Summary: 2006-01-04 07:58:34 I bought the Acer Ferrari having read a bundle of reviews online, now I own one I think it's only fair that I do the same.
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_The Looks_/
Very Pretty. VERY pretty. Unless you hate Ferrari for some reason I can't think of anything you can have against the looks. However, do you spend most of your time looking at the cover? No. You look at what's under it.
And that too is very nice. Rubberised surface that surrounds the keyboard is chunky and comortable although you would need to wash your hands every time you used it to avoid marking. The person that would do that is not me.
The Screen is a joy. It's somewhat less vivid compared to some LCDs. But I'm not going to detract from it, because 1680 x 1050 on a 15.4" screen is beautiful. It really is. The pixels are tiny. Makes you feel smug.
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_The Preinstall_/
Comes Preinstalled with whichever flavour of XP you plump for. The Hard drive is partitioned into three drives. Two of 40 Gig and one of 20 Gig. The 20 Gig is where it hides the windows iso and the recovery software.
You get a very nice Calender desktop. I got bored of it within thirty seconds and I had to go rooting around the hard drive to find the offending software and uninstall it If you don't, it comes back when you restart, everytime, thanks for that Acer.
The Ferrari Windows sounds are nice, but a novelty. NEEEEEEEOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!... bored now.
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_Playing games_/
This is why I bought the thing in the first place. As every review I read mentioned it won't do full spec on demanding games. Well that's fair enough, but not entirely true. The games I've been playing are Battlefield 2, Thief: Deadly Shadows and Black & White 2.
On Thief I couldn't get full detail in 1024 x 768 so I scaled it down to 800 x 600 and tada! full detail. The same works for Battlefield 2 aswell except it goes up to medium not full spec(but playing online in the garden is a true joy) Black & White 2 was the exception. It actually had a 1680 x 1050 resolution. If it gives you that you have to take it. And it was worth it. It was goooood.
Now, Heat. It gets hot. Very hot. I want to keep this laptop. If you buy this laptop or any laptop for that matter you probably want to do the same. It gets very hot playing hi-spec games like Battlefield 2. I've not owned it for long, but I just know that overheating is going to be the kiss of death for this laptop. So I'm going to get one of those coolers you stick your laptop on. Even though I have the 3 years warranty (mandatory me thinks) I'd rather not lose all my valuable data or have the hassle. This is how hot it is. Christmas Day I had a small child dangling her feet next to (but not blocking) the out take fan while I played battlefield 2. Within 2 minutes she recoiled in pain... ouch! that's hot. Yes it is... Yes it is.
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_Every day use_/
This system works wonderfully under windows, nice big spreadsheets and all that malarky. It stays nice and cool too. I very much like being able to turn Bluetooth and WiFi on and off, it makes me feel secure and in control. As well as supposedley saving some battery life, although that's not why I turn it off. Playing movies from the DVD is lovely (not a patch on CRT though obviously) and better than the pants LCD TV in the room at my parent's house.
Playing movies from the hard drive can judder if the hard drive is busy this is what you get for using a 5400rpm hard drive. I don't mind, turn everything else off first, then it's fine.
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_Wi-Fi_/
The antenna is behind the screen and having had a competition with a few laptops it does get much better reception (about 10-20% better)
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_Battery Life_/
When you play games on the battery don't expect it to last the journey from london to... well.. just outside London. I'm not being specific, because depending on the stress you put it under it'll last different times. I reckon if you left it on doing nothing it would last 3 or so hours. Playing movies: about the length of the movie and a fair bit after (as long as it's not a Peter Jackson movie), Playing games, about an hour and a bit. You could challenge yourself, if you really tried I'm sure you could suck up the battery in half an hour.
In short. Keep it plugged in. Use it like a portable computer when you need to, but not a PSP.
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_Weight_/
Most reviewers said 3kg was too heavy. (if you can't carry 3kg I reccomend going to the gym a little more often)
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_Conclusion_/
It takes some getting used to it's little foibles, but you forgive it for it's idiosyncracies, because it's a portable gaming laptop that costs less than £1600.
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_Addendum_/
I would reccomend checking out the reviews on the internet and reading the notebook forums to see the problems people have had with theirs from the glowing reports to the horrendous nightmares.
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