After searching for so many days and browsing almost every site about which laptop I should buy , I went in for an Acer Aspire 5738.
Surprised..... I know u guys must be thinking. Huh!!! after so much thinking went in for a measly Acer? so guys....Be ready for the shock of the millenium folks. The Acer laptop I bought is great value for money...
Let me start with the specifications first : Processor Core2Duo(2.0GHz, T6400, Centrino technology, 2MB L2, 800MHz FSB) RAM 3GB DDR3 (the latest, not available in many brands till now) Hard Disk 320GB (I guess it is 5400rpm. Not sure) Screen 15.6-inch;HD;1366×768;16:9 Graphics Card Intel GMA 4500MHD(Good enough for me) Sound Dolby speakers. Built in.
Quite loud ( no need of outer speakers) Card Reader 5 in 1 Batteries 6 cell Li-Ion Eco-friendliness EnergyStar 5.0 compliant with a powesmart button Optical Drive 8X DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive Wireless Lan 802.11a/b/g/draft-N Bluetooth Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR Ports 4 USB Ports
1 HDMI
1 Fingerprint reader
1 Ethernet (RJ45)
1 modem(RJ11)
1 VGA Port Cost ~. I got mine for Rs.32, 000
Keyboard Regular size. With separate Numpad and floating keys..
Heating: It does not heat much. I hardly shut down my lappy and believe me there is absolutely no heating problem. It’s quite cool on the surface. I was running on AC
Camera: This works with cheese. great of general use .. havent explored much
Batteries: This is another place where this laptop shines. It gave me 3hours and 45minutes with light usage and 3 hours with some real work on.
Keyboard: The keyboard is revamped. It is fantastic to type in. It is extremely flat and at the same time it is very usable. Keys are well spaced and sensitivity is just right. It is a pleasure to work on. However it will take some 10 minutes to get used to. It has a separate Numpad. It is very convenient(Though I hardly use it)
Sound: As I said before, It has Dolby speakers. . It is quiteloud and easily touches around 75% of the PC speakers volume with amarok. It will surely do much better with VLC’s 400% volume option. But I am not interested in running an announcer table... so no need to buy an extra creative speakers with ur lappy..
Connectivity: I personally tested the Bluetooth, Wireless and Ethernet ports. All work out of the box. I dont know/test/care about the RJ11 modem port.
Optical Drive: I wrote a DVD with it. It worked fine.
Touchpad: It has a really good touchpad. It is quite big and has scrollers on one side. It also (presumably) supports multitouch. I dont care about it anyway. It has a finger print reader, of which I have no use of too.
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Graphics: The monitor is a good 16:9. It goes to highest resolution out-of-the-box. However, with aggressive power save mode, I can see waves flying across the monitor(Low brightness). I repeat. Use nomodeset for the boot options on F11.
Suspending/Hibernating/Resuming: Work fine with vista..
Summary: It is an excellent laptop. It is brilliant value for money. It runs linux as well as any other laptop would. It doubles up as a good programmer laptop too. I wonder if I would have got a better deal even for Rs.10 -20 , 000 more than what I paid for this( no need to serach for better deal .. I have already done that). I think the only serious contender was Dell Inspiron 15’. But I chose to try Acer. AND IT WORKS.
If you are looking for a laptop , A serious laptop, l, you will be very happy with this. It will also serve a good lappy for programming and carrying around. Looks nice and rounded too and comes with a spring locking system for the monitor so that you dont break your monitor with the pen sliding into the laptop’s mouth when the magnetic clasp opens and closes and dont forget to get a nice carry bag with this...