The Acer Guy

Any of you own a Gemstone Blue 8920?

Have you found a bag for it?

In an amazing oversight , Acer seems to have forgotten that people actually like to lug portable computers around and don’t have a custom bag big enough for it (yet?).

I’ve been getting requests from customers about this and can’t come up with anything. My only suggestion was Timbuk2 but apparently they don’t make one big enough either.

If you have found something big enough for the 8920 can you post it on the comments section here please? It’ll help a lot of people avoid a lot of scratches.

16 Comments »

We have our first review for the Acer Aspire 8920.

I’m really excited about receiving these directly from you, and want to thank John Daniels for writing this up so soon after receiving his.

But that’s enough of me. Let me get out the way and let John tell you what his first few days have been like.

Acer Aspire 8920G-934G64Bn

Windows Vista® Ultimate”, Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz, 800MHz FSB, 6MB L2 Cache), 18.4″” WUXGA Acer CineBrite™ LCD TFT, 2*2GB RAM, 2*320GB 5400rpm Hard Disk Drive, 2X Blu-ray Disc™/DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive, Mobile Intel® PM965 Express Chipset with NVIDIA® GeForce™ 9650M GS 512MB VRAM, Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (dual-band quad-mode 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N), 8 cell Li-ion Battery, 6-in-1 card reader (SD™, MMC, MMCplus™, MS, MS PRO, xD), 0.3 MP Crystal Eye Webcam, Bluetooth 2.0, Acer Bio-Protection fingerprint solution, Dolby® Home Theatre Digital Surround Sound Technology, McAfee® Internet Security Suite 60 Day Trial”

The box contains the 8920, power supply, manual, guarantee & a Sony Blu-ray demo disk with various Blu-ray movie trailers on. I haven’t included any photos of the machine as there are plenty on the Internet & Acer can take better picture than I can, but here is the box.

After 6 years using 15” screens, it looked huge, with a very attractive outer styling; only problem with the gloss finish is it shows every fingerprint.

Set up was painless, Vista took about 10 minutes to complete its install, creating a system restore & a driver restore disk, was about 45 minutes, reinstallation of drivers can be completed via the Acer Mobility Center, directly from your hard drive, as can a restore to factory defaults through the Acer eRecovery management.

It came with Vista Ultimate 32 bit SP1, there were a few windows updates to get, which downloaded & installed in about 10 minutes, there was also an updated version of Acer Arcade Deluxe which was updated from within the program.

Build quality is excellent, a different league from my old Aspire 5110, it feels very solid, & with normal use, no noticeable give on the keyboard, which is positioned nearly central, with the numerical keypad on the right & CineDash Media console on the left. Touchpad is about central with the keyboard, positioned directly under & the same width as the space bar.

The screen is a beauty, my old Aspire’s screen looks positively dull in comparison; it can be viewed from a wide angle both horizontally & vertically. The huge width takes a bit of getting used to but I find myself using Acer GridVista a lot more now as it is ideal for this screen size. The included Blu-ray demo, has a couple of comparison clips showing you the benefit of HD, watching normal definition content will never be the same again.

CineDash Media console is a bit of a gimmick, & takes a bit of getting used to but it does what it says & looks pretty cool.

The 5.1 sound works, but this is a notebook, I’d have to be 2” tall & stand on the keyboard to get the benefit, & then I’d have to have eyes at the back of my head, as the front & rear speakers seem to be swapped. The Tuba Cinebass, adds a little bit of bass, nothing out of the ordinary, but all in, not a bad sound for a notebook & probably the best I’ve heard.

Performance.

Windows experience index is 5.1, with memory operations per second being the bottleneck

Windows shows 4gb of Ram, but Everest shows only 3gb is available. I was running Vista 64 bit on my previous aspire & the WEI for memory was 5.9, so it presumably it would be the same on this machine.

It would be nice if Acer supplied a 64 bit version, all the drivers available for download from support are 64 bit compatible except the Nvidia, which I’m not sure about.

Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 9650M GS

I ran the following tests
3DMark 05 – 8009
3DMark 06 – 4814

It should be able to handle all current games, though not on fullest effects on games like Crysis.

Battery life on the power saver plan is about 2 hours 30 minutes as per the specifications.

Very good hard disk performance from the 2 Western Digital Scorpio wd3200’s, considering they are 5400rpm disks, I had a Hitachi 200gb 7200 in my old aspire & it got the same score, 5.3

The 2 physical disks appear as 3 partitions, there are also 2 hidden partitions, presumably for acer system restore. See below

There is an Intel Robson & Matrix Storage manager driver included, but no onboard Robson (TurboMemory) & the current BIOS doesn’t allow RAID (to my knowledge anyway, I’ll be contacting Acer support regarding that) so seems redundant to me.

Improvements I’d like to see would be Vista 64 bit operating system, internal TV card (included in the next model down) RAID & TurboMemory.

In conclusion, I’m happy with my purchase & consider the price very reasonable considering the specification.

Acer seems to have stepped up a notch in terms of quality & I think they will be onto a winner with this model. Now let’s see if they can do something about their technical support.

112 Comments »

This time round I answer four questions:

1. What’s the Windows Experience Index?
2. What does a (real) DVD look like on the 8920?
3. What is the keyboard like?
4. How loud can it go?

Unfortunately I couldn’t get my hands on a VoIP Bluetooth phone or a 6920 but I’m still looking for them so this ain’t over just yet.

If you have any more questions I’m happy to go in there again and try and answer them. Just don’t make them too technical as a) these are sample models which means they are not full production spec and b) I’d rather YOU publish your own reviews once you’ve bought one…

Anyway, without further ado… here is the latest installment of the Gemstone Blue.

13 Comments »

Now that the event’s been and gone and the only thing all of you who really, really want one of these notebooks have to enjoy in the meantime are my frankly laughable videos, I thought I’d put up something that harnessed the collective wisdom and generosity of TheAcerGuy readers and kept you busy.

I want you to tell me (and everyone else) where and when the Gemstone Blue is available.

Officially it should hit the shelves mid-May…

With the original Gemstone 5920, this got really messy with me trying to coordinate your thoughts with official Acer info but I’ve learned my lesson and this time round I’ll leave it up to you.

This post, then, is for you to signal places where the Gemstone Blue is available (on or off-line). No affiliate links please, just good old-fashioned detective work.

In your replies, please indicate both country as well as the name (and link) of the business. I ask this as requests have been coming in from all over the world and it’ll help readers zone in on relevant answers.

You can also discuss spec differences if there are any. Don’t know if there’s a single, global spec sheet but it’s very unlikely because as I’ve mentioned before, country managers order what their clients (distributors/retailers) think you’ll want to buy so the specs are occasionally very different from one country to the next.

So, the search is on. Where’s it at?

4 Comments »

This is a bit of a giggle really. Don’t take it too seriously.

I promise I’ll do better in future.

Anyway, the other day I was looking for videos of the Gemstone Blue to post here. I mean my Google alerts have been firing off a couple of times a day ever since the launch event but apart from articles based on stuff I wrote, there’s very little to actually look at.

So I went out an made my own.

OK, I know it’s an awful video - the lighting is terrible and this one was a prototype so the specs were all wrong but I had fun making it and that’s all that counts isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Who knows if they’ll let me back in to make more.

Whatever. Enjoy!

3 Comments »

I found an interesting article about the Samsung displays Acer has ordered to use in the Gemstone Blue Full High Definition models on the Display News 4 U site.

The article says that Samsung is “the only panel maker capable of producing 16-inch FHD panels, with other panel makers likely to begin deliveries in the third quarter of 2008. As Acer has already set the launch schedule of its Aspire Gemstone Blue series for April, Samsung is said to have brought forward its shipments schedule. Acer aims to ship a total of 200,000 Aspire FHD notebooks worldwide in the second quarter“.

200,000 Gemstone Blues is a lot of machines, particularly as they are high-end products.

I wonder who will be the first to post a review up here.

1 Comment »

There’s a new video up about the Gemstone Blue.

It’s not a product review (I’m trying to get my hands on one) but shows some of the highlights of the various presentations of Gianfranco Lanci, Jim Wong and Gianpiero Morbello and is a clear demonstration that Acer have well and truly raised the style bar.

Game on!

No Comments »

No, wait… I just dug this up (good job I work in marketing). No that isn’t me speaking and no I didn’t write the copy.

But it’s an official Acer video so it’s pretty slick.

Next Page »