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Barry’s Rigs ‘n Reviews
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performance, she preferred the keyboard of her
IBM ThinkPad
over the Ferrari 4000
keyboard.
The touch pad on the
Ferrari 4000
was the most responsive I’ve ever used, but for
doing any work for an extended period of time, a mouse is still a better choice—
which is why Acer included the Bluetooth wireless mouse with the
Ferrari 4000
.
Although the size and styling of the mouse is a plus compared to some mice, the lack
of any kind of indicator showing how much charge is left—whether built into the
mouse itself similar to some of Logitech’s cordless mice, or even a software-based
System Tray icon, is hardly reassuring. And contrary to the documentation, it did
not
work as a regular USB mouse with the batteries removed and the charging cable
attached (which could have been a bit longer). With batteries, the mouse is heavier
than a regular full-sized corded mouse, with responsiveness that varies between
average and below-average. I personally prefer something lighter to carry around in
my bag on a daily basis that has much more responsive performance and better
precision, so my Salamander Red
Razer Diamondback
mouse is now occupying the
compartment in my notebook bag where the Acer Bluetooth mouse used to be. The
mouse also flaked out on numerous occasions, forcing me to push the Bluetooth
button at the front of the notebook on and off several times and underneath the
mouse, before it finally started working again.
I was surprised to find that the
Ferrari 4000’s
100 GB hard drive was split into two
50 GB FAT32 partitions. As it turns out,
Acer eRecovery
requires the second, empty
FAT32 partition to store backup images—the rationale being that all of your
programs and data would reside on the C: partition, while the
eRecovery
backups
would be stored on the D: partition. Storing backup images on another partition on
the same hard drive may be fast and convenient, but if the hard drive crashes, not
only do you lose your current data, but everything you backed up as well. Since I
make image backups of all my systems to my
Buffalo TeraStation NAS
on a regular
basis with
Acronis True Image
, needed the full 100 GB disk space and prefer
Windows XP’s NTFS file system over FAT32 for its better performance and reliability,
I used Vcom’s Partition Commander Version 9 to convert the drive into a single
100GB NTFS partition, while still maintaining the option of using eRecovery from the
Acer’s hidden partition or CDs to return the notebook to factory condition if I choose.
One totally bizarre and unexpected issue I encountered with the
Acer Ferrari 4000
was with
NTI’s Backup NOW! 4
. When backing up and restoring files with Backup
NOW! the program changes the case of files that it backs up. For example, backing
up a file named
mywordfile.doc
would be backed up and restored as
Mywordfile.doc.
I was able to duplicate this anomaly on several other machines that I installed the
software on.
