Acer 4710z review

Acer 4710z

Processor: AMD Turion X2 @1.6GHz
RAM: 1GB DDR2 RAM
Graphics Card: nVidia 7000m GT
Hard Disk: 160GB SATA HDD
Display: TFT

First Impressions: In the first look the laptop looks different, different as compared to other laptops which have grey colored or a black color finishing. this laptop has a plastic finish making it look more like a portable DVD player. Although after sometime you will find this feature adding to the appeal of the laptop.

Looks & Weight: The blue and grey colored laptop is slim and has curved edges. the 2.3 kg wieght makes it very light to carry. the design is really gaining points as it is very sleek and smooth.

Hardware Detection: the laptop came with linux loaded but i loaded Windows vista premium. the hardware detection worked well for hardwares i added except that the security check in vista made it annoying.

Performance & Battery Life: the 6 cell battery has a typical power backup of 2 hours although this is not appreciable for my use but still is good with vista. overall i was satisfied with the performance in the initial weeks but slowly i am starting to get annoyed as the AMD processor did not actuall live upto my expectations. the system has a very high booting time of almost 2 minutes, even with minimum startup programs. the PC would do better with a XP or other OS.

the 14" screen is good for all purposes but you wouldn't want to watch your favorite flick on it. the VGA webcam is said to be optimized for use over slow speed internet but th refresh rate is very bad and one would not record a video greeting with that and also the PC did nt come with any software to support video capturing. Although the windows movie maker supports this in XP but not in Vista.

Sound Quality is good and the speakers would live upto all expectations.the volume control button is actually a rotating wheel that one would find in an old walkman, very passe.

The DVD writer works fine with Roxio and Nero. And it has been able to play even some of my scratched CDs that my old PC would not play.

The bluetooth is working fine and is synchronizing well with other devices.

Support: i have not really tried Acer support yet, thankfully. i dont think the support would be any less than good as my friends have had to use that couple of times and they never complained about it.

Final Thoughts: this piece from Acer is a good budget laptop. very light in weight and on pocket. i would suggest using it with Windows XP.