Solved! Is this any good...Acer Aspire AS8730G-6681 laptop

crashingmedic

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Jan 19, 2008
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I am needing to replace my old laptop and I've run across one that looks great and it's a great price. It's an Acer Aspire AS8730G-6681 18.4" Core 2 Duo T6500 4GB RAM 250GB HD & 1GB Nvidia 9600M GT. Here's the link...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115594

I would be using it for daytrading when not at home and I need the largest screen possible. I originally wanted a quad core cpu but the price for those are just too high right now. Plus the custom desktop I built with a q6600 with 4GB RAM runs all my apps without a missing a beat. I think a dual core with 4GB RAM will work fine. If not I'll wait and keep looking.

I don't know anything about Acer laptops. I have 2 Acer monitors at home and they are great. I've head mixed reviews about Acer's laptop's quality. This particular machine is @ $200 cheaper than anything else of similar size, even those without dedicated graphics cards. This makes me wonder what the deal is.

Below are the answers to what I'm looking for...

1_What is your budget?

> $1000


2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

18.4" but will consider 17" - I will not buy one that is smaller than a 17" as it will not fulfill my needs.

3_What screen resolution do you want?

As large as possible


4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

Desktop replacement


5_How much battery life do you need?

1.5-2 hours minimum...it's usually plugged in so this isn't a big issue


6_Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

Possibly but this is not a deal breaker. I have Quake 4, Left 4 Dead, BioShock and a few newer games. Low to medium settings are fine.


7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing, surfing the web, playing music, watching movies, Etc.)

Creating & editing Camtasia videos, running cpu intensive charting applications & broker platforms simultaneously, general everyday use as well (Firefox, MS Office apps, media players, Power DVD, etc...)


8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?

250GB main HD is fine. I have a 320GB as well that I can use if need be.


9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post the links to them.

Newegg, TigerDirect, Amazon


10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?

As long as it will last. I've had 2 Toshibas, the first lasted for over 8 years until I sold it on eBay and the one I have now is almost 3 years old and working fine. I need a new one because the applications I'm using have outgrown this machine's capabilities.


11_If you would like to mention some other things about purchasing your ideal laptop, post them.

Like I said before it will be primarily used for day trading. The applications I will be using simultaneously are Sierra Chart (2 instances of it), Open E Cry's broker platform, Firefox w/ @ 3-4 tabs open, Oanda (web based java trading platform), Trade The News platform, MetaTrader4, MS Excel. In XP Pro 32bit I use @ 1.3GB of RAM when running all of this. In Vista Ultimate 64 bit it uses 2.5GB. I will probably cut this down considerably when I get my new machine configured the way I want it.


12_Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.

I have only had Toshiba laptops. The 1st one was a very old Pentium 1 133mHz and yes it was ancient. The one I have now is a L35-S2151 that I got on Black Friday in 2006. It has a 1.6Ghz Celeron M 420 & 2GB RAM. I don't like Dell or Lenovo because I've worked on several friends machines that always had motherboard problems. I know nothing about Acer and have heard mixed reviews about their quality which is why I'm posting here. Other than that I really don't care as long as it works.


13_What country do you live in?
USA


Thanks for reading this. Any advice is helpful...EWB
 
Solution
Great machine for the money just be forewarned Acer doesn't have the highest build quality although maybe I did push mine harder than most since it was my primary computer for 2+years before it started crapping out so it was used more than most laptops are intended to. I will admit though I did get my money's worth out of it. It was also one of the older chassis designs that wasn't super durable or all that well built to begin with. The new Acers have a nicer sturdier chassis that seems to hold up better. I'd say go for it since it won't be your primary machine you probably won't see the issues I did and plus it's based on a newer chassis so that in itself is a huge plus

/rant

lol

Espada

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Jul 9, 2009
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The laptop you choose is good. 9600mGT will be able to play those games in medium settings. T6500 though you would see bigger power saving in batter with the P series and would have a 1mb cache and usually have 1066FSB instead of 800FSB youll a little difference in performance. I would go with the ones below just because I know youll be able to upgrade the cpu later in life since they dont solder it in. And some of the moterboards gpu can be changed! and the hard drives are 7200rpm youll defintly see a difference between 5400 and 7200rpm when loading up or adding stuff to the hard drive...

Heres a good price for a 17inch with resolution and a better graphics card
and you get to choose what processor how much ram and hard drive good site.
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np7750-built-clevo-m775su-p-2539.html?wconfigure=yes
link for the 17inch..
another 17inch screen you should take into consideration
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Xplorer_X7-7500_Notebook/

most of these laptops are taking from msi, sager and asus barebones and they add components! Ive ordered from cyberpowerpc and my friend has ordered from xotic and he says thats good. Just takes a while wait like 2 weeks or so. I hope this helped.
 

overclockingrocks

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Oct 9, 2006
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Great machine for the money just be forewarned Acer doesn't have the highest build quality although maybe I did push mine harder than most since it was my primary computer for 2+years before it started crapping out so it was used more than most laptops are intended to. I will admit though I did get my money's worth out of it. It was also one of the older chassis designs that wasn't super durable or all that well built to begin with. The new Acers have a nicer sturdier chassis that seems to hold up better. I'd say go for it since it won't be your primary machine you probably won't see the issues I did and plus it's based on a newer chassis so that in itself is a huge plus

/rant

lol
 
Solution