Acer Aspire 3002NLC Review

[Sourabh]

Acer Aspire 3002NLC Review

So here is the review of the Acer Laptop which has been mine for nearly 2 days now. The laptop comes preloaded with Linpus Linux and boasts the following specs:



Notebook Specifications:

Processor: Mobile AMD Sempron™ processor 2800+(1.6 GHz)
Chipset : SiSM760GX
Main Memory: 256 Mb DDR-RAM @333Mhz(Max 2GB)
Display: 15 XGA TFT LCD(1024x768 pixels 16.7 million colors @ 120 Hz)
Video Graphics & Memory:

- Integrated 3D AGP graphics with up to 128 MB of shared memory (512 MB or above of system memory)
- Integrated 3D AGP graphics with up to 64 MB of shared memory (256 MB of system memory)
-Dual independent display support
-External resolution/refresh rate:

* 2048 x 1536: 60/75 Hz
* 1600 x 1200: 60/75/85/100/120 Hz
* 1400 x 1050: 60 Hz
* 1280 x 1024: 60/75/85/100/120/160 Hz
* 1024 x 768: 60/75/85/100/120/160/200 Hz
* 800 x 600: 60/75/85/100/120/160/200 Hz

Audio:
Audio system with two built-in stereo speakers
Built-in microphone
MS-Sound compatible

Hard Drive:

40GB HDD ATA-100

Optical Drive: DVD/CD-RW Combo drive
o Read: 24X CD-ROM, 24X CD-R, 24X CD-RW, 8X DVD-ROM, 8X DVD-R, 4X DVD-RW, 8X DVD+R, 4X DVD+RW,
o Write: 24X CD-R, 24X CD-RW

Other details:
56K Fax/Modem,
10/100Mbps LAN
Battery Life: 1.5-hour battery life, 2.5-hour quick-charge, 3.5-hour charge-in-use
Dimensions: 364 (W) x 279 (D) x 33.9/38.9 (H) mm
Weight: 2.8kg.
OS: Linpus Linux BE
Warranty & e-support: 1 year warranty (International) I/O ports

I/O Ports:
Three USB 2.0 ports
External display (VGA) port
Type II PC Card slot
Ethernet (RJ-45) port
Modem (RJ-11) port
External display (VGA) port
Microphone/line-in jack
Headphones/speaker/line-out port
Type II PC Card slot
DC-in jack for AC adaptor

Layout And Design: The laptop comes with a Silver –Black layout and with its sleek design, it does appeal to most. The front panel boundaring the 15” TFT Screen, the Keypad & TouchPad comes in a unicolour black look which makes a perfect visual duo with the Silver Body of the laptop. The Touchpad with 4-way integrated scroll button is a nice addition. Four easy-launch buttons along with the Power button are placed above the keyboard layout on the right hand side and can be configured by the user to launch different Programs. The Headphones/speaker/line-out port are inconveniently placed on the front panel of the laptop, if they had been on one of the two sides it would really had been icing on the cake. The Power adapter is a 65 W AC adaptor and comes in a sporty black colour.



Performance: From the specs, it is clear that the laptop comes with a descent config and can handle Regular browsing, office works, viewing movies on DVD and some occasional gaming. The 15.0" XGA color TFT LCD, 1024 x 768 pixel resolution takes a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz and is quite a treat to watch and have no dead pixels as supposed to be rumors with the Acer Entry level laptops. The hard-disk may be a downer for a few since it comes with a 40 Gb variant. The speakers are placed at the front panel, and give acceptable sound quality which is surprisingly better than in most other laptops, to say the least.

Gaming: I was infact surprised to see that even with the onboard meagre Sis760Gx Video Adapter having 64 Mb of shared memory from the system memory, Games like NFS Underground 2, Fifa2005 played almost fine even at a resolution of 1024x768 with low settings. When tried to work on these games with high settings on the same resolution, the game ran fine but there were some unusual jerks. So 800x600 resolution with high settings seems to be correct choice for playing these games. Even after more than two and a half hours of continuous gaming, the heat generated by the laptops were within acceptable limits.



On the Move: The Aspire 3002NLC fails miserably to be used on its batteries. The battery can barely manage to keep the notebook running for a little over an hour while watching movie DVD’s.

Final Thoughts: The Drivers bundled with the CD are fully working and have no issues with Windows XP Pro SP2 . All in all, this is a no-non sense laptop at a price tag of 33770/- Rs- {I'm from India}. An extra 256 Mb RAM Module would be an icing on the cake. The price tag is inclusive of a Acer Laptop Carry Case. If you ever dreamt of a laptop and planned to do all the things you did with your desktop PC at an affordable price, then the Acer Aspire 3002 is for you.

Pros:
(+) Kick A$$ Config to suffice most users
(+) Combo Drive in a Entry Level Notebook
(+) Killer Price Tag makes it a more viable option

Cons:
(-)Low battery Life
(-)So-so graphics adapter with shared system memory.
(-)Inconveniently placed Sound ports at the front panel

Other Pics
Sisoft System Summary Full

Last Words: All in all, this is a no-non sense laptop at a price tag of 33770/- Rs. An extra 256 Mb RAM Module would be an icing on the cake. The price tag is inclusive of a Acer Laptop Carry Case. If you ever dreamt of a laptop and planned to do all the things you did with your desktop PC at an affordable price, then the Acer Aspire 3002 is for you. Book one till the stocks last and yeah lastly this laptop took me almost 15 phone calls to different dealers of Acer Laptops in Mumbai to get my hands on one. A Sempron M 2800+ processor which does a 1.6 Ghz, 15” XGA TFT screen, 256 Mb DDR RAM, a COMBO drive, 3 USB ports & PCMCIA slot for upgradeability , An Acer Leather Carry Case and a whole 1 yr of International warranty on the laptop. What else can you ask for within a sub 34k budget for normal buyers and a 32k for students after the 2k rebate later.?

If you have any more questions/queries abt the laptop , i would be very happy to answer them.

[Kannan]

Superb laptop for sub 35 K

Great buy Sourab

[delhibhai1000]

@Sourabh: Do they allow u to add more RAM at the time of purchase, & whether that voids the warranty or not??
Do u knwo whether it can take up DDR400?
Also, wats the price for a 512Mb DDR400 stick for notebooks??

[geek_rohit]

Great lappy s0urabh. Congrats man.
Great buy.

[digen]

Thats a pretty cool lappy there soura.A nice buy indeed.

[mail2and]

nice pics soura.... i'm surprised that the IBM mouse isn't working

[sumitava_b]

Great buy, Sourabh. Acer is really scooping the laptop market with killer prices!!

How ever, how is ur acer battery is performing?

[Sourabh]

1 hr 15 minutes while playing NFS undergound 2

[Sourabh]

@delhibhai :

The acer guys themselves are coming to my place in a couple of days to add the xtra 256 Mb ram on my laptop for about 2700/- rs and wod be changing the IBM mouse with it

So the warranty wont be void if u add the extra DDR RAM if u do it from Acer guys themselves because they wod place another sticker of ACER over it

AFAIk PC3200 isnt supported

abt the price of 512Mb no idea dude, they are charging 2700 rs for another 256 Mb of PC2700 DDR SDRAM

[rohanbee]

Very good buy and a very good review. I think other forum members should give such kind of reviews too.

Everything else is ok but i think a graphic card is needed whatever kind it may have been !!

[Kannan]

I agree with rohanbee. I prefer a standalone Graphics Card with 128 MB RAM.

Still for sub 35 k this graphic processor is OK.

Great buy Sourab

[mohit]

this is definitely a vfm laptop and is surely going to take the market by storm... a very good buy for sub 35k. you have got everything man good speed, decent gaming capability , good screen , combo drive ... though they shud have integrated bluetooth and irda as well but then also a nice buy.

[busyanuj]

hey sOurabh, nice purchase there.

total of 512 mb ram would be good.
cd-rw/dvd combo is good, keeps it future proof.

overall a good purchase considering Acer's pricing 8)

[super_i_man]

I am planning to buy Acer's new offering TravelMate 2355 NXI which is advertised at 27500 + 2500 + Taxes. The config is same as the one reviewed above but with an Intel Cerelon M processor.
I am little worried about the reliability of the Acer product. In some posts I have read about TFT going bad etc and optical drive not working.
what about Compaq M2002 AL for 34000 with the same config. Do you know of any problems with this compaq model. What do you think and what is your opinion. and is your Laptop giving you any problems (touchwood!)

[Sourabh]

Bad battery life thats it

besides the sempron 2800+ M is atleast better than the Intel Celeron M Processors

cant expect more than 1 hr at the most

mebbe the compaq one wod have a better battery life, read my review i have tried to be as neutral as possible

[mail2and]

with compaq you get toshiba HDD.. philips cdrw/dvd-rom... samsung/lg tft.... etc... thats why its a bit over-priced....

[Kannan]

Hey sourab can u produce a full system report using SISSoft Sandra in HTML format.

It would be more helpful to understand the laptop so that I can recommend to others.

Please compress the HTML Report to ZIP or better to RAR.

I saw the pictures and were good

[Sourabh]

abey i have already posted tht in text file na

anyways i m on my laptop rite now wod do it in a while

y do u want a HTML and not the text file version?

EDIT:

http://www.freewebs.com/adpinfo/sysreport.rar

[suave_guy]

falling prices of brands like acer n compaq shud be a wake up call for samsung n toshiba....they are really overpriced....

also dell has not gauged the indian market that well as of yet....the day it will introduce a 30K and 40K laptop, i guess the competition will be huge....

but when...?

btw a very good buy Sourabh....just get that additional 256 mb ram and good quality headphones...altec lansing AHP512....

ENjoy....

[Kannan]

Hey soura thanks for the report yaar

Saved in my system and has forwarded to my friend who is looking for that particular model.

[quad master]

Gr8 Review there Sourabh.
& Congrats on ur new Laptop

[tarey_g]

hmmm.... value for money

[bharathbala2003]

hmm gud buy for 35K m8 decent rig..

Quite good & balanced laptop for 35K, Sempron 2800+ Mobile gives performance equivalent to AthlonXP 2600+ barton core, which is still quite enough for anything other then hardcore gaming.

With that Combo Drive this is a great deal, as DVDs are not popular in India that much, so providing a DVD writer is quite useless, not every one has a DVD Drive here, ask me, I bought a DVD writer & have burned only 1 DVD so far, & 24 CDs in 1 month, money saver in this case

40 GB HD is enough for a Laptop, I mean hardly anyone uses the laptop as the primary system, well some do, but then again, there is always an option to go for High prices external Drives, instead burning data in CD-RW is better

The chipset used is 2nd only to 855GM, in quality & performance, quite good, the integrated gfx isn’t anything like even a FX5200 but then again, laptops are not meant for gaming, if U use it, then U R definitely a fool, cos they cost more then a desktop for gaming purpose, 1024X768 at 100Hz is da best, even my CRT goes to 1024X768 at 85 Hz only, besides, it has to be good, it got my initial GX in it

Hmm, Gigabit LAN is cheap to produce & production cost is marginal over 10/100 LAN, so Y not that SiS

Using Linux to cut cost is a great move from Acer, even they know that as soon the user in India gets a laptop with Linux he will take out his wallet, give Rs 50 to the Shop keeper & buy a Windows XP Pro CD pirated, & install SP2 given in Digit or any other magazine CD or he will simply get the CD from a friend, & make a copy of it, for Rs 15, We are genius in saving money

& last but not least, the battery life sux, big time, I mean 3 hrs, that is toooooooo low, what Acer was thinking. At least 7 hrs is required, they better release a new model with high battery life & also give an option to users already using this model to upgrade the battery, or this can lead to a dent in their already stable market place, a small flaw can become hindrance in total market domination

[Sourabh]

the battery life is not 3 hrs dude

i get only 1 hr 15 minutes on battery while watching a DVD movie, and besides i am not gonna roam abt the whole of mumbai in the local trains even if i had a battery life of 3 hrs

i m just using it near my desktop PC for surfing, chatting, watching movies and listening to music after i get some PCMCIA Sound card and a good headphone

suggestions for the same are welcome

hmm, what was the name, Audigy NX, maybe, external USB based sound card

[amit_arya]

Originally Posted by gxsaurav

I bought a DVD writer & have burned only 1 DVD so far, & 24 CDs in 1 month, money saver in this case

he will take out his wallet, give Rs 50 to the Shop keeper & buy a Windows XP Pro CD pirated, & install SP2 given in Digit or any other magazine CD or he will simply get the CD from a friend, & make a copy of it, for Rs 15, We are genius in saving money

Bhai going a bit out of way. and sorry if what i write hurts you but Why did you bought a DVD writer??? DVD media are now as cheap as Rs. 15 and can store content of 6-7 Cds. its been 40days i bought my DVD writer and have written a little over 9DVDs + 3 coasters... to be frank with 7DVDs by Day 2 at that time also i was not planning to Buy a DVD writer but handling 30Cds was a tough job expecially when a few files were over 700MB. 3 coasters were because of error in the file being written...

seconds you will get Winxp Pro with SP2 int. for Rs. 50 (umm Rs.40) itself.. and a smatter move would be borrow a CD from friend and make a copy so all done in Rs. 15 you can treat me at McDonald For saving your Rs.50 ..