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Acer Aspire Timeline 3810TZ review

in Laptops

Verdict

Perfoming an almost perfect balancing act, the Aspire 3810TZ is a preternaturally accomplished ultraportable at a bargain price.

Review Date: 8 Mar 2010

Reviewed By: Sasha Muller

Price when reviewed: £404 (£475 inc VAT)

Overall Rating
5 stars out of 6

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
6 stars out of 6

Performance
4 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

Details
Part Code LX.PE602.045
Review Date 8 Mar 2010
Price ex VAT £404
Price inc VAT £475
Overall rating 5 stars out of 6
Features & Design 5 stars out of 6
Value for Money 6 stars out of 6
Performance 4 stars out of 6
Warranty
Warranty 1yr collect and return
Physical specifications
Dimensions 322 x 228 x 29mm (WDH)
Weight 1.600kg
Travelling weight 2.0kg
Processor and memory
Processor Intel Pentium SU4100
Motherboard chipset Intel GS45
RAM capacity 4.00GB
Memory type DDR3
SODIMM sockets free 0
SODIMM sockets total 2
Screen and video
Screen size 13.3in
Resolution screen horizontal 1,366
Resolution screen vertical 768
Resolution 1366 x 768
Graphics chipset Intel GMA 4500M
Graphics card RAM 64MB
VGA (D-SUB) outputs 1
HDMI outputs 1
S-Video outputs 0
DVI-I outputs 0
DVI-D outputs 0
DisplayPort outputs 0
Drives
Capacity 250GB
Hard disk usable capacity 233GB
Spindle speed 5,400RPM
Internal disk interface SATA/300
Hard disk Seagate ST9250315AS
Optical disc technology n/a
Optical drive None
Battery capacity 5,600mAh
Replacement battery price inc VAT £0
Networking
Wired adapter speed 1,000Mbits/sec
802.11a support no
802.11b support yes
802.11g support yes
802.11 draft-n support yes
Integrated 3G adapter no
Bluetooth support no
Other Features
Wireless hardware on/off switch yes
Wireless key-combination switch no
Modem no
ExpressCard34 slots 0
ExpressCard54 slots 0
PC Card slots 0
USB ports (downstream) 3
PS/2 mouse port no
9-pin serial ports 0
Parallel ports 0
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports 1
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports 0
3.5mm audio jacks 2
SD card reader yes
Memory Stick reader yes
MMC (multimedia card) reader yes
Smart Media reader no
Compact Flash reader no
xD-card reader yes
Pointing device type Touchpad
Audio chipset Realtek HD Audio
Speaker location Above keyboard
Hardware volume control? no
Integrated microphone? yes
Integrated webcam? yes
Camera megapixel rating 0.3mp
TPM no
Fingerprint reader no
Smartcard reader no
Carry case no
Operating system and software
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
OS family Windows 7
Recovery method Recovery partition, burn own recovery discs
Battery and performance tests
Battery life, light use 8hr 44min
Battery life, heavy use 4hr 9min
Overall application benchmark score 0.67
Office application benchmark score 0.68
2D graphics application benchmark score 0.78
Encoding application benchmark score 0.60
Multitasking application benchmark score 0.61
3D performance (crysis) low settings 5fps
3D performance setting Low
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User comments

Swallowed a dictionary

lol - preternaturally.
How long have you been waiting to use that work?

By Steve_Adey on 9 Mar 2010

Doh!

I meant word!

By Steve_Adey on 9 Mar 2010

He's lucky...

I'm still looking for a decent excuse to use chthonic or cyclopean. Blame Lovecraft.

By nichomach0 on 9 Mar 2010

An opportunity missed...

... to use Paradigm Shift.

(poem © 2010)

By JohnGray7581 on 9 Mar 2010

wrong thread

If you hop over to the iPad thread, you could describe it as a cyclopean iPhone.

By Steve_Adey on 9 Mar 2010

So excited by preternatural

that I forgot to point out that 'complimented' should have been 'complemented' in the second-to-last paragraph.
A star falls from heaven...

By JohnGray7581 on 9 Mar 2010

An opportunity missed...

... to use Paradigm Shift.

(poem © 2010)

By JohnGray7581 on 9 Mar 2010

Paradigm Shift
Is that a Scottish game bird?

By stokegabriel on 10 Mar 2010

hi

this is very good i want one

By casperando on 14 Apr 2010

hi

this is very good i want one

By casperando on 14 Apr 2010

Backup

Under OS/System it states Recovery method:Recovery partition, burn own recovery discs
I thought there was no optical drive - so am I right in thinking if you want to back up your £475 laptop you first need to additionally buy a USB DVD/CD writer?
I was interested in this laptop but if the above is true I'll go for one which has the optical drive included.

By Simeon on 1 May 2010

Dodgy trackpad

Just bought one of these on the basis of the review for my wife. On the whole, its a well put together machine. Unfortunately though, our trackpad refused to work properly in the out of the box Windows 7 install... no gestures, no tap to click, and the left mouse button didnt work. On the advice of Acer tech support, I did a factory reset which made no difference, and neither did downloading the latest synaptics drivers.

Strangely though, i've just tried the ALPS driver, which lets allows both buttons to work, but no multi-touch features.

I'm now unclear whether this a hardware or software problem.

Unfortunately, I think this laptop will pass the wife's approval... will be a pain if we have to send it back.

Keith

By mckeithyb on 14 May 2010

Doh!

I meant.. "will not pass the wife's approval".

Perhaps the keyboard is dodgy as well ;-)

By mckeithyb on 14 May 2010

Comparison

Better than the Asus-ul20a then ??

By moocifer on 22 May 2010

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