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Acer Aspire 5000 AS5002WLMi with AMD Turion 64 Mobile 1.6GHz Notebook

Sunday, November 6th, 2005 | Laptop and Notebook Computer Reviews, Reviews | 3 Comments

The Acer Aspire 5000 is one of the lower priced of Acer’s laptop range. Coming in at just over 6lbs it features in the desktop replacement category. It is fairly well featured and at the new lower price range will give you more bang for your buck than you may expect.

With many laptops rated for whether they are suitable for travel or not this laptop makes an attempt to try and get into the thin and light laptop market at a low price. Unfortunately it’s weight means that it is more suited as a desktop replacement.

This does not however put it out of the running as it boasts a fairly large set of features.

• AMD Turion 64 ML-30 1.6GHz processor
• 512MB of RAM
• Wireless LAN
• Large screen
• DVD writer

The AMD Turion chip is a toned down version of AMDs fantastic Athlon 64, designed for use in thin and light laptops. Its inclusion in this model is a bonus, as the starting price for models with this chip is actually slightly higher.

512MB or RAM should suffice for most tasks you care to give to this laptop, and the hard drive should provide ample space, providing 80GB for your programs and documents. The hard drive does run a little slower than many of its competitors in this range. This means that performance on reading and writing to the hard drive is a little weak.

The Wireless LAN is decent and you can turn it on and off which is a definite bonus as it can save power when you don’t actually need to connect to the internet via wireless network.

The screen is a little dim, even when it is cranked up to its highest setting it is too dim. This is not too terrible but could get annoying.

In terms of accessibility there is a USB port, 3 audio ports and the wireless on/off switch at the front of the laptop. At the left is the DVD writer and on the left are the PC card slot, 2 USB ports, a network port and a modem port. Having all these ports at the front makes it very easy to acces things on the computer.

Finally the DVD writer is an added bonus at this price point. The usual CD writer / DVD combo drives are alright, but the DVD writer will save you one potential upgrade in the future.

Pros

• Well featured
• DVD writer
• Light for a desktop replacement

Cons

• Too heavy for travelling
• Slightly poor graphics performance

Acer Aspire 3000 AS3002LCi-512 AMD Sempron 2800+ / Wireless / XGA / 512MB DDR Notebook

Saturday, November 5th, 2005 | Laptop and Notebook Computer Reviews, Reviews | 1 Comment

The Acer Aspire 3000 AS 3002LCi-512 is a well-specced notebook computer, capable of handling a lot and providing a lot of power for the budget price it goes for.

Acer are a big brand in the laptop business. This model manages to give many of the features as its more expensive brothers but without having to fork out huge amounts of money to get it.

At a glance it features include…

• AMD Sempron 2800+ processor
• 512MB of 333MHz DDR memory
• 40GB hard drive
• 15 inch monitor
• Wireless LAN

The AMD Sempron processor performs well. Many people like to favor on the side of their preferred chip manufacturer, but I say get whichever does the best for the job you want it for. In terms of performance the Sempron performs very well against the Intel Celeron, another budget chip. However the Intel Pentium M and Intel Centrino chips give better performance but are also in a higher price range.

512MB or RAM does well to give the computer a little bit of extra clout over other computers in this range which often only come with 256MB or RAM.

The 40GB of hard drive space should be enough for anything you need to store on it and is pretty much average for computers in this range.

15 inch monitors are the norm nowadays. This one is no exception. It delivers decent performance in playing DVDs but doesn’t really live up to the demands of heavy gameplay, you’ll have to invest in a more powerful laptop to do that. It does however handle any 2D graphics program you can throw at it, like Photoshop.

The Wireless LAN can be turned on and off with a switch, so you can save power when you are not using it.

The laptop is pretty heavy, weighing in at over 6lbs without the extras like power pack and extra batteries. It’s battery life is pretty poor, offering only just over and hour and a half on a normal battery. The battery life has been the main complaint of people who have bought this computer.

Pros

• Good performance for the price
• 512MB RAM
• Fully featured hardware

Cons

• Heavy
• Short battery life

Overall this notebook could qualify as a replacement for a home desktop computer. If you want to travel with it be prepared for tired arms, it has a hefty weight. A good buy.

D-link Airplus G Wireless Card DWL-G630

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 | Networking (LAN), Reviews | No Comments

One of the most deciding factors in any purchase I make is quality. Sure, getting a good deal is great too, but if its too rubbish, then its not worth it, no matter how cheap.

Unfortunately I seems that the D-Link Airplus G Wireless Card DWL-G630 falls into the cheap and not so great category.

Here is a summary of its features…

• 54Mbps throughput
• IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g compliant
• WPA1 - Wi-Fi protected access
• 100 meter indoor range

Reviews on the internet for this card are not good. Reports of problems with connections are probably the most worrying for me. Once you are connected to the internet there should be a minimum of interruption after that. But like my old modem connection, this card seems to lose the connection every few minutes or so.

There also seems to be some issue with it having problems with the Windows XP driver that tries to connect automatically to the network.

Despite these reports, many people have been happy at the range and effectiveness of the card, even one Linux user reported good distance for the card.

To make sure you minimize the number of problems you have, make sure to download the latest drivers and firmware for the card you are using. There are 3 revisions:

• Revision A
• Revision A
• Revision A

The card is value for money, but I would not recommend it on the grounds of the potential for too many problems. Those kind of hardware issues drive me nuts.

D-link DI-524 Airplus G Wireless Router

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 | Networking (LAN), Reviews | No Comments

D-Link has become to be a reliable name in the wireless networking market. In the past, it got played down a little compared to it’s rivals Linksys and Netgear.

With time, they have improved their technology and cemented their place in the budget wireless router market.

The D-Link DI-524 Airplus G Wireless router provides good quality at a good price. Basic features are as follows…

• 100m indoor range
• 400m outdoor range
• 54Mbps maximum transfer rate
• 802.1x security
• up to 128-bit Wireless Encryption Protocol
• 4 LAN ports

There is a wizard for setup which should make things pretty hassle free, it picks up all the details for you and sets it up.

Amongst the options for the router is an option for Antenna power. This is useful if you live inside an apartment building or in a place where there are other computers. By limiting the antenna power you can make it hard, if not impossible for other people to use your connection.

Power settings are 100%, 50%, 25% and 12.5%.

In order to get the WPA encryption you will need to update the firmware. This can be done at:
http://support.dlink.com/products/revision.asp

Reports amongst consumers are mixed, with some people very happy, but others with some problems. This is a cheap router and is priced as such. Don’t expect it to perform wonders, but for a connection to one of two computers, it should be okay. Also, make sure to update the firmware.

Overall the D-Link provides wireless networking at a price which is more than reasonable, and with performance that is not bad either.

Nvidia gains in desktop GPU market

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 | News | No Comments

Nvidia has narrowed the gap between itself and rival ATI in the desktop graphics segment.

Nvidia experienced a growth rate 3 times higher than ATI, giving Nvidia a boost. Nvidia is creeping up to ATI in terms of market share, although Intel is still in the lead, mostly due to it’s integrated solutions.

Source: Digitimes

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB Hard Drive

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005 | Hard Drive Reviews, Reviews | No Comments

The DiamondMax 80GB is a slightly older model from Maxtor and was the first hard drive to be offered by them.

This model came in sizes up to 200GB. It’s not the fastest around anymore, but is still worth a mention as it does a very good job anyway.

One of the nice features of the drive is that it comes with fluid dynamic bearings making it much more quieter in use than its traditional ball bearing breathren.

Its features are

• 8MB of cache
• SATA interface
• fluid dynamic bearings

In testing it doesn’t perform too badly. Although it does slightly underperform it successor the DiamondMax 10 it does a good job against it’s bigger 250GB brother. The DiamondMax outperforms it by about 10% or so.

In terms of raw performance modern drives have taken a fairly smooth increae in speeds, often to do with the compactness of data on the drive as well as speeds of the platter and things like NCQ.

It’s overall I/O performance is cetainly at the lower end of new drives, but still enough for probably most peoples needs.

The interface bandwidth of this drive is quiet high. It falls in the upper half amongst its competitors. Unfortunately it has one of the slowest random access times, but still faster than the Seagate 400GB.

Overall this drive is a good look into the history of drives, but not great in terms of comparitive performance.