Acer Aspire AS1410 (1810T)…

Out of all the netbooks/ultraportables that I had the pleasure of owning over the years, the Acer 1410 is the most complete in satisfying my requirements. I needed a laptop that had good resolution with ample screen real estate , great battery life(5hr+), and adequate processing power to watch videos, type up documents, etc.  Should a company meet my demands, I wouldn’t mind paying a premium for a perfect machine, if it’s be cheaper then I wouldn’t complain either. After using my Samsung NC10 for a year, the 11.6 inch 1366 x 768 resolution was a welcomed change.  Enter the Acer 1410/1810t.

I received my Acer a little over a week ago after pre-ordering it from JR.com. At first glance it was perfect in many ways. The screen although slightly washed out is pretty much what I expected from a netbook quality computer. The size is absolutely perfect. Small, lightweight, and thin. Using my 10 inch Samsung NC10 as a comparison, it is thinner, wider, louder(speakers), faster, and cost less.  While I paid around $500 dollars for the Samsung when it first came out, this Acer was only $386 with  the 12% Bing Cashback I received from Microsoft/J&R.

Performance wise this laptop is everything you want in an ultraportable. The 1.4GHz Intel Core2 Solo ULV SU3500 processor may sound weaker than the 1.6 GHz Intel Atoms many netbook owners are used to, but slower, it is definitely not. This processor is one of the main reasons that I got this laptop to begin with. It took everything I threw at it lag free and performed admirably. After I gave up using Vista with its shit ton of bloatware I installed Windows 7 and it’s still snappy and best of all, the drivers installed without a hitch. Should the need for extra ram arise, a 2gb RAM boost is as easy as unscrewing the bottom and popping it in.

Specwise the Acer surpassed my expectations, but it seems that even this great ultraportable suffers from the problems many first edition products do. My one major nitpick is that the fan sounds like its not held down tight enough. When tilting the laptop sideways as I often do, the fan makes a mechanical noise as if it propellers are grazing its enclosure. Although the 1410 sitting on a flat surface is quiet,  just that one issue alone might be a dealbreaker for me.  While I may be spoiled by my super solid and ultra quiet Samsung NC10, a noisy fan should not be acceptable. I have returned laptops in the past because of its fan noise(Vaio Z series) and I will again should it continue to annoy me in the next couple of days, especially with the 1410′s dual core sibling coming out soon.

- Vaio TZ290 –

Since i’m bored and got nothing better to do besides waiting for the dealership to fix my dad’s shitty car I guess i’ll write a new post on my latest purchase.  For my dad’s current trip to China he once again to take one of my laptops. Because I was now laptopless, I went ahead and did what I usually do when he takes it. I bought another one.  I guess its pretty cliche to say but I never knew how much my laptop meant to me until it was gone.  It was my digital nightlight that played various Friends and Family Guy episodes to help me sleep or the entertainment companion that keeps me connected to the world while I sat on the crapper.  Without my laptop it just leaves me with just my big ol’ desktop that has a monitor too big and bright to use when i sleep and its also kinda hard to take to the shitter.

After researching numerous replacement for my VAIO SZ160p/c.  The SZ while perfect in size and functionality was a terrible laptop probably because it was a poorly made first generation model. The fan noise is off the charts and it had the notorious non spacing spacebar issue.  For this new laptop I was sort of going for a ultra portable high battery life unit that lasts longer than a typical larger model laptop. I looked at many new possibilities, Lenovo’s IDEAPADs, HP mininote, Dell m1330, Thinkpads, and etc. So i decided to go ahead and purchase another VAIO, since nothing really combines or compares to sony’s style and performance while running windows. None of that mac bs plz.

Enter VGN-TZ290.

First thought was god damn this laptop is tiny.

Aside from the size, when booting up the default vista operating system it was extremely slow. Probably because of all of the junk bloatware the system was running. To clear out that junk I did a clean install with xp pro. After running xp pro the speed is dramatically improved both booting up and running applications. Finding the correct drivers is a pain in the ass because not everything is listed under the specific model’s page. So I had to use the drivers listed under TZ150b/n instead to get everything working. Here is the definitive guide to clean installing Vaio TZ series laptops

Aside from initial bloated software slow down. It feels very solid and well built. Even though its only a couple of pounds it has that feeling of heavy sturdiness that you get from well constructed products. And so far the battery life has been spectacular. I decided to test it out at the dealership and I went without a charger at 100%, booted it up at 1:00pm and as of this writing, it is 3:45pm with 58% battery life 4 hours and 55 minutes left according to windows using five bars of brightness.

Overall I think this laptop is a winner, but who knows how long that will last. Out of the previous 3 VAIOs that I have owned, only one of them was high quality. The rest were either average or subpar. My favorite being the Z1 series laptop that was slim, fast, and cool with slight palmrest fading, the XG700k also with classic sony palmrest fading was slow and had a hard drive failure was the average one out of the group, and the SZ, ironically the latest model with the most features being the worst because of the quality issues that came with it. I guess when you have more stuff, you have more stuff that can break.

Pictures…