Acer Aspire 2001lci

[zivan56]

The Acer Aspire 2001lci is a Centrino based laptop (AKA Intel Pentium M processor and Intel Pro/2100 Wireless card). The back of the screen is covered by some sort of metal cover (dont know what its made of, but during the winter it gets really cold), so its not your average plastic laptop case.

Unlike most laptops, this one has lots of leds that display all sorts of information. For example, the E-mail button flashes orange when you get new messages in your inbox. Likewise, there are bright blue LED's that tell you information about caps/scroll/numlock etc. There are also two large LED's that tell you if wireless and bluetooth are enabled. The touchpad is pretty common, and has a 4 way button in the middle for scrolling.

The ports in the back provide 3 usb 2.0, 1 s-video out, 1 vga out, 1 56.6k port, 1 ethernet port and 1 firewire 400 out.

Furthermore, there are LED's for standby/hd access/battery charging/charged/draining. Note: There is also a built in card reader for different memory formats right under these, along with a built in microphone, microphone jack, and headset jack.

There is also a status LCD beside these. Unfortunately, it cannot be used to display anything other than whats playing in the Arcade program and what time it is.

The keyboard itself is perfectly positioned if you put the laptop on your lap. However, if you use it on a desk it can get quite uncomfortable to type on if the desk is not low.

This laptop comes with 512Mb (2x256Mb Nanya) of RAM and a 40Gb Toshiba HD. The CD drive is a CDRW/DVD combo with 24x max read/write and 16x DVD read speed. It has an Intel Pentium M 1400Mhz processor with a 400Mhz FSB and 1Mb L2 cache. It has a 15.4" Widescreen display which fits widescreen movies perfectly at its native resolution (1280x800, WXGA). The video chip inside this laptop is an ATI Radeon 9200 with 64Mb of dedicated DDR RAM. Surprisingly, this is nothing like the desktop 9200 cards, as you can actually play most new games (non-FPS) at the laptops native resolution. The sound is a standard AC97 codec (the lan chip is also a very common realtek 8139), which actually makes the laptop compatible with most operating systems (Tested with Linux, BeOS, and few others). The Intel 855 chipset inside uses the ICH4M, which provides 6 USB 2.0 (3 provided in laptop, 1 in use by card reader thats built in).

The most noticable things when you run on batteries is the fact that the CPU frequency changes every second depending on how much power you need, that means if you are playing a game it goes to a full 1400Mhz and if you are browsing the web it goes the 300Mhz. When running at full speed, this processor outperforms my Pentium 4 2Ghz in most benchmarks except the memory ones (this is due to dual channel memory support of the Intel 865 chipset in my desktop computer),

In terms of software, you get Windows XP Home edition. In terms of custom software, you the Windows based Acer Arcade (which is access through the arcade button). This program is basically like Windows XP Media center edition. However, if you press the Arcade button when the power is off, it boots a special version of Linux which runs the same software in less than 10 secs. The BIOS is actually an EFI bios made by INSYDE, which has drivers inside of the bios. However, they arent loaded unless you have an EFI compliant system (Linux 2.6 or Win XP), so that means the WLAN LED and Bluetooth LED wont work without one of these OS's. You also get Norton Antivirus 2004 full edition with this laptop.

Pros:

4 hours of battery life

Pentium M (and 855 Chipset) compared to Pentium 4 M

Nice looking/stylish

Lots of LED's :D

Good for non-FPS games

Good video card considering its a laptop

Cons:

Keyboard in bad position for desktop use and takes time to get used to.

EFI bios is annoying with any other OS's.

Price: $1800 CDN Dollars.

Hopefully this review will help some people wondering about the quality of acer laptops.

Edited May 9, 2004 by zivan56

[Ayepecks]

Wow, looks good :) I'm jealous now :( lol

[El_Hummer]

I completly agree with Zivan.

I have the 2001WLMi and I think the only differents is that I have a dvd recorder as well that is capable of:

CD-R/W

DVD-R/W

DVD-RAM

this is what Nero Info Tools says I think, but the descriptions says it's able to record DVD+R as well, maybe a miss spelling or I have to upgrade something :huh:

Another thing is the 60GB HDD quiet handy for...yeah well a lot movies :D

It just looks damn cool, not too heave for his specs and the battery life is just great...even for his specs.

The only think I don't like is: When I am writing some text, like posting in forums or messengers and I hit some key my cursor is some where else...

Jump into another window or format my hole text and then it's like sh*** wtf!?!? :omg:

Maybe I got to big hands :D Or that a side effect of not installing all drivers...

One nice thing is the size...Acer must have a deal with some backbag companies....it's to big for normal backbags...just some centimeters :wacko:

No that's the time you see that I am not living in a inch and feet country.

Maybe tha the result if you let inch people design such ja nice pice of hardware ;)

But well this is to much off topic because we talkin' about the laptop itself not some accessories (Delkin has one called Terminal, big and really expensive 100?)

I paid 1.646,00? and it is worth the prize, every cent.

Now I have some questions:

I read that it's 2x 256 ram, one accessible from the unterside, remove a small panel, easy to reach and remove/extend and the oterne? Under the keyboard? RIght? Have to take everything apart?

Zivan, did you allready test the card reader? I installed the drivers from the acer website and them on the cd (tested both, install/deinstall) and put a SM card in there and it won't show up as a removeable drive??

[zivan56]

To upgrade the memory, you have to take off the memory cover at the bottom and take out at least 1 module to replace with a bigger size.

I tested the card reader with SmartMedia cards, and it works perfectly. It shows up as 3 new drives in my computer.

[Adrian]

Nice laptop, my friend has one, but the thing i didn't like about it was the mouse click buttons.

[zivan56]

Nice laptop, my friend has one, but the thing i didn't like about it was the mouse click buttons.

I guess it all depends on opinion. I actually like how it needs more pressure to click; that way you wont accidentally click.

[Daniel F. Administrators]

congrats this made the front page Neowin Member reviews

[Premgenius]

nice

[Winston]

I've got the WLMI version, which has the DVD burner. hwoever i only had 40 gb, how come El_Hummer you got 60 gb? :s... anyways you also forgot to mention the sub woofer it has hhaha its mad :D... i recently got this laptop but i love it :)

Oh and i also want to list some other cons

cons:

a little too heavy

the slot loading drive, i dont trust that if theres any problems

[Hummer]

I thought the pentium-m's only went down to 600mhz

[zivan56]

I thought the pentium-m's only went down to 600mhz

Nope, according to wcpuid it goes to around 300mhz when in dynamic speedstep mode.

[Adelon]

This laptop yust kicks ASS :shifty:

i bougth it about 2 months ago and i like it allot + it got good battery live (5-6 hours using office, i-net, music) probely the only real problem i have whit it is that the colors dont seem to be that clear (like when checking your mail whit hotmail its hard to tell whats new and whats old because the colors are ****** :angry: )

i heard all ppl got this problem maby got somthing to do whit the drivers you get whit the instaltion cd (maby the made new drivers?) or could yust be the hardware :rofl:

And i got to tell you the "centrino" concept yust OWNZ because of the wireless build in lan and the great pentium-M proc :devil: and ofc the amazing chipset..

i give it 9 :star: of 10 :star:

[zivan56]

Have you tried pressing Function+up arrow key a few times? this just seems to be a brightness problem for me.

[Keldyn]

I have to say, that is one sexy looking machine. Nicely reviewed too. Well done.

[zivan56]

Thnx Keldyn and everybody else for the positive comments about my review :)

I look forward to making some more.

[Marduk]

hmmm, reasonably priced and nice looking to boot! Cool stuff :) good review!

[Winston]

Nope, according to wcpuid it goes to around 300mhz when in dynamic speedstep mode.

What? my one is at 153 Mhz idle mode, well not really idle i've got Word and a few minor apps opened.

it's amazing :)

[Garrett C]

Lovely laptop, lovely review.

Two thumbs up.

[perochan]

wow, i have the exact same laptop. Im using it NOW to type this message. ^_^

lovely laptop :)

[Adelon]

Have you tried pressing Function+up arrow key a few times? this just seems to be a brightness problem for me.

it kinda helps turing the brigthness but if you hook up a other monitor the screen be perfect :D (so its no driver problem)

[El_Hummer]

I've got the WLMI version, which has the DVD burner. hwoever i only had 40 gb, how come El_Hummer you got 60 gb? :s... anyways you also forgot to mention the sub woofer it has hhaha its mad :D... i recently got this laptop but i love it :)

Oh and i also want to list some other cons

cons:

a little too heavy

the slot loading drive, i dont trust that if theres any problems

Well, maybe it was a my dealer put a 40 and 60GB version in his assortment. So I took the 60 :)

Zivan I am installing the drivers and no three new drives show up, sadly I have to card to test it. I use the drivers that come along with the machine.

And I tried the ones from Acer support, no drives :cry:

[blachole]

This laptop looks bad ass. I am looking forward to purchasing one for school once I get the funds for graduating high school next week.

I cant help myself from drooling over this one... :drool:

[Oblivion]

nicely done review

[tan_aniki]

Have you tried pressing Function+up arrow key a few times? this just seems to be a brightness problem for me.

that function is for tune up the volume, to increase the brightness, press Function + right arrow key.

[tan_aniki]

Well, maybe it was a my dealer put a 40 and 60GB version in his assortment. So I took the 60 :)

Zivan I am installing the drivers and no three new drives show up, sadly I have to card to test it. I use the drivers that come along with the machine.

And I tried the ones from Acer support, no drives :cry:

that one is another package from acer. previous package 2000 series got 40GB but have slot loading DVD burner + DVD-RAM(not ROM) + CD-RW, as for new package 2010 & 2020 series got 60GB but only have optical drive DVD-ROM + CD-RW. The improvement is the wireless lan supports 802.11b/g as previous one only 801.22b which is much slower but still fine for me. In the end, i can said that this is the 1st n prefect notebook for me! I love it!!!