OttoBlog
2007/11/23: Acer Laptop
This summer, I was thinking about buying a new MP3 player.
I already had a portable CD player that plays MP3s, an Archos Jukebox that plays 20 GB of MP3s, and a pair of Coby headphones that play MP3s with no annoying wires (making it great for mountain climbing where you don't want wires running from your ears to the rest of the unit, which can easily get snagged on trees).
The Archos has been having some hard drive problems, so I figured it was time to replace it (despite the fact that I haven't been using it much lately).
I was going to buy an iPod (the largest at the time was an 80GB model that sold for $350) but I've heard horror stories about how annoying it is to put MP3s on it if they aren't acquired from the iTunes web page, as well as a bunch of other hoops one must jump through (that isn't a problem with any other MP3 player).
Then I realized I could buy an 80 GB laptop, and use it as an MP3 player. I noticed it was the same price as the iPod (marked down from $550 to $450, plus an additional mail-in rebate (one of these days I'll post a blog ranting about how I hate mail-in rebates)). So basically, I'd have an iPod with a much bigger screen, a full keyboard, and hell--I can even surf the internet with it when I'm not listening to tunes.
Of course, it was a laptop that wasn't available for delivery, so I had to make a long car trip to pick it up. Before doing so, I called the store, since the last time I went in--despite the fact that their web page listed it as being "in stock" they had none. This time, again their web page claimed the store had them in stock. I tried calling the store to verify this on no less than 5 occasions, never able to reach a human (despite it being during the hours the store was open).
So I drove there, only to learn that (gasp!) they don't have any in stock. Luckily, before I started trashing everything in the store, the clerk said that I could place an order at the customer service desk and it would be mailed to me at no cost when they had them in stock. If they allow this, then why the hell couldn't I have ordered it from home? Idiots...
Anyway, while I was there, I picked up a USB mouse, since I've always abhorred they "etch-a-sketch" mousepad that laptops have.
It arrived a week or so later, and I didn't have many complaints. I already had the correct wiring to hook it up to my main stereo, the stereo in my master bedroom, and the sound system in the garage.
My nearest neighbor (about 250' away) has been complaining that his laptop can't see a signal from my wireless. The first week I had my laptop, I went over to his house and noticed the signal was alternating between 4 and 5 bars (so my laptop apparently has a better signal grabber than his).
Setting it up to use my 65" Sony HDTV as a second monitor was fairly easy (but wasn't in ANY of the documentation (either in print or online)). I'm currently using a S-VHS cord, but I'd get a better picture if I use a Hd cable instead.
The only real complaints I have with the unit thus far are:
- The battery life is real short (less than two hours with the screen turned to the darkest setting and not using the CD/DVD drive)
- The mouse has a very bright blue light for the mouse wheel.
- About once every week it'll get into a state where it's fully powered on, but has nothing on the display and no keystrokes seem to be recognized. The only way to get it out of this state is to hold the power key for 10 seconds til it powers off (and upon power-on it will complain that I didn't do a proper shutdown).
- Even on full volume, it isn't very loud. Normally, this is okay, since I have it plugged into a stereo with a powerful amp--but if I'm not at home (or sitting in the back yard) people are always saying "turn up the volume; I can't hear it".
- I filled up the 80 GB hard disk the first day. Pretty much every day for the months after that I've deleted several songs I don't listen to very often.
- The hard disk came split into two 32(?) GB drives. I'm guessing the remaining 8(?) GB is tied up in recovery or something. This isn't a huge problem, as I put music files on one drive, using the other one for comedy, audiobooks, etc.
- They have a dedicated "$" key (in addition to being able to use shift-3) and two separate keys with the "Euro" symbol. What a waste.
- The lack of a dedicated numeric keypad (it's too much bother to use the one that's some weird shift of UIOJKLM, etc) blows. I realize they didn't want to make the unit any wider, but there is a huge unused area below the regular keyboard where they could easily fit a numeric keypad, plus some normal arrow keys.
- For that matter, the keyboard should be about four inches closer to the user, instead of right next to the screen. There's no need for a "wrist rest" and the etch-a-sketch mousepad could be put above the keyboard instead of below it.
- Speaking of the keyboard, there's apparently some built-in inhibitor for users who ingest too much caffeine. If I type "2007", 99% of the time it'll come out as "207" unless I wait nearly a second between the two zeroes.
- While there are some annoying things about Vista, I haven't found too many of them to be a complete roadblock. The worst is the inability to modify files under C:/Program Files (if I had known this ahead of time, I would have installed everything in a different directory).
- A couple months later, Wal-Mart had pretty much the same laptop, but with twice the memory (for the same price--no rebates needed). If I had heard about it in time, I would have picked up another (to use as a non-MP3 player).
- I haven't installed any anti-virus software on the Acer, since I figure anything I install will cause the music to "skip" if it tries doing anything in the background. I'm trying to keep the registry as small as possible.
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