[clue-tech] Laptop

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Sun, 2008-10-05 at 18:56 -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> Now I'm curious. Almost everyone I talked to in the past considered
> Acer to be low quality. That includes sales staff at the now defunct
> CompUSA, who told me that they got more failed Acer units back than
> any other brand.

Don't know what to tell you on that part.  All I can say is that this
laptop has performed perfectly.  I bought it for <$1000 back then (from
CompUSA, I believe, in Colorado Springs).  It has plenty of features -
multicard card reader, multiple usb ports, wifi, 100MB ethernet,
external VGA and TV-out.  It has a Synaptics pad but I disabled it
because I hate how it reacts to the palm of my thumb (even with proper
synaptics configuration in my xorg.conf).  I prefer a USB mouse.  

1280x800 display.  The intel driver (i915GM chipset) supports dual
monitors with xrandr though I have to run without 3D acceleration to get
1280x800 side by side with 1280x768.  I don't find that a problem since
MythtV doesn't need it.  About the only thing I've found that *does*
seem to care is gqview when scrolling large images.

It's got 2GB, an easily accessible hard drive for replacement or upgrade
dual-DVD_R double layer/DVD+RW (though I only use it for CD writing -
haven't burned any DVDs yet).  Even the keyboard has a nice feel to it,
though at the moment I'm typing on an external USB keyboard connected to
it (just due to the way I use the dual monitors).  It also has an
infrared receiver and firewire port but I've never tried using them.

FWIW, here is the pci bus listing.  I just thought it was a good deal
for sub-$1000 4 years ago.  It's lived up to that for me.

> mjhammel(tty0)$ lspci
> 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)
> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
> 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
> 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
> 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)
> 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 04)
> 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
> 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
> 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
> 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
> 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 04)
> 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4)
> 00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 04)
> 00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 04)
> 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
> 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
> 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
> 06:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
> 06:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
> 06:01.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
> 06:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05)
> 06:08.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5788 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)

-- 
Michael J. Hammel                               
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org / http://www.graphics-muse.org
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