Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810TZ-4696 14-Inch Laptop – 8+ Hours Battery Life

5 comments

1. 

   C. Frieder on December 8, 2009 at 10:00 am

   A couple of things bug me. Why does the 15.6-inch larger screen version cost $100 LESS? Why is Acer not offering a choice to run this machine on a Linux/Unix open source operating system such as Ubuntu, and preloaded with basic open source apps like Firefox (browser) OpenOffice (text editor, spreadsheets) or Gimp (Photoshop alternative) — then deduct from the price whatever pound of flesh we otherwise are forced to tithe to Microsoft? I don’t get it.
   
   Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4274 15.6-Inch Laptop – 8+ Hours Battery Life

2. 

   BobSunnyvale on December 8, 2009 at 10:26 am

   First of all, I kept this laptop although I might have had reasons to return it. Battery life is VERY important to me and I never had a laptop coming even close. The lag in performance is not a major issue for me but there are a few things I really do not like that much. The touchpad is hypersensitive and not just to touch, also to almost touch. If my hand rests close to the touchpad (1″) I seem to be very pre-charged because it moves the cursor (capacitive coupling). That is really annoying. The DVD drive stopped working after 2 weeks because of a driver problem seems to have caused a damage in the registry. I only installed programs that I have used before on other PCs and found them to be reliable. After about a month MS updates did not work any more. The system readiness program from MS could not fix it. I am still trying to work this one out.
   
   So overall it is a mixed bag, in typical usage the battery life is 6-8h but that is not good enough for 4 or 5 stars considering the issues I have had.

   Edit after 4 months
   
   Pros:
   
   Great battery life
   
   Nice screen
   
   Gets barely warm on my lap
   
   HDMI connector
   
   light weight

   Cons:
   
   Driver problems with DVD
   
   Some Microsoft Updates can not be installed
   
   Touchpad way too sensitive, still drives me nuts when I don’t have a mouse with me
   
   Only 3 USB connectors

3. 

   chosenatrandom on December 8, 2009 at 12:55 pm

   I have owned this computer for six weeks and have been deeply disappointed with it.

   What it does: It crashes and freezes constantly, even when I’m using only a single word-processing or web-browsing application. This is not a simple software crash, but a complete freeze up of the entire machine, often requiring a hard reboot. (Ironically, it froze up again while I was writing this review, so I had to switch to a different computer to actually write it.) At least one source of this problem seems to be the massive Windows Vista software that the small processor on this laptop simply cannot handle. This results in hours of lost work, slow operating times, and a lot of time wasted just trying to shut-down and restart the laptop. Customer support at ACER seemed unsurprised by this complaint, but has so far refused to do anything about it.

   The Timeline also comes pre-loaded with an excessive number of large and unnecessary advertising applications, some of which have proven impossible to uninstall, forcing me to deal with them every time I turn the computer on.

   What it does not do: I bought the Timeline for basic office and home use and expected that it would be a no-frills machine. While I never expected to use it for substantial video editing or other big tasks, I had expected that it would function fine for editing short home video clips of the family–a seemingly mundane task that both my old laptop and our ancient desktop handle just fine. I was really surprised at the this model’s complete inability to process even small, short clips. To be clear on this: if you ever, for any reason, plan on uploading and editing even short, simple video clips from a standard consumer quality camera, this laptop is probably not for you.

   Poor build quality: In addition to the constant system crashes, I’m now confronted with a new problem–the keys have started falling off. The laptop has not been dropped or otherwise abused, yet it has suddenly lost two keys, with another on the verge of falling off. I was able to get both back on briefly, but one of them promptly fell off again. When I contacted Acer to complain, they told me I would have to send the laptop to them at my own expense, at which time their technicians will determine whether service on this brand new claptop is covered by the warranty. In the meantime, I will lose my computer for three to four weeks.

   Battery life less than advertised: In my experience, the battery life on this laptop is consistently around 4-4.5 hours. This is not bad, but far less than the “8+ hours” that is the system’s major selling point. I have yet to achieve anything approaching 8 hours of battery life.

   For all of these reasons, this machine is not recommended.
   

4. 

   Timeline Owner on December 8, 2009 at 2:42 pm

   Got mine for $450 during black friday sale and it is amazing. Way way more powerful than a netbook for almost the same price. I have yet to test the reliability(Of course it takes a few weeks of usage) but I havent been disappointed so far.

5. 

   R. Comstock on December 8, 2009 at 2:43 pm

   This laptop is lite-weight and small, but with a full sized keyboard. It really does hold true to it’s claim of 8 hours of battery life. For less than $550, with Microsoft 2007 and a full replacement 1 year warranty you can’t go wrong.