Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ4274 15.6Inch Laptop 8+ Hours
November 14th, 2009
| Brand: | Acer | ||
| Average Rating |
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Acer AS5810TZ-4274 Notebook comes with these specs: Intel Pentium Processor SU2700, Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1, 15.6 HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit Display, Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset, 3072MB DDR3 1066MHz Memory, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, 320 GB SATA Hard Drive, 8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive, Acer Crystal Eye Webcam, 5-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader, 2nd Generation Dolby Sound Room Audio Enhancement, 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi CERTIFIED, 4 – USB 2.0 Ports, 1 – HDMI Port, Convenience Buttons- Multi-gesture Touchpad, Acer PowerSmart Technology, Acer Backup Manager, Touchpad-lock, 6-cell Li-ion Battery (5600 mAh), 8+ hours battery life, 5.3 lbs. | 2.4 kg (system unit only), Wireless Setup Card, Registration/ Limited Warranty Card, McAfee Internet Security Suite (60-day insert) more info
Posted in Science and Technoloty | 
Tags: 15.6Inch, Acer, AS5810TZ-4274, AS5810TZ4274, Aspire, Hours, Laptop, Timeline
My first laptop
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
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.
Amazing machine for the money
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought the Acer Timeline because I just got rid of my MacBook with the intention of buying a MacBook Air. I stumbled across the Timeline and decided that with the cost (roughly 1/3 the price), it would be worth it to try the Timeline. It has turned out to be an awesome machine. I miss MacOSX, but Windows Vista works pretty well. The only drawback is the processor speed. However, the processor itself is a bonus. It is a low-energy processor, so I’m able to use this machine for a long time on a single charge (I’ve gone up to 9 hours while running FireFox, and up to 8 hours while running Word and MediaPlayer at the same time). So in my opinion, the slower processor is well worth it.
Excellent laptop, but amazon sucks!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is an excellent laptop. It has plenty of ram, large enough screen, and more then enough hard drive space. The horsepower is there. The battery life is good, but I have yet to get 8hours out of it. I suspect that’s mostly do to my power settings and that I did not charge it up when I first got it.
The touch pad on this laptop is offset to the left of center, which is a bit strange and annoying. You will get used to it, but I would suggest you use a laptop mouse. The keyboard has an unneeded num keypad, but many people seem to like it. If that really bothers you to much though then get the 14″. I personally think its annoying as it does not make all the keys on the keyboard where they should be. The enter key, for example, should be the last key on the right.
Windows vista is a little sluggish on this laptop, but that’s not the laptop as it has plenty of ram and a pretty fast hard drive. I suspect windows 7 will be much faster. The 3 gigs installed is plenty, but why acer did not just install two 2 gig models and bump it up to a full 4 gigs beats me.
Another problem with vista is acer only installed the 32bit version not the 64bit. The 64bit version would of been much better. The cpu on this laptop is only solo core, but it does have 64bit instructions.
I do notice that this laptop gets dirty easy. I have seen finger prints on the keyboard and some gummy dirty stuff the back of the lcd. I suspect the stuff on the back of the lcd is because its metal not plastic. It could be residual dirt left over from packaging, shipping, etc. Nonetheless, it does get dirty easy. The keyboard gets dirty the most easy of all. Just simple typing, even if your hands are clean, will leave finger prints and marks. Therefore, I would keep a microfiber dust cloth handy for cleaning.
Please do remember people, that this is not the best laptop for gaming. If you want a gaming laptop get an alienware laptop or one of the higher end dells. This laptop is for business use or school use and it performs extremely well in that category.
As for Amazon now, I am really, really mad at amazon!!!!!!!!!! I am just 45 miles from amazon in Seattle and they are taking 13-20 days to ship. That just makes no sense. What did I pay shipping for? Really!! So, in other words, if you do decide to buy this laptop do not buy it from Amazon. Do a search on google products because you’ll find a more places then just amazon that have this laptop for the same price.
Amazon Suck.
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I try to return the product a couple time online and talk to Amazon agent for an authorization number to send it back. They sey they will email me for the authorization number. It never came. It had passed the return date for me to retur. Amazon sell it but I want to return it, they look away. I will not buy product from Amazon again.
Why Windows, Why All the Bloatware, and Why is the 14-Inch $100 More?
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Why does the 14-inch screen version Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810TZ-4696 14-Inch Laptop – 8+ Hours Battery Life cost $100 MORE? Why must they/we give Microsoft its customary pound of flesh for its usual awful operating system, and why does this box apparently come all loaded down with extraneous bloatware nobody wants? It seems like such a nobrainer to offer a version of this machine running Ubuntu, preloaded with Firefox, Open Office and Gimp (for example). Charge LESS for a smaller screen, and also deduct from the cost whatever amount is tithed to Microsoft for its wretched Windows OS.
dead hard drive after 2 months
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
started getting SMART warnings at startup. acer support site is different from their main website. 800 number is run by voice recognition software. its hard to make it recognize an 11 digit serial number. when i finally got past the pre-recorded messages i was put on hold for at least 30 min. acer would not pay for shipping of the product even though it was under warranty. decided to fix the problem myself because it is cheaper to replace the hard drive than it is to ship the laptop to acer repair center in texas.
the western digital hard drive used on this model has a high rate of failure. it is one of the cheap refurbished items you could buy in bulk at discount computer stores like fry’s electronics. model number is WD3200BEVT-22ZCTO for anyone who is curious.
the laptop itself is good for the price. if only it lasted more than a year before something breaks. the keys are a bit flimsy but everything about this laptop is cheap anyways.
Excellent, Lightweight, And A Good Value!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
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 left 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.
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 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.
Link to Windows 7 Upgrade offer
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Here is the link to the Windows 7 Upgrade offer on Acer’s website. You have to have purchased the system between June 2009 and January 2010, as I recall. The registration process is a bit tedious. Right now, it says you have until January 2010 to request the upgrade, and it will be shipped on a first come first served basis. I’ve had the computer for about a month. I like though I’m not getting anywhere near the 8 hours battery life advertised. Perhaps I don’t have all the power saving features deployed. I haven’t changed any settings since I took it out of the box. The screen is great and I don’t find the mouse buttons hard to operate (which was a complaint of many). One of the plastic caps covering the hinge on the left side popped off because I was probably trying to open the screen too far, but it didn’t give me the best feeling about long-term durability. We’ll see–I’ve had nothing but IBM thinkpads for years and last year bought a Lenovo netbook.
http://www.acer.com/windows7upgrade/
Acer Timeline
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
While the ACER Aspire Timeline 5810TZ-4274 appears to be a good machine, you should know that it is almost impossible to contact support and completely impossible to get any information from them. For example, this morning I spent over 30 minutes on the telephone with their computer just trying to get it to recognize the serial number so I could get some help. I gave up — apparently that’s their goal! Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4274 15.6-Inch Laptop – 8+ Hours Battery Life
Stay away unless you can solve your own problems with the inadequate documentation they provide!!!Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4274 15.6-Inch Laptop – 8+ Hours Battery Life
UPDATE: It is absolutely impossible to get any meaningful answer from ACER Tech (non) support.
Can’t find the status on the Windows 7 upgrade they promised. Just getting through to tech support is a herculean effort — but even if you do get through they NEVER have any answers.
If your expectations are reasonable this laptop is perfect!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
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.
Could be better
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
When I first got this product in the mail, it was not a good experience. When I plugged it up I got nothing on the screen. I called technical support and they couldn’t help me, so I had to send it to TX for repair. (I live in MI) This is not something that you want to do when you have just spent over $500. However I didn’t have to pay for shipping and the waiting period wasn’t too bad, (10 days) plus you could track your package. I do love the fact that it runs on the battery for 8+ hours, but when I do run it on the battery there are a lot of freezes. When you run it on AC it performs wonderfully. The pointer touchpad is extremely sensitive I assume because it is a gesture touchpad. So until you get used to the sensitivity, that can be annoying. But now that I have had it for almost a month I love it. It is very thin and lightweight and that is a big plus for me because I have arthritis and it is easy to carry. If it hadn’t been for the technical problems from the start, I would rate this product a 71/2. Even though that does happen, I didn’t need it to happen to me so I give this product a 5.
Good computer, some weird quirks
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Amazon provided this computer in their usual quick fashion. It has some excellent features and some slightly irritating ones. I have been using it about a month now on a daily basis.
First, the good news. It does have excellent battery life. With the wireless on and letting its very good power management profile do its thing, it will last about 3.5 hours. Next, it has a full numeric keypad in addition to the normal keyboard–very nice. Next, nice bright screen and good sized keys. I also like the front light that is orange while on AC and charging and blue when fully charged. The lit power button is also nice. Another nice feature is a top mount DVD eject button. The unit is very light and thin. Also, it does run nice and cool and the fan is very quiet. I haven’t tried the built-in webcam and microphone, so I can’t comment on the quality.
Now, the somewhat bad new. No spacer betwen the keyboard and numeric keypad, which results in some accidental wrong keystrokes. Also, the keys have a very sloppy feel to them. Other quirks are: no caps lock indicator or num lock indicator that I have been able to find. Also, the WLAN off/on switch is the indicator, which is very unintuitive. The touchpad is centered on the keyboard, making it about 3 in left of center on the computer due to the numeric keypad–sort of strange. But there is a touchpad deactivation switch which can be handy at times. The headphone jack is in a good location, but is black, which makes it a search. The card slot is also in a strange location at the very center up front below the charge light.
Overall, a good computer and a good deal at Amazon’s price.
Flashback to 1995 Speeds
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I gave it a shot…but if you want to run more than one program or even two explorer windows at once, this laptop will not perform the job. It was horrible and there is zero customer service. I returned it to Amazon for a refund. Keep shopping as this is a horrible product.
This is the laptop all others should be – light, thin, cool…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
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.
Great for everyday uses.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Like other reviewers have said, make sure you go to Acer’s website to download and install all the latest driver updates, otherwise the cpu will spike to 100% without much reasons and the fan keeps running at full speed.
Once I have done that, the laptop works very well for everyday uses – browsing the web, watching 720p encoded videos work without any issue with the KLite codec pack and Media Player Classic, Microsoft Office programs, Vista runs fine on this laptop. Acer also packages quite a number of simple games on this laptop; the games are quite fun for a short while, so they are good enough to knock off some time when you are bored and trying to find something to do. I have not tried out any graphic-intense games though and I don’t expect the laptop can handle such games well.
The battery life is excellent.
The keyboard is glossy, and the key-travel and feel are not as good as Lenovo’s laptops. You may not like the keyboard if you have to type on it for extended time. Then there is the position of the touchpad – I find my left hand accidentally touches the top left corner of the touchpad when resting, and when my right hand tries the use the touch pad, the on-screen cursor won’t move or some gesture actions get triggered.
All in all, the laptop is sleek and not heavy, and feels sturdy. It definitely excels in the everyday tasks. The keyboard and touchpad can be improved.