Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4274 15.6-Inch Laptop – 8+ Hours Battery Life
Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4274 15.6-Inch Laptop - 8+ Hours Battery Life
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 List Price: $599.99 Sale Price: $459.00 Availability: unspecified 
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Product Description
With the Aspire Timeline series, Acer has taken a big, if not the biggest step forward in the concept of mobility, an area where finding the perfect equilibrium between light weight and autonomy has always been the number one priority. The Aspire Timeline series was conceived around the duration of the battery and introduces an entirely new way to render the system lighter, more efficient and less harmful to the environment. From now on you can turn on your Aspire Timeline in the morning and turn it off in the evening without ever having to charge it! Light as your time can be!
Details
- 1.3 GHz Intel Pentium SU2700 Processor
- 3072MB DDR3 1066MHz RAM
- 320 GB SATA Hard Drive, 8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive
- Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1), Over 8 Hours of Battery Life (6-Cell 5600 mAh)
- 15.6" HD CineCrystal LED-backlit Display, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
Rating
This is my first laptop and I love it. The screen is beautiful, the battery life is great and it has been easy to customize setting. amazons price would be hard to beat; I looked a lot and this is a great price! The only downside I have found is when I bought it there was a offer for a free upgrade to windows 7 and after it arrived I’m having problems finding info on it. Overall still a great buy!
Rating
This is a great laptop. I read reviews and info about this for more than a month before laying down the cash for it. I’ve been extremely happy with it. It’s thin and sexy. It’s light (especially for a 15 inch laptop). It’s extremely cool. The performance is good but not amazing. I mostly work with music editing and notation software and this laptop has handled all them fine. I play games online with it and I have yet to find a game that it can’t handle (it should be noted I only play games from the browser and have no idea how a real computer game would do, but I know since this doesn’t have a graphics card it probably wouldn’t do well with 3d graphics, but I dont really know.) For everyday computing this computer has all the power you need. The 15 inch model is great too. The keyboard is full sized (which was somewhat of an adjustment after using cramped keyboards for so long) and the number pad is extremely helpful (at least to me).
The battery life is why you buy this computer. All day computing is no lie. I used to own a Dell and a Toshiba which got about 3 hours battery life at best, and then up to 10 minutes as they got old. It’s been hard to break the habit of packing my power adapter when I leave but I’ve never needed it. I can go to school all day, take my computer to class, work in the library or cafeteria and never need to worry about running out of juice. If I crank it up to “High Performance” I can get a solid 5 to 6 hours of battery, on “Power Saver” I get an easy 8 and a half and if I turn off the WiFi I can get a little more then 10 hours. I’ve never, never, never, run it down completely during normal use.
Overall a great computer at a great price. Everything you need with an unbelievable battery life. Free yourself from the wall socket and buy this computer!
Rating
I have used several laptops (work and personal), including the hyped ThinkPad T61, T500, T400.
But the Acer Timline series laptops have really surprised me in terms of build quality, price, form factor, and battery life.
If these are the things you care most, the Timeline is for you!
My T400 never got passed 4hrs at the lowest CPU setting and LCD brightness. The Timeline consistently gives me over 5hrs (not the 8hrs+ as they claimed though) using Windows XP.
Windows XP installation (over the default Vista Premium) was a straightforward task, as Acer website provides XP drivers so you don’t have to search anywhere. I tried both the 15.6″ and the 14″ version and personally I’d like the 14″ for its screen size, though both share the same 1″ thin dimension and similar battery life. The 15.6″ keyboard comes with a numeric keypad.
For those people who complained about CPU spiked at 100% at random or eject button locked up the laptop, I had the same problems. After I updated it with the latest Intel graphics driver and Acer BIOS, all the problems went away!
I am usually picky about what I use, but I have to give Acer a thumb up for such a great job. After all, it only costs $549!
Can’t say the same for Lenovo ThinkPad which costs more, thicker (>1.2″), and only average battery life.
What’s the point of having wireless internet if you must plug in your power regularly? With the Timeline, I can truly roam most of my day without fear of running out of power.
My only complain about the 14″ version: if the mouse pad could move to the left about 1″, that would be perfect. As I type, my right palm occasionally touches the mouse pad that causes the mouse cursor to move. If Acer did this on the 15.6″ version, why not on the 14″?
Rating
I couldn’t be happier. A beautiful machine, well configured, and truly amazing battery life. I love the light weight and thinness. Gorgeous screen and plenty of power for my needs. I installed Windows 7 RC on it and the Acer Timeline runs it flawlessly. Make sure you go to the Acer site and sign up to receive your FREE Windows 7 upgrade when it releases in October. Great Laptop!!! … for a remarkable price. Teriffic value.
Rating
The performance on this laptop could be better but for basic web surfing and running word processors this laptop works just fine. Free Windows 7 upgrade is what makes this an even better deal! Although this is not as light as the smaller display models of this laptop, it is light enough for the giant, beautiful, bright, and sharp LED display! The laptop looks very sleek and stylish. With 3gb of ram that is plenty for all your multitask needs! I doubt that the processor or graphics accelerator can handle any heavy gaming though. So just keep that in mind if gaming is essential for your purchase. Netbooks are gaining a lot of popularity right now but the largest netbook display I have seen is 10.1″ or so. For me the larger display was more important to me and I also love the full size keyboard of the Acer Aspire Timeline. It does take a bit legwork right out of the box though. The system comes installed with Vista SP1. So there are a tremendous amount of Windows system updates. In addition, there are also a handful of drivers and bios update for this system from Acer. Once you get all those completed, which could easily take up several hours, you should be good to go with a smooth running system!
Rating
OK!!!! Lets start!
First let me tell you what I had before…..
a Gateway P-6860FX
Specs:
C2D 1.83GHz CPU
4GB RAM 667MHz DDR2
GeForce 8800M GTS GPU
17″ 1440 x 900 LCD
320GB HDD
Definitely a gaming laptop. And now I switch to the Acer Timeline.
Specs:
Pentium 1.3GHZ (single core) CPU
3GB RAM 1066MHz DDR3
Intel GMA 4500MHD GPU
15.6″ 1366 x 768 LCD (LED backlit)
320GB HDD
Now this is an “extreme” change for me. Going from Performance to Portability. Some people might think, what the f**k are you doing? You can’t play games anymore. NO GTA4, Grid, Crysis, Far Cry 2, NO NOTHING. But guess what? I’m not complaining. This “little” laptop is pretty damn awesome! Well It is a little underpowered but only if you try to look for it.
Of course I’m basing my experience with this “lappy” on Windows 7 RTM. It comes installed with vista and bloatware. So just make sure you get rid of that crap and you’ll be happy.
Here are my thoughts on performance….
Well actually, first let me tell you what programs I was able to run smoothly and define what “smooth” meant for each.
iTunes: Yes iTunes. And I think this is Apple’s fault. My P-6860FX was laggy with iTunes. Now running an underpowered laptop makes things better? It weirdly true.
Photoshop CS4: It’s not fast, but it is usable. I works for most of your photo editing needs.
Ummm. Actually that’s all I got to show off right now. I’ve only had it for a day or so.
Oh! lets talk about battery life!
As you know they never real last as long as the company says. Unless you dim it all the way down, no wireless, power saving mode, etc. But I was able to get about 6 and a half hours with Wifi on. So not to shabby.
Keyboard!!!!
It has a chicklet style keyboard. Very responsive, good spacing and a NUM pad!!!! How I love NUM pads!!! This keyboard is was very easy to get used to.
Touchpad:
It’s has multitouch capabilities. I love the pinch zoom for photos. Works pretty well. But at times it does get a little glitchy.
Speakers:
There small and not that loud. They don’t really give you a theatrical bass pounding feel. But they are very “accurate” sounding.
Design:
All you have to do is look at the picture. It’s very sleek and SEXY. I love takin’ this around with me. And with ease weighing around 5 pounds.
OVERALL:
This laptop is totally awesome!
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO:
BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating
Unless you play very demanding 3D games, the Acer AS5810(15.6″), AS4810(14.4″) or AS3810 (13.7″) is the one for everyone.
- Thin and light, 5.4 to 3.5 lb, < 1", nothing else I know of is like this.
- Cool, very thoughtfully designed to avoid heat buildup. Metal top, lots of spaces between keys. Bottom is never warm, palm rest area is absolutely cold, incredible.
- Quiet, as it is so cool, the fan never speeds up to make noticeable noise.
- LED backlight, should last forever and save battery.
- 8-hour battery life, never need to carry the AC adapter for the day. Never worry about empty battery, just concentrate on your work.
- Metal lid, looks VERY VERY good. This thing looks better and slimmer than MacAir, no kidding.
- Number keys included.
- Only $[...], even cheaper than other thick, heavy, hot and noisy craps.
My son, senior high, carries it in his backpack together with many thick books. This is not a demanding 3D gaming machine, exactly a good thing for a student. If you want to save $[...], then get the Dell i1545, just heavier, thicker and shorter battery life, but a real dual core CPU, unbelievable deal.
The only stupid thing: I’ve seen crap ware installed in new PCs before, but Acer did it to the extreme on this laptop, like 100 trial games etc.
It took me a whole day to uninstall them. Because no Vista CD included, so I could not just do a clean installation. Then I used Ghost to make a full back up for the partition 2, about 5 GB. No need to back up the partition 1, about 10 GB, it is the factory restore area and you can use Acer’s utility to burn them to DVD disks. Next time when a restoration is need, I can just restore the ghost and no need to uninstall the numerous crap ware again.
Rating
I read some reviews of people who where disappointed in the performance of this laptop. I have had mine for two weeks now and I think it is spectacular. The screen is beautiful and bright. Battery life is not 8+ hrs but is still amazing compared to any other laptop I have owned. The performance is very respectable for the price. Plenty of RAM and a big hard drive. The built in DVD-RW is great as well in a laptop this thin. The processor could be faster but for $525 it is everything I expected. This is a great looking laptop and the number pad on the 15.6 version is wonderful for us business people. My roomate has a 15″ macbook pro and even he thinks the timeline is a very good looking machine. I expect it will preform even better when I install the free windows 7 upgrade that is included. I wanted something for my everyday computer tasks; email, photo downloading from my camera, internet browsing, itunes and media downloading/watching. It has done all of these amazingly well. I also have a monster desktop cpu with a quad-core processor, 1gb video card, 8gb of ram, 120 gb 10,000rpm raptor and a 1 tb WD black sata hard drive, so I also know what fast computing is all about. I did not buy a $525 laptop to compete with my desktop. I bought it for portability and form and battery life. It has met every expectation this user has.
Rating
I love this laptop, i’me happy that I read so many reviews before picking one out.
PROS:
-great screen quality
-good keyboard
-battery life
-runs smooth
-strong casing
-most of the touch motions go over rather well, feels natural
CONS:
-keyboard has no light source, so typing in a dark room can be a problem
-keys are very easily smudged
-trialware is puked all over the laptop
-CD tray feels fragile
-uninformative manual,if you can call it that
Most of the cons are neglible, as long as your not careless with the CD tray.
Rating
The emphasis of this computer (Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4274) is lightweight and lasting power (8+ hours from a single charge), so if your requirement is not heavy gaming or number-crunching, I consider it quite suitable for Internet tasks such as browsing, blogging, emailing, Skyping, YouTubing, etc. and running productivity applications such as OpenOffice and Microsoft Office. Although the computer is available in three different sizes, I like the 15.6 inch model most because it has the largest screen and is still quite light to carry around.
Because the chassis is very thin, the optical disc eject button has been moved to a place just above the numeric keypad (yes, this wide screen notebook has a dedicated number keys area), so when you need to insert or eject a disc, you won’t have to hunt for that eject button with your finger. The disc tray, as other reviewers pointed out, does feel a kind of flimsy; you should support it with your fingers when you are inserting a disc.
The keys on the keyboard are of the Chiclet style, like those on Apple MacBooks. The key surface is completely flat, as opposed to a regular keyboard that has a concave surface. I don’t know if this has any effect on typing. It just looks different. The key surface is not matt finish, so if your fingers are oily, the keyboard would look soiled.
The trackpad is very sensitive, so if you do not need to use it, you can press the trackpad on/off toggle swtich on the upper right of it to turn it off. For reasons of speed and efficiency, whenever possible, I try to use an USB mouse connected to the computer, rather than attempt to use the trackpad on any notebook computer. The trackpad will wear out quickly if constantly used, and if you plan to sell the computer at some point in the future, a worn trackpad will drastically diminish the value and desirability of the computer.
Acer probably wanted to save as much power as possible, as there are no indicator lights for Caps Lock, Number Lock, or Scroll Lock. The hard disk access light is a very tiny blue LED; you’d have to look at it carefully to see its activity.
The left and right speakers are located right above the keyboard area. They are also small but can generate pretty loud sounds. When I was unpacking this new computer, at first I did not notice that there was a thin, transparent film protecting the area covering the speakers and the four indicator lights. This film significantly muffles the volume of sound if you do not remove it, so if you find the speakers not loud enough, that would most likely to be the cause.
The computer is shipped with Windows Vista, but you can order a free Windows 7 upgrade from Acer ([...]), as long as you do it before its January 31, 2010 deadline. I upgraded this computer to Windows 7 Ultimate after first making restore and drivers discs, in case I want to revert back to Vista at some point in the future:) The restore discs require 2 DVDs and the drivers and apps disc requires one. The process is very time-consuming; making these three discs took almost two hours! The Windows 7 install went without any problem; it was able to detect all hardware and install all drivers! If you don’t have a lot of time, you may want to consider changing over to Windows 7 without first making a backup of Windows Vista. But if there is a possibility that you may return the computer to where you bought it, then it is probably better to backup, so you can restore it to factory OS.
After the Windows 7 upgrade, the Timeline runs extremely smoothly without any problem. This model has the Intel Pentium SU2700 1.3 Ghz CPU, 3 Gb of DDR3 memory, and 320 Gb of hard disk capacity. It is so cool-running that it is nearly silent in operation.
If you don’t play much games and want a large screen notebook that you can easily carry anywhere, the Acer Aspire Timeline is an excellent choice.
With Windows 7, IMO, there is less need to switch over to Apple’s Mac for ease of use and/or security. This computer cost just 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of an Apple MacBook Pro 15, and it’s lighter.