|
Articles and Reviews
|
Home >> Photography >> Digital Background and Quick Thoughts on the Acer 9920 In 2003, 17-inch notebooks were just becoming mainstream. Apple had a 17-inch G4 notebook, which was slim, slick and sexy, but since I’m a PC guy, I waited and my desires were answered by Toshiba when they introduced the Satellite P20, one of the first 17-inch sized PC notebooks. Back then, the 17-inch class notebooks were brutes and because of their size, they cost a princely sum to buy. My P20 was about CAN $3200 retail and it irked me when, about six months later, the price of the then equivalent model dropped into the $2500 range. Today, 17-inch notebooks are widespread and some are so low in cost that you can pick up a much more powerful unit than the P20 for a third of the price that I paid for mine. When the opportunity came to update the notebook, my inner Jones took over and I looked to the next size up in the 20-inch class of notebooks. I knew that such a beast existed because I came across the Dell XPS M2010 some time back. There is not a plethora of choices when looking for a 20-inch notebook. As mentioned, Dell has one, HP has one, Samsung has a 19-inch one, and Acer has 20 and 19-inch models. Canadian manufacturer, Voodoo PC (now an arm of HP, similar to Alienware being an arm of Dell), also offers 20-inch notebooks, but the cost is breathtakingly sky high with some versions in the CAN $7500 range. During the time of my search, which was long before I actually took delivery of it, Dell and Acer 9810 were the two primary choices available and almost immediately, the Dell was out of the running because it would have cost another $1000 more than the Acer model. The Dell is interesting though with its detachable Bluetooth keyboard, which allows you to turn it into a sort of, kind of iMac, instead of being a notebook on steroids that the Acer and other units are.
If I had waited, the HP could have also been a contender with more customization available than the Acer, such as faster processors, larger and faster hard drives, Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. However, I suspect that the price would have jumped into the Dell M2010 range, or beyond. I originally specified the Acer 9810, but the supplier took so long to deliver that by the time I received the unit, the 9810 had been phased out and replaced by the 9920. The 9920 offers more choices for processors, but mine seems identical to the 9810 with a Core2Duo 1.5 GHz chip. My supplier/builder did me a favour and upgraded the RAM from the standard 2 GB to 4 GB. However, Vista only makes 3 GB available because 1 GB is shared with the video card (Vista Home Premium being a 32-bit OS is also a factor in not seeing the full 4 GB of RAM). Aside from the obvious widescreen 20-inch LCD feature (with built-in camera for video conferencing), the Acer offers other benefits. One of the attractive features of the 9920 is the dual hard drive capability (also available with the HP and Voodoo models). Mine came with two 160 GB, 5400 RPM hard drives for 320 GB total, although, I find the default setting to be somewhat curious with the first drive partitioned into C and E drives and the second setup as the D drive. The optical drive is setup as G drive, leaving F drive as the default for external hard drives or card readers connected to the computer.
Running Photoshop on the Acer should be a bit better now that I can designate a separate physical drive as the scratch disk, but I suspect that I’ll be happier when I upgrade the hard drives to 7200 RPM units. I usually wait until the warranty period is over before doing any major upgrades, such as for the hard drives, so I’ll cool my heels before upgrading. Another feature is a HD DVD ROM optical drive so that one can enjoy watching HD quality movies. The drive also offers an 8x dual-layer DVD burning capability. Watching the demo HD video (a series of short clips and scenes from blockbuster Hollywood movies) that came with the Acer looked impressive with a crispness not seen previously.
Typical of computers that are produced by well known name brands, the Acer came loaded with a number of software, some permanent and some on a trial basis, including Norton and MS Office Home. Once I got into configuring the Acer, I dispensed with both, because Norton, while generally effective, is just plain evil for getting into every little nook and cranny of a computer’s OS. Although I uninstalled it, there’s probably vestiges of Norton deep in the registry not unlike a bad virus, which is rather ironic, given what Norton is best known for.
MS Office Home was uninstalled in favour of the Pro version of the suite. I’m still getting used to the new version of Word and how it operates and presents its functions. Eventually, I’ll look at all the apps that came with it and decide which to keep and which to delete, but one feature that I’m enjoying at the moment is Vista’s side bar of gadgets that sit on the desktop. The side bar can offer a number of different bits and pieces of information at a glance, such as a clock, a calendar, the local temperature, news feeds for headlines and stock market indices, images from the Pictures folder, CPU and memory usage indicator, and even a tiny little note pad to quickly type up reminders to myself. These types of features and functions (not to mention the slick looking cosmetics of the OS) generally take away from the performance of the computer, but as a daily use machine, the Vista gadgets are useful. Horses for Courses Using a laptop instead of a desktop offers some advantages, such as:
The three reasons above are why I’ve come to love using a notebook as my daily computer and the Toshiba did just about everything in the four years that I used it (almost every day):
This is not to say that the Toshiba did everything well though, as I did ask it to do more than it should have in running 2007 applications on a 2003 computer. A Pentium 4 with only 1 GB of RAM can only do so much in today’s world and Lightroom crashed regularly when, in the previous three months while I waited for the new arrivals, I had no other computer to use except the Toshiba. The old notebook has also been prone to freezing up more in its old age, but I think it will still have a few more good years of service for my wife, who now has it as her own. My two oldest kids almost immediately asked for the old Toshiba once they saw the new Acer sitting on my desk. The better for them to surf to Teletoon.com and play the games related to their favourite cartoon shows. Knowing where my place is in the house, I first offered the Toshiba to my wife J I won’t be offering any timing differences in operation between the Toshiba and the Acer, because there’s no point. I’ve made my choice and I’m living with it and it’s best to just move on and not look back. However, I will say that the Acer is indeed zippier in every aspect of operation than the Toshiba, which is expected given the age and generational differences between the two. My thumbs are twiddling less than before and as the Acer arrived before the new desktop, it gave me much anticipation to see what a full-blown powerhouse desktop could do with Lightroom editing. 17 versus 20 Okay, seriously, a few inches doesn’t seem like much, and even pixel wise, it’s not a huge difference per se going from 1440x900 to 1680x1050, but every little pixel counts in this super sized, consumer world we live in. When I was cruising around researching notebooks, I noticed that Apple offers the 17-inch Macbook Pro with a stunning 1920x1200 resolution LCD, which is impressive, but on second thought, the pixel pitch must be tiny to allow for a resolution normally found on 23 or 24-inch LCDs. HP also offers the higher 1920x1200 resolution on its 20-inch notebooks, which would be more appropriate and is another nice option in favour of HP. The extra pixels and pitch of the 20-inch Acer makes it easier to view dual-page layouts in Word and makes photo editing more comfortable, but the ultimate would still be three 30-inch LCDs running at the same time J One big LCD for Adobe Bridge or other browser, one big LCD for the main editing window, and the third LCD for the palettes and other apps to run on the side. Unfortunately, it’s a configuration that won’t be happening anytime soon in my house. If you think three is impressive, I’ve seen stock traders use a four screen configuration to monitor all the price feeds and keep an order screen available for trading. Although, none of those setups used large 30-inch monitors. The Acer’s LCD lid is thick; as thick as a whole Macbook Pro, so when closed, the damn thing is almost three-inches thick and weighs in at 15 lbs. It’s so big that I thought I would need a suitcase to lug it around, but surprise, surprise, Targus, makers of notebook cases, does in fact have a case (the 20 XXL) that can accommodate a 20-inch notebook…no, I don’t plan to buy this case.
The Acer makes the Toshiba look like a piker and suddenly, I realized that while once considered large, a 10 lb, 17-inch notebook is actually still a portable computer. There’s no way that I’d want to lug the Acer out of the house, but then I never had such expectations when I spec’ed it out. As such, I’m still on the lookout for a good little notebook for truly portable usage. The Toshiba U300 series looks okay, but I may end up with a similarly configured HP unit to save a bit of money, especially since I wouldn’t be using this notebook for heavy-duty editing.
The quality of the Acer LCD is quite good with crisp resolution and vibrant colors. When I first cracked open the lid, I was taken aback by the reflections seen in the black LCD. It was a mirror finish not unlike the new iMacs with the glass in front of the LCD and I worried about how this would affect the usage of the computer. My fears were unfounded as the reflectivity of the screen is only when the screen is off or if there’s a large, deep black segment on the screen, e.g. viewing a dark photo. Generally, I had little to no problems with reflections in day-to-day usage.
I also have 15-inch and 24-inch Acer LCD monitors and along with the 20-inch screen in the 9920, I can definitely see a family trait in the color quality, which in a color managed environment, is a good thing for consistency from one screen to another. I think my 30-inch Dell is better still, but I’m not using any of the Acers in a super critical editing situation, so I’m fine with their quality. Vista Home Premium on the Acer I will say that while I understand the rationale for locking down Vista security wise, the confirmations and admin authorizations required to do some simple daily tasks is indeed annoying. For example, when I connect some (not all) of my external drives to the computer, moving files from the external to the internal hard drive requires three confirmation clicks to finally get the operation going, whereas in XP you just click and drag and it does its thing. I could turn off User Account Control, but then I’d leave myself vulnerable. However, as the computer become fully configured and used everyday, the UAC prompts and annoyance have abate. Otherwise, Vista looks good so far and no major issues connecting my peripherals to it. The Epson R2400 printer was installed successfully after I downloaded the appropriate Vista driver and the HP laser printer was simply plug-and-play. Anti-virus is always a potential issue in the PC world, but I already had a license for Kaspersky, so not a big deal to install it have it run quietly in the background. I use DiscKeeper Premium for defragging the hard drive and no problems there either running with Vista Home Premium. Tune-up Utilities 2007 round out the apps used to tune up the computer every now and then. Thus, my biggest accommodation to make so far with Vista has been getting used to the cosmetic changes and the UAC prompts. After a couple of days getting used to Vista, I had the Acer configured pretty similarly as the old Toshiba running XP. As of this writing, I think it’s too soon to be offering anymore significant comments on Vista. I will note though that Dreamweaver 8 crashes on occasion, something that did not occur with XP and Lightroom 1.3 still crashes, which I now suspect is an Adobe issue, since the same behaviour was noted with XP on the old Toshiba.
Acer Irks With the desktops, I’ve been using Microsoft ergonomic keyboards for several years and when I bought the Toshiba in 2003, it took a while to get used to using a straight keyboard again. Because I use both types of keyboards just about everyday, I don’t have a problem going back and forth now, but for big typing projects, the ergonomic is my preference. The Acer keyboard places some keys in different locations than the Toshiba or the standard Microsoft keyboards. There’s the “\” “|” key, which is usually found beside or above the Enter key, but on the Acer, this key is placed between the left Shift and “Z” keys. The left Shift key on the Acer has been reduced to half its normal size to accommodate the location of the “\” “|” key and when I type, my tendency is to use my left pinkie finger to hit the Shift key when I need a cap. Unfortunately, with the Acer, I’m hitting the other key half the time, requiring more corrections than I care for. The location of the Delete key is also an annoyance, but this is more Toshiba’s fault for placing it in the lower right section of the P20’s keyboard. I found this location to be very convenient instead of being in the usual spot in the top right section, as found on the Acer and most other keyboards. I’m also getting used to having a numerical keypad back due to the size of the Acer base being able to accommodate a full sized keyboard and still have room leftover. Unfortunately, the Acer keyboard is not as good as Toshiba’s for tactile touch.
Acer makes a big deal about the sound of the built-in speakers, including a “subwoofer” located at the bottom of the notebook. Maybe it might impress a consumer without a clue about good sound, but it’s laughable to me to think of a three-inch speaker as a subwoofer. Acer has not found a way to cheat the physics of sound, thus, the sound quality is nothing to write home about and if the Acer or any other notebook finds its way to your desktop as a primary computer, I highly recommend using superior external speakers. The US $200 Audioengine A2 powered speakers were raved about in the December 2007 issue of Stereophile, so I’d point you in that direction instead of buying from the usual suspects of computer speaker makers (Logitech, Creative, et al.) As an aside, if you're serious about your sound from a computer source, forget about all the crap with surround sound and other sound effects from the OS. Set your sample rate to match the resolution of your source music files, e.g. 16 bit, 44.1 KHz, in the OS and your music player of choice, e.g. iTunes. Use full resolution, or lossless files, such as AIFF, Apple Lossless, or FLAC - at the very least, if you have to use compression, use the highest bitrate possible. I subscribe to Lenswork’s audio blog podcasts, which, in it original form, is actually just an email notice that a new audio blog is available for listening (currently, you would subscribe through iTunes or use an RRS feeder for updates). Brooks Jensen’s voice is slightly baritone, but you’d only know that if you’ve heard his voice through a decent set of speakers or headphones. I find using his voice is a good way to judge the quality of speakers. Through the old Toshiba P20, Jensen’s voice loses the bass response, so his voice sounds leaner and a bit higher pitched than normal. Through the Acer, Jensen’s voice regains some of the bass, but sounds, for lack of a better term, kinda “honky” through the Acer’s built-in speakers. There’s a definite sense muffling, or something getting in the way between your ears and Jensen’s voice. The only way to really hear Jensen’s voice properly is to bypass the built-in speakers (and/or the headphone jack output on the Acer) and listen through a good external sound system, whether it be speaker or headphone based. Using the Headroom Portable Micro Amp connected to the Acer via the USB DAC and output through the Sennheiser HD 650 headphones gave me back the quality missing from the Acer’s speakers. It also allowed me to hear deeper into the recording than I really needed to, e.g. recording flaws, or possibly compression artifacts from the MP3 process. Compared to using the Headroom Micro Amp, listening through the Acer’s headphone output gives me electronic glaze and dirty high frequency extension. Sss’s become more pronounced and hissy and is of the quality to give one headaches after a short listening session. However, as much as I trash the Acer’s sound system, let me point out that pretty much every other notebook computer on the market offers crap sound quality too. So, do your ears a favour, bypass the internal speakers and headphone jack, and get yourself a quality USB DAC and head amp to feed a good set of powered external speakers or headphones.
Other irks: while there is a small four-pin Firewire connection available, there is no support for Firewire 800, which is unfortunate, as I’d love to be able to enjoy the fast transfer times available with the UDMA Lexar and Sandisk readers and Firewire 800 capable external hard drives. Similarly, while the Acer does provide a DVI (and VGA) connection for an external monitor, it does not support dual-link DVI, which means not being able to run my 30-inch LCD with it, like I could if I bought a MacBook Pro. However, this is not a deal breaker and the video card does support an external monitor with 1920x1200 resolution, and that’s hardly having to slum it. My last irk is common to most notebook manufacturers today: no physical backup or OS discs are provided. The old Toshiba came with a set of DVD discs to allow me to easily reinstall the OS and original applications that came bundled with the notebook. The Acer does not, although it does have a utility to burn a set of installation discs, which is what I did shortly after receiving the unit. Once the Acer has been fully configured the way I want it then I can use the same utility to burn an image for backup purposes. Performance Conclusion |
|
Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
|
 |
|
As the Acer was the first to arrive, this was the computer that introduced me to Windows Vista. There was a short period getting used to Vista, as it initially seemed quite different cosmetically, but after a few minutes, I could see that all the basic components are the same as they are in XP. In the same way that XP is slicker and glossier to look at than Windows 2000, the same goes for Vista and XP.
