My 1810T experience so far

Yesterday received my 1810T by mail.

Unboxing and first thoughts
As seen in (Mali's) Philflow's vids (EDIT: I thought these were the same person, but they aren't and Philflow is the author of the video I mean) the 1810T only includes essentials as opposed to the AA1 A150 (the first 8.9" one, don't know the exact model type), which came with a carrying case, mouse (which I both never used) and a thin sleeve. Pity Acer does not include the sleeve anymore as they did with the AA1 A150. I liked this thin sleeve, since it wasn't that bulky as neoprene sleeves. Usually the sleeves that are for sale are a bit more sophisticated (to justify the price I imagine) and it was just that simpleness of the Acer sleeve that I liked the most.

It's also nice the 6-cell accu is completely flushed with the casing, however I didn't really mind the extrusion on the A150 and the extended accu was a great handle to carry the netbook around (yes I did think "what if the accu lock isn't that strong" numerous times, while happily swinging the netbook from the front to the back while walking).

Only things I disliked about the physical aspects of the 1810T is the shiny, in my opinion tacky, slightly loose power button and my version had a grain of excessive paint/irregularity (feels like a very small grain of sand) on the touchpad, which I feel when using the touchpad. This wasn't enough for me to return the netbook (and not be able to play with it ofcourse). Issues like this happen from time to time in my opinion and I will sort this out later (polish it I guess).

I also noticed the "Aspire 1810T" sticker with specifications right of the touchpad wasn't put on 100% straight. It's not that much off that it really annoys me though.

The keyboard needs some getting used to and looks less appealing as the more luxuruous keys on the Timeline 4810T do. It's great it is fullsize, although I didn't found this to be a real issue with my A150 and was able to type as fast on the A150 as I am on my desktop PC.
Although I hardly experience any keyboard flex, I do experience some "key flex", which I can't recall on the 4810T (I only worked for 5 hours with the 4810T though). "Key flex" isn't the proper name though, since the keys don't actually flex, but they do tilt a bit. For instance my "S" key is tilted toward the right bottom a bit more as the "D" key that is sitting straight, so not all keys are aligned perfectly, because they are able to tilt a bit. Looks a bit awkward an cheapish. However I'm trying to imagine regular keys on this notebook and I do think these flat chiclet keys make the notebook look more streamlined/trimmed.
Edit: After typing this post, I have to say, I like the charactaristics (not the size though) of the A150 keyboard more as I do with this keyboard. The keys press down a bit less on the 1810T (especially the Space key), which maybe takes some getting used to, but at this point I don't like this. It's not like it's disastrous, but I prefer the A150's press characteristics.
One thing that IS buggin me is that the space makes a squeeking/unlubricated like noise. I'm trying to reproduce it at this moment, which I am unable to, but I do notice it while typing (I type blind, pretty fast) and I'm 90% sure it is the spacebar.
I do accidentally touch the touchpad while typing from time to time, making the cursor to be placed where I don't want it to be. Doesn't happen often, but it does happen. I didn't experience this with the A150 at all. Fortunately the touchpad can be disabled.


First usage
First thing I noticed while booting was the screen (duhh). It looks big. Even with the low resolution of the Acer "first use vista deployment" installer. This actually feels like a notebook (which it is) instead of a netbook (which it isn't).

I think the contrast and colors of my A150 look a bit better as they do on this 1366x768 screen. Especially with a lot of black, I see a greyish glow and the colors seem less vivid overall. But the screen is certainly acceptable and the resolution makes up for it completely. Maybe need to do some software tweaking of some kind.

Vista deployment was pretty slow and man, you have to uninstall a lot of crap nowadays (10-15 Oberon games? Which actually did take up some space). When I was done, the endresult was Vista Home Premium. I installed vista 3 times on my desktop and ditched it all three times after a week, reverting to XP. I planned on getting the free Windows 7 upgrade from Acer and run on Vista until the Win7 upgrade would arrive.
Vista didn't felt terribly slow, but it didn't feel fast either. Fortunately I ordered two 2Gb SODIMMS with the 1810T, so this would be a good time to pop those in. I ordered two since I recalled reading somewhere on dual channel actually making a noticeable difference. I didn't recall if this was on the 1810T or the 751h or another Timeline though, but memory is pretty cheap so I just figured to order 2 of the same modules.

After I installed those (showed up fine in Bios and Vista) and did some installing I did experience some lag I typically disliked in Vista earlier on my desktop, so I decided to repartition the Vista partition and Install Windows 7.


Disaster
I repartitioned my A150 a few days earlier with the free version of Easus Partition Manager (making a MBR backup with MBRWiz before doing so and installing Win7). So I did the same thing with the 1810T. I know Vista has the "Shrink Volume" feature in Disk Manager, but I never used it and did not see why Easus PM wouldn't do the same trick. The resizing of the partition takes a while so I did some other stuff.

When I came back, the notebook was powered down. Shouldn't it have rebooted and show the Vista login screen?? I pressed the power button... Nothing. (x2, x3 and so on). I remembered having the same thing with my A150 once which had something to do with overheating protection of the accu, which could be fixed by booting without the accu and popping it back in again (powered down ofcourse), so I tried booting the 1810T without the accu.
This time the screen did show the Bios being loaded, but I was redirected to the Acer recovery software (which I hadn't seen before). Tried rebooting first with a BSOD as a result while booting Vista. After this I tried all kinds of stuff in the Acer recovery software (from the mildest form of repair to restoring the whole system to factory defaults), but nothing seemed to work. Apparently Easus PM did crash while resizing the partition and the partition(s) appeared to be corrupted.

Created a Gparted bootable disk and deleted the Vista and Acer parition with my fingers crossed and it worked! No error messages. So I was fine to install Windows 7. I THOUGHT. I didn't mind losing the Acer partition that much, since I knew I was able to boot stuff from USB and disliking Vista that much, I wouldn't miss Acers -ready to deploy vista- partition that much.

When I exited Gparted and it told me "System Halted", but the system actually didn't turn off. So after a few minutes I manually powered down the system. At this point it just wouldn't boot anything anymore (not even the BIOS). Some LED's were on, but no HD rattle of any kind and no screen. Same thing after trying to boot the system without the Accu.

Final thing I could think of was a Bios Recovery guide for the AA1 I read a while ago. So I looked up the guide and prepared a FAT USB disk with FLASHIT.EXE and the BIOS file (downloaded from Acer) renamed to ZG5IA32.FD . Thing is, this guide was for Acer Aspire Ones and not specifically for the 1810T. Couldn't find a service manual for the 1810T though, so decided to give it a try. No success.

FINALLY I remembered the memory upgrade and decided to rip out the 2 new SODIMMS and replace it with the stock Acer one. I didn't think of this earlier (which I should have ofcourse) because I worked with the upgraded memory for about an hour without any errors and figure the problems to be an obvious error of Easus Partition Manager.
After this the 1810T booted just fine and excuse me Easus; probably nothing wrong with your product, just my bad choice of memory.
After this I installed Win7 and haven't experienced any problems at all. I'm almost sure it was the memory, which was Corsair Valueselect DDR2 667mhz (VS2GSDS667D2), which was on sale.

Windows 7 runs like a charm and with the 2 possible re-armments I should be able to make it until the official Win7 upgrade gets shipped.


Thoughts after some more usage
I'm a little bit disappointed about the noise the 1810T makes. Sure it's less noise my A150 would make out of the box and with the A1CTL software the A150 still is a bit louder as the 1810T is (it's a higher toned noise though, whereas the 1810T makes a deeper -humming like- noise). I have heard the 751h, which is insanely quiet. I read somewhere the 1810T wouldn't be as quiet as the 751h, but that it would still be very quiet. Well, to be honest. I don't think its "very quiet". It's not loud, no, but very quiet? Not in my opinion. I'm dying for a fan control tool for the 1810T. At home the noise doesn't bug me that much but at college, especially while sitting in small groups, it does.
It does make a difference though if you are on a perfectly flat surface. If you are, it makes less noise, but it's still hearable and not as quiet I hoped it to be (after reading about it's quietness).
Also I don't hear the fan speed change much. It does, but not way as often as my A150 changes fan speed.

About the screen. Especially on battery power, the screen of my old A150 looks better as the 1810T's. 1810T's looks less a live and colors are noticeably paler as they are on the A150. I haven't calibrated the colors yet though (although I also haven't on the A150, which runs the same Win7 release). You can dim the screen really low on the 1810T, which is nice, although the lowest brightness is to dark for my personal likings. I did run on lowest brightness on A150.

Can't say much on battery life yet. Vista showed "9 hours" once, but I don't think that figure is very accurate. Right now I'm on battery with WIFI on, 96% charge left, brigthness set to darkest + 3 and Windows 7 says 4:47 left (I'm reviewing the post right now, haven't changed any settings and it says 5:52 with 92% charge left). I did read drivers weren't that good for Win7 yet so this is likely to be the cause.


Don't get me wrong
This post might have a negative tone to it, but that's because I don't have to comment on things that work fine like on other notebook/netbooks, unless they're real good and surpassing the notebook/netbook average. With the 1810T that would have to be the great screen resolution and speed on the netbook side and the portability and battery life on the notebook side.

Although I did have higher (maybe too high) expectations, I still do recommend the 1810T.

The higher screen resolution makes a great difference. I actually felt like working on a normal notebook, as opposed to the A150, where I would use the desktop whenever I could. I haven't done any CPU intensive tasks yet, but I haven't experienced any issues regarding speed and the system feels really nice. I resized about 150 2-4MB pictures with ACDSee this morning and was pleasantly surprised how fast this finished. You do notice the extra power it delivers over Atom processors. Sound is also noticeably better as it is on the A150, although I can't really comment on this yet, since I only have watched a couple of youtube vids. I did notice immediately sound qualitiy is better as it is with the A150.


Questions to you guys
- Anybody knows of a Fan Control utility that works with the 1810T or if one is being developed?
- Anybody knows the proper bios recovery procedure? This could come in handy some time. I did get the blinking LEDs, but after pressing the power button nothing happened using the AA1 method (formatted to FAT16, FAT32, bootable and non bootable).
- What kind of memory is confirmed to work in the 1810T? And does anybody has some more info on the Dual Channel thing?

 

Thank you for this detailed review!
About fan control: Try Smartfan, because it is more configurable. It might be inoparable on Vista/Win7 because of a driver problem, though. I guess on XP it should work.
About BIOS recovery: Quanta calls this model ZH7(AOA1x0 is ZG5), so this might be a starting point when figuring out the right FD name.
About memory: If I were you I would just check the stock RAM module model number and buy a second one of exactly the same.

Edit:
The link I posted in the other thread is not my review, so that are not my vids

 

Oh ok! Saw your replies on tweakers (or is that another Mali?) and thought I read something like "check out my review", but apparently it was "check out this review".

Thanks for the tips!

I fiddled around with Smartfan a bit yesterday night. Had to run it as administrator and at first was very glad, because the 1810T was silent all of a sudden! After a few seconds it did continue it's usual fanning and I wonder wether the program operates correctly on Win7/with the 1810T. When I set a fan speed, nothing happens. The only time I can get the program to silence the fan it is in the Auto profile, but this is not adjustable unfortunately. All other profiles don't do anything.

 

You are a hero!
So, Smartfan actually might work on 1810t! You just have to find the right hex values for the different fan speeds and it should work

Could you please do me a favor?
It would be great if you could check something for me:
1. Download latest SetFSB
2. run SetFSB, select SLG505YC264BT
3. click 'Get FSB'
4. click on 'Diagnosis' panel
5. click 'Capture'
6. go to the sub directory called 'Capture' in the SeFSB folder and upload the .bmp-file

I could check the settings of the clock generator and compare it to a datasheet to find a way to overclock. Phil did try moving the slider but his 1810t froze.

Btw. what is 'tweakers'? I'm 'der_mali' on forum.notebookreview.com, I just registered there to speculate about Acer's new 11.6" CULVs

 

Always nice to be a hero! No clue why I would be, but still sounds good! :mrgreen:

Where should I get these hex values for the different fan speeds to work?

Tweakers is a Dutch tech news site, but never mind, I'm really mixing up different people I guess and doesn't matter at all anyway.

Here's the datasheet. No clue what it does, but here it is:

 

It's very important for me to know, if the fan can be controlled via software. I want to have a dead silent PC if I need to, like when browsing in bed or some such So I'm glad someone tries before I get my device and I can fiddle with the settings myself.

Smartfan includes a program called 'FanModes'. It must be run when smartfan is off, it can't be started at the same time. So exit Smartfan if it is running and start FanModes. On the left click on a hex value and click "Set Mode". If the fan speed changes you have found a working setting. There are many settings that are identical to each other or some settings start with a fast fan and get slower after a few seconds. Some settings do weird things. So it's best to take some time to test every value and write down what it does. In the end assign a proper name to a value that fits best(slow/high/medium etc.) After you have set all names you can save them in options.ini. Start Smartfan and configure a scheme to your liking


Thanks for the SetFSB screenshot! I will post how to overclock later

Edit:
Damn! TME is enabled(offset 09h bit6 is 1)
How can it be that Phil's 1810t got unstable after moving the slider?
So I will have to look at the mainboard for a hardware solution again :roll:

 

Ah, that's how fanmodes works. Launched it and had a look at it. Thought FANMODES.EXE was supposed to autodetect the fan hex values, but now I understand.

I'll fiddle around with it this evening and post the results.

EDIT: This Fanmodes trying takes a lot of effort! Spend half an hour on it and I'm only at 15-20% through the hex values I guess. On top of that, a lot of them aren't consistent. Sometimes they will put fanspeed to 26-30%, but sometimes they don't do anything. Furthermore there a lot that set the fanspeed to 0%.

For the rest of the post; most of it is jibberish to me :roll:

Overclocking isn't that important to me. 1810T runs great as is for my likings and can't imagine what I would run on this that needs a lot of CPU power. Underclocking on the contrary would be interesting (because of battery life on long trips without the possibility to charge).

About what I think of the notebook after 2 days:
I really am getting annoyed with the keyboard. The fact that the keys don't press down as much really alters the typing characteristics. I actually think I'm typing slower on the 1810T at the moment as I did on the 8.9" AA1. Maybe it takes some more getting used to (I hope).

About the fan sound; It's not that bad as I portrayed in the OP. I guess I just had higher expectations. Yes, it's audible, but the sound the AA1 made was a higher toned, more annoying noise. With some luck I'll get SmartFan setup properly and the sound won't be an issue at all anymore.

The touchpad definitely is nicer as the A150's. I haven't figured out how the mouse gestures work yet, but I doubt if they'll even be available in Windows 7 with the lack of drivers at this moment.

I'm pretty lazy and usually write an AutoIT script to automate (or make them easier if automation isn't possible) certain annoying tasks. At this moment I have a function that'll toggle between 2 different mouse speeds with a hotkey, since my VX Nano moves the pointer a lot quicker as the touchpad does. Believe it or not, I'm also to lazy to press the hotkey everytime to switch between mouse speeds. Would anybody have a clue on how to detect wether the mouse is being controlled by the touchpad or the mouse? If this could be detected, I could automate the pointer speed changes.

Another thing that really bugs me is the ALT-GR button. I almost never use it, however I did use the right ALT key a lot on the A150 (mainly for pressing ALT-LEFT with one hand to go back one page in the browser when working without a mouse). I haven't really looked into this yet, but I did try to trap LCTRL+RALT (what ALTGR sends) to reroute a RALT, but this far unsuccesful. I did manage to trap CTRL+ALT and reroute this to ALT, but I do use the CTRL-ALT combination quite a bit (hotkeys) and don't want to loose them. Anybody has a working solution to reprogram/reroute the ALT-GR key to send a (R)ALT?

 

Would you give me a link to the smartfan software? I have the 3810t, and would like it to quiet a bit too... alsp, if you find the right settings, could you share them with me?

 

It doesn't work on 3810t. At first I thought it would be a Vista/Win7 problem but now that it works on 1810t I think the reason might be that a different embedded controller is used(1810t is made by Quanta, 3810t is made by Inventec). You can get the software here:
viewtopic.php?p=97800#p97800

Edit:
I've seen that you are a NBR member. Search over there for 3810t+Smartfan.

 

Okay, thanks

 

Thanks a lot for your review!

I was strongly considering the 1810 and waited a while to get more info on it, but ended up pulling the trigger on the 751h. I'm happy with my 751, but am strongly considering installing XP as Vista just doesn't run that well on this thing, even after tweaking it for performance in just about every way possible.

Can you give me some more of your experiences on Vista vs. XP vs. 7 on the netbooks you have tried them on?

Also, tell us more about the overall performance of the 1810, and what OS did you settle on for now?

Thanks!!

 

Hi all.

After using 10 days(15 hours a day- I am retired) for nothing on the famous AspireOne751h(2 different X)
I got my money back to day and visited another shop and got the new 1410. Up about 70 dollars.

Acer Aspire 1410 (Aspire 1810T/1410 Series) (LX.SA70X.047)

Installed Windows Vista Home Premium

Model ZH7
S/N LXSA70X04792903B8B2500
CPU Intel Celeron processor 723(1.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB)
VGA Intel GMA 4500MHD UP to 1244 MB DVMT
LCD 11.6" HD LED LCD 1366x768
MEMORY 3 GB memory
Storage 250GB HDD
WLAN Acer Nplify 802.11b/g/Draft-N
BATTERY 6-cell 4400mAh Li-ion
BLUTOOTH NO

My Externals:
Iomega USB Super Slim DVD
Microsoft USB mouse


********************************

After pushing THE BUTTON for the first time i had my 2 Recovery DVD's after less than 2 hours.(1h 55min).


Then i cleaned all:

Oberon- eSobi - Google desktop - McAfee - Microsoft Office - Microsoft Works.


Installed AVIRA Antivir Personal(default) and connected to the world. (1.5 Mb DSL)

AVIRA updated very fast and told me "you are safe". Thanks to AVIRA people.

Windows Update started automatic and updated normally, the installation as well(about 120MB).

Restart after 3h 45m.

Time for testing:
DVD with CHER - The FAREWLL TOUR - Full screen and sound OK.
DVD called ROUNDERS - Full screen and sound OK.
Color changes to WiNdow Vista Basic is the message on both DVD's. What that means ...?

Automatic start using CyberLink PowerDVD.

Windows system classified to 3.1.

Camera seems fine.

SO FAR this is a fantastic saturday afternoon.

You people out there - get rid of the AO751h and get your sleep back.

Somebody playing FREECELL. It is really a test for your computer. I have used this cardgame from early 90's.
If the cards moves smooth using a mouse, the system is probable in shape.
On my two 751's it didn't work normally, but on my new 1410 it is soft and normal.

http://www.vgtv.no/?id=23021&category=43
Streaming from a newspaper, works perfect

Time for some installations:
First off all - OpenOffice and then whatever I need. Maybee Windows7(free upgrade) and LinuxMint as an experiment.

6 hours now and everything works perfect.

***************************************

I am a new user on this board so this comment may be misplaced but you experienced may put it right?

Arild from Norway

 

Hello, Arild
I invite you to join forum.notebookreview.com.
It would be great if you would post your experiences here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=401647
For tips look here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=413140
I'm 'der_mali' over there, maybe we'll meet there