. In fact I'd argue to lower resolution (less scaling) would look better.

For games the X1400 will play most games at low to medium settings. It'll breeze through less intensive games (ie. WoW). The x1600 is a significantly better video card, but it sounds like that is not important to you.

IMHO if it were to be my ONLY machine I'd probably go with the 8204 just to have the extra speed and longer shelf life. If I had a desktop somewhere to work on if/when I needed the processing power I'd definitely save my money and get the 5670.

 

Thanks for your comments Jon. It's a shame the 5670 doesn't come with an option for the 2GHz processor?!

This machine would be my primary development machine! I need the portability, and am not about to shell out for a top notebook and a top desktop. Eventually I would look to get a docking station for whatever notebook I decide on so I can hook it to a flatscreen, KB and Mouse. I have a newish PC, but no where near the spec of the laptops - purchased primarily for my wife to MSN/Email/SKYPE/etc...

Does anyone know if the ACER notebooks work with their lids shut? My current machine automatically goes to sleep when you close the lid, and speaking to the manufacturer they said there was no way around this!!

What's a good price for the 8204?

 

I too would like a 2ghz 5670. Acer's specs say that it's possible, but there are are only selling them so far with 1.66ghz. (Is the processor replaceable like on the Asus?)

 

what about running Falcon 4.0 Allied Force?
How ill this compare?
How will this compare to the Dell E1705?
Whats a better machine?

 

There is a big difference between the X1400 and the X1600. The X1400 will perform better than an X600, and score around 2,000 in 3DMark05 from what I am hearing. Compare that to the X1600 scoring about 4,000 . . big difference. Get the X1600 if you plan to game; not that the X1400 won't be able to play them, just you will probably have to turn down the settings and resolution.

As for the 2.0GHz Duo vs. the 1.66GHz - upgrading the processor's clockspeed will not be noticable most of the time. If you are just doing menial tasks such as word processing, surfing the web, etc., the processor runs at 1.0GHz anyway, regardless of whether it is a 1.66GHz or 2.0.

In gaming, you might see a few more frames per second, but I wouldn't pay more than $150 or so to go from 1.66 to 2.0, it just isn't worth it. You will get a much larger boost from upgrading the memory. 2.0GB is what to shoot for if you plan on playing the latest games at higher settings. 1.0GB is the minimum I would go with.

Just one more note before I stop rambling - the hard drive is the slowest component in a computer, 1000x slower than memory, which is the next-fastest component. Therefore, any increase in hard drive speed will be noticable. A 5400RPM hard drive should be perfectly fine for most people. If you are doing a lot more hard drive-intensive apps such as video editing, then it would be a good idea to get the 7200. There is about a 15-20% performance increase from 5400>7200.

Thanks guys

 

For me, I don't care about games. I care about video. Video editing, transcoding and the like. I need a computer with a 15" widescreen (17" are too heavy for travelling), an ATI x1x00 video card (for the avivo hardware encoding/decoding) a fast HD and the fastest CPU I can afford, while keeping the cost reasonable and weight to a minimum. The 5670 is perfect (if I upgrade the HD to a 7200 and get it with 2gig of RAM), as long as I can get it with a 2.0ghz Core Duo CPU. So far, haven't heard whether that's possible.

 

As I said above, I too have no interest in gaming, however, I am running a lot more than "menial tasks such as word processing, surfing the web, etc."

I spoke to almost EVERY Acer dealer in my area today, and it more or less confirmed that you cannot get the 5670 with a 2GB processor! (i.e. none of them have a listing for it and are not able to get/order it.)

 

Could you overclock the 1.66? Not sure it's possible, just asking...

 

I called Acer, and they also confirmed that the 567x series is only available with the T2300 CPU. Not upgradeable. As a side note, the TV tuner is not available in North America either.

 

I've seen complaints the Acer 8204 doesn't have media keys, but looking at it I don't even see dedicated volume keys.

Could someone (since now some people have them) please confirm one way or the other?

 

Right on both counts: no media keys and no dedicated brightness, volume etc. The latter take using the Fn key.

- Ed

 

Anyone had a good test drive on one of the North American ones yet? Opinions?

 

lets talk gamming hows this laptop compare to the E1705 for gamming?

 

I need a new laptop/notebook; my budget, including tax and extended warrenty is CDN$3000.

I think I have it down to two contenders:

Dell Inspiron 6400

Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2500 (2MB Cache/2GHz/667MHz FSB)
15.4 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen SXGA+ Display with TrueLife™
2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHZ, 2 DIMM
100GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
80 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/g Mini Card (54Mbps)
Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth Internal (2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

By the time you work in tax and 3 year extended warranty it come's to
about CDN$2900.

Acer TravelMate 8204

Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2500 (2MB L2 cache, 2.0GHz, 667MHz FSB)
2GB (1/1) DDR2 533 SDRAM
120GB SATA hard drive, 5400RPM
modular Super-Multi (DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM) drive
5-in-1 card reader
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) TFT display
ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1600 graphics, 256MB DDR
802.11a/b/g WLAN
Bluetooth™
gigabit LAN
V.92 modem
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

The BlueTooth VoIP phone and built in web cam are a bonus (although I
understand some sort of XP bug at the moment causes the web cam to
drain battery even when not in use... fix... ???). I also have read
there can be display issues with this model and multiple returns may be needed to get a good one (no light leak, spots, bright display, etc...)

By the time you work in tax and 3 year extended warranty it come's to
about CDN$3000.

I want to use it as a desktop replacment development machine (XP Pro,
MS SQL, IIS, VB, .NET, HTML, ASP, etc...) but also be able to play my
MP3s and DVDs (on a plane, etc... I have a home DVD player!).

I am not at all into gaming... so the super high end graphics (X1600)
doesn't concern me all THAT much as long as I can get a decent hi res
for coding and the occasional DVD play mentioned above. However, I am
warry of the shared memory of the Dell onboard graphics (you can't seem to upgrade this model!).

Also, what is the Acer extended warranty like? Does anyone know or have any past experience? Is the DELL 24 hour on site all that it is cracked up to be??

Cheers,
G-Mo

 

If you would like a notebook recommendation, we have a forum dedicated to that - the What Should I Buy forum, right at the top of the forum index - http://forum.notebookreview.com/

Just go in there, and there is a What to Buy FAQ you can fill out that helps us find and recommend a notebook for you.

Chaz

 

Thanks Chaz!

I have done so...



Cheers,
G-Mo!