Acer’s Timeline 4810T Update
Ok. the good news. Battery life lasted until 8 pm, about 10 hours of basic work tasks in balanced mode. From a drained battery to fully charged while still working took about 3.5 hours.
I’ve been able to get my Samsung Instinct to work as my Mobile Broadband modem on Sprint’s All Voice / Data Plan with this laptop. Yea! No need to waste an additional $60 / month for a 3G data connection that I’m already technically paying with my current all data plan.
The bad news, I’ve experienced a few CPU at 100% incidences where I had to power down and restart. This apparently has been a known issue with Acer and reported on support forums. Since then, I’ve gone onto Acer’s support site and downloaded the newest Bios 1.2, the power management, audio, video, intel chip drivers, essentially any driver that was updated after my laptop was setup (sometime in April 2009). Yes, Acer’s been updating these drivers, some as recent as a week ago to address this issue. I’m hoping this will address the random CPU utilization freeze ups. I’ll let you know tomorrow when I start loading MS office and all my real world aps.
I found a program called PC-Decraptifier 2.0 that’s a freeware ap that will go thru and remove most of the crapware that’s installed on a new PC. This helped save time uninstalling MS works, MS Office, a few dozen trial games and aps. Although I had to run it several times due to uninstall conflicts, it did it’s job.
I also like using Revo Uninstaller to make sure it removes everything out of the registery files and hidden temp folders. It is also Free.
The only other issue I’ve had is burning my recovery and driver backups DVD’s using Acer’s Restore/Recovery Program, it keeps creating an error and I can’t create any master recovery disks. I’ll have to contact Acer to figure out another solution. I did test the burner and it appears to be able to burn both DVD’s and CDs without issues, so I’m guessing it has to be software specific or an issue with the recovery data that’s stored on a hidden partition.
Temperature has increased to noticeably warm with increase usage, but not anywhere near burn my skin hot. But I do notice it once in a while.
Still overall, I’m impressed, just want to make sure it doesn’t keep freezing up and also, with the major applications installed want to make sure the CPU can handle the work load without too much effort.
On a side note, the card reader can read SDHC format. I wasn’t sure since I only could find mentioned was SD reader, but nothing for High Capacity.
Now to hunt for the ideal case. Hoping to find perhaps an office legal size binder that this could slip in to. Something to maintain it’s thin appearance that can be easily carried to a meeting while still protecting it. I thought I saw a picture of a timeline in a padded binder on one of the review sites. Just can’t remember where.
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I am deciding between the new ASUS and the ACER timeline. Like you I am curious to know how the less powerful Timeline configuration handles Excel and Word and other mid-level office functionality. I occasionally do work on moderate size excel files and work on powerpoint presentations; and I have to flip back and forth between the two applications. For a long-time this requirement has kept me leashed to computers that are more powerful than I need on most days. Thanks for the informative posts.
Hi, Technurse. Did you ever figure out the erecovery DVD burning issue? I’m getting the same thing.
No, not yet. If I figure out a solution, I’ll post it. I’m probably going to just burn a drive image of my current setup that includes all my settings and installed software.
Yeah, if you find a way to burn recovery for this unit please let me know… I accidentally lost the partition when install linux and I am now stuck.
Oh, that’s not good as the recovery disks I believe rely on that partition. Acer did finally contact me, apparently there’s a known bug with eRecovery software on 64 bit systems. They sent me the link for the new updated version which should resolve the issue.
The link seems to of expired since I downloaded the fix. You can http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/portal20.cfm?recordid=1357&formid=3390&website=AcerPanAm.com&siteid=7117&words=all&keywords=&areaid=2” rel=”nofollow”>try the link anyway, it may work for you. If not, go to Acer Support and open a help ticket. They should respond within 24 hrs with the appropriate link. Make sure you register your computer as well if you haven’t already. They will require this.
If you can’t create them, Acer does have a way that you can purchase a copy of the recovery disks: Purchase Recovery Disks
Hey Nurse, Im in serious trouble my acer timeline 4810T 32bit has been freezin like crazy. What is up with that? I dont know what to do about it. I went to the acer service center and they tech guy said its the Operating system. lets just install you an antivirus and lets remove it! turns out it didn’t help at all! I had already replaced my first unit because of some issue with the spacebar. Anyway. Is there a cure for this freezing already?!?! I emailed acer and no reply yet!
please email me!!! at aldrin_enrile@yahoo.com
Hi Aldrin,
Try to go to Acer’s online support and download the updated drivers. Based on other forum users that had similar experiences, it sounds like perhaps an update driver may be necessary. For me, I did this prior to any freezing issues, but I looked at the back of the laptop to see the manufacturer date, on a label, then based on that date, I installed the drivers that came out after that date. For me, It was the audio, bios, cpu chip if I remember correctly.
Here’s the link: http://www.acer.com/worldwide/support/download.htm
Hope this helps.
Hi. I have purchased timeline 4810T too and it keeps hanging up. i tried updating bios to 1.3 and the audio and chipset driver like u said but it still hanged up this morning. is there a possibility that maybe core 2 solo is too much for windows vista? is updating to windows 7 will be of any solution to the problem? thank you.
Hi Ericson,
I’m not sure, If you are having issues with Vista, I doubt Win 7 will resolve it since there’s very minimal changes between these versions other than some bells and whistles. But it could be the single core. I’m running the dual core version and haven’t had any issues. You may want to add the vista side bar aps that tracks CPU usage that may help trend when it hangs. Going to the task manager may also show you what process / task is driving up the CPU usage if indeed it’s the CPU. This may at least point you to a culprit that may resolve by uninstalling or updating their drivers.
can i get my laptop changed into dualcore?
I doubt it. I would definitely try contacting Acer support. If it truly was a single processor issue, many many more complaints would of been heard. The only other thing I can think of is looking at your tasks and see which ones seem to eat up the resources and memory. I would then disable those and see if you still have freezing issues.
When trying to work on a 5mb word document the CPU kept reaching 100% and the system would lock up. This was happening all the time. After reading a few blogs it was suggested that I should update the Bios however the BIOS files supplied on the ACER website were not for the 4810T. I obtained the latest BIOS from the techguys and so far so good:-
http://support.thetechguys.com/layout.aspx?ID={628d131e-5d20-465e-b58f-1645ec8f30a4}&CatID={e8bc7711-5ae2-4a71-b324-f2f1ee420131}
Hope this helps