Acer Ferrari 4000 4005WLMi, Brochure & Specs

Page 1: ...ghter faster more powerful and feature packed than any of its predecessors Today we ll take a look at this race bred beauty to see if it s truly worthy of its namesake Whether on the racetrack or in business strategic partnerships are crucial to success so the partnership between the Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team the FIA Fédération Internationale de l Automobile the governing body of international moto...

Page 2: ...s Established in 1976 Acer Inc employs 5 600 people supporting dealers and distributors in more than 100 countries Revenues in 2004 reached US 7 billion Acer Ferrari from Past to Present Below is a table summarizing the features and specs of Acer s Ferrari series notebooks Series Processor Operating system Display System memory HDD Optical devices Dimensions weight Ferrari 3000 AMD Athlon XP M pro...

Page 3: ... 2 or Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 preloaded 15 4 WSXGA 185 nit color TFT LCD 15 4 WXGA 185 nit Acer CrystalBrite color TFT LCD 512MB 1GB 80 100GB Slot load DVD Super Multi double layer drive 363 W x 267 5 D x30 5 34 3 H mm 2 86kg 6 3Ibs Courtesy of Acer The Ferrari 4000 arrived in a larger box with additional packing to protect it during shipping This attention grabbing design...

Page 4: ...p of a living room table with its glossy finish Striking photos of the notebook are set off against a black and carbon fiber background with Acer s corporate logo Ferrari 4000 in sleek red letters and Ferrari s world famous Prancing Horse crest A closer look reveals the brushed aluminum Ferrari Official Licensed Product logo and holographic sticker on the side of the box First Class all the way bu...

Page 5: ... this much power The Wireless Network and FCC certification sticker with another Ferrari hologram sticker The 2 5 100GB 5400 RPM hard drive The integrated controllers for the Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet NIC Bluetooth Wireless Mouse and the IrDA Fast Infrared port The Acer Ferrari 4000 comes with 1GB of DDR333 RAM It can be expanded to 2GB but with only 2 sockets available for memory you ll have to r...

Page 6: ...Card slot with removable dust cover and the PC Card slot eject button On the left side of the laptop is the AC Power Jack and a security key lock that accepts any Kensington compatible Computer Security Lock The optical drive supplied with the Acer Ferrari 4000 is a slot loaded Matshita UJ 845S DVD RAM drive that can read and burn to a wide range of standard sized CD and DVD media including dual l...

Page 7: ...nd Battery LED indicators and an Audio Out jack for things like headphone and speakers Here are the button indicators for Bluetooth left and Wireless right communications The laptop powers up with Bluetooth and Wireless networking enabled by default Both can be manually enabled and disabled by pressing the appropriate button or by using the Acer Launch Manager When using the button indicators to m...

Page 8: ...familiar Microsoft Designed for Windows XP label with a surprising twist Windows XP x64 Edition is also listed on the Designed for label as well The Ferrari 4000 s boot screen consists of a full color photo of a Ferrari Formula One car and a simple Press F2 to Enter Setup message at the bottom for entering the notebook s BIOS When Windows XP Professional SP2 starts a WAV file of the F1 racer shown...

Page 9: ...e MIA Scroll Lock indicator Let s get properly introduced to the Easy launch buttons in the upper right hand corner above the keyboard Working our way from left to right Mail Web Browser Acer s eManager and one User programmable button All can be modified and configured through the Acer Launch Manager in the system tray Ferrari World s wallpaper applet automatically puts a cool new Ferrari photogr...

Page 10: ...er Acer notebooks that have the same keyboard some of the Acer Travelmate 3000 and 4000 series notebooks do I d recommend trying it out in a store first to make sure that you like it before making a commitment The generous sized touchpad with its 4 way scroll button is the fastest most responsive I ve ever used on a notebook requiring only the lightest of touches without any skipping or lagging Th...

Page 11: ...motherboard powered by the new ATI Radeon Xpress 200P chipset with 1GB of Single Channel DDR 333 RAM upgradeable to 2 GB Mass storage is provided by a Seagate Momentus ST9100823A Ultra ATA 1000 5400 RPM 100MB IDE hard drive with an 8MB buffer and 12 5ms access time Included with the Ferrari 4000 is a Bluetooth rechargeable wireless mouse Powered by two rechargeable AA batteries the full sized scro...

Page 12: ... load system defaults and save or discard any of the BIOS settings Acer even throws in a Ferrari Red cleaning cloth to clean the notebook with a good thing since the reflective carbon fiber lid shows fingerprints easily and the rubberized surface around the notebook s keyboard has a tendency to show dust lint and oils from your hands or food if you re an eat while you work person The supplied clot...

Page 13: ...on the ePresentation screen brings up this useful mini guide on the utility Next is Acer eRecovery for creating and restoring system backups and re installing system applications and drivers Type in the password default is six zeroes Software Nowadays the average notebook computer ships with enough pre installed software and utilities for two notebooks most of it will never be used and just hogs d...

Page 14: ...ld also be displayed as well as the option to create the image on the second drive partition Note that while you can convert the C partition to NTFS the D partition on the hard drive must remain FAT32 Next is Recovery Actions Online help is available at any time for all eManager functions by clicking the Help icon in the upper right hand corner of the menu Note the options here You can also reinst...

Page 15: ...s to the notebook s display settings can be made with this option The Display Device configuration screen The fourth CD contains Symantec s Norton Antivirus 2005 which Acer does not pre install on the Ferrari 4000 This way you have the option of installing your own favorite antivirus program without having to worry about any potential conflicts due to something that an uninstall of Norton might ha...

Page 16: ...lt F10 during system boot up Acer eSettings allows you to make system and security changes in Windows without having to go into the notebook s CMOS on boot up Acer GridVista a utility with four pre defined display settings that allow you to run multiple windows on the same screen With dual monitor support two displays can be partitioned independently of each other This utility makes arranging and ...

Page 17: ...em passwords and configuring any smart cards you may be using for security Finally System Information gives you a look under the Ferrari 4000 s hood Here s a summary of the laptop s configuration Details on the Ferrari 4000 s powerplant AMD s 2 0 GHz Turion 64 ML 37 Mobile Processor Here you can see the version of the BIOS This gives you the laptop s serial number This displays the amount of memor...

Page 18: ...guessed or have experienced if you already own a laptop computer or any other battery powered gadget advertised battery life and recharge times don t always jibe with the ones in the real world I use the Ferrari 4000 connected to a power outlet about 85 of the time On battery I average roughly around 2 to 3 hours battery life before getting the usual low battery warnings depending on what I happen...

Page 19: ...ry power under normal circumstances The Classic test was used System Info Manufacture Model ModelEx OS Windows XP Service Pack 2 CPU Info CPU Manufacture Advanced Micro Devices CPU Model AMD Turion tm 64 Mobile Technology ML 37 CPU Frequency 801Mhz CPU Extensions Ext MMX SSE2 Ext 3DNow CPU Cache Info Level 1 Instructions 64 Level 1 Data 64 Level 2 Data 1024 System RAM info Total Memory 1023Mb Memo...

Page 20: ...apacity 71040mWh Full Charged Capacity 67828mWh Designed Voltage 0V Current Voltage 0V Manufacture Date 0 0 0 Cycles Count 0 Cells count 0 Force charge support Not Supported Force discharge support Not Supported Benchmark results CPU BEmarks 0 GPU BEmarks 0 RAM BEmarks 0 HDD BEmarks 0 Work Done Pi calculations 81880 Cycles HDD read write 12107 Mb Fames Rendered 641333 Frames Benchmark Options Reso...

Page 21: ...signed to completely drain a battery by running an endless loop of vigorous processor video and hard drive routines that typically do not occur under normal use but it is useful in determining just how well your battery will hold up and recover under the most extreme conditions Benchmarks 3DMark05 Professional The industry standard of 3D synthetic benchmarks Futuremark s 3DMark05 is designed to me...

Page 22: ...d are properties of their respective owners Copyright 2003 2007 by Barry Little All Rights Reserved 1 20 was used for the test The default settings for the benchmark were used and the video driver control panel settings were left at the default Application Preference for all quality settings ...

Page 23: ...Page 23 of 23 Barry s Rigs n Reviews http www barrys rigs n reviews com All trademarks used are properties of their respective owners Copyright 2003 2007 by Barry Little All Rights Reserved ...

Page 24: ... started it all powered by a spectacular new graphics engine with incredible lighting effects and near photorealistic visuals The retail version of the game was used and patched to Version 1 3 The tests were performed at 800x600 and 1024x768 the two resolutions where the game was most playable High Quality and 2x antialiasing were enabled DOOM3 s default anisotropic filtering setting is 8x so that...

Page 25: ...e for download This visually intensive benchmark is based on one of VIA Arena s premier custom made multiplayer maps for DOOM3 Not only is this map designed for lots of fast and furious deathmatch fragging but it s perfect for stressing even the fastest video cards and CPUs Because DOOM3 scales well visually at lower resolutions the game still looks pretty good at 800x600 and 1024x768 Since the ma...

Page 26: ... video subsystem to the limit Unlike DOOM3 you don t spend 95 of your time in darkness or near darkness in Half Life 2 so visual jaggies from disabled or low levels of antialiasing are going to be more noticeable in the game The retail version of the game was patched with the latest updates downloaded from Valve s Steam online service The tests were performed at 800x600 and 1024x768 the two resolu...

Page 27: ...Freeman and the Resistance against the Combine troops As we can see from the chart if you re willing to live with occasional brief moments of slowdowns and chugging when there s a lot going on in a level the 1024x768 resolution is a good compromise between looks and performance on the Acer Ferrari 4000 provided that you don t get crazy with the antialiasing and anisotropic filtering settings If fr...

Page 28: ... the Ferrari 4000 s class that can barely run games like DOOM3 and Half Life 2 if at all PCMark04 Professional PCMark 04 is Futuremark s application based benchmark for measuring overall system performance utilizing portions of real applications instead of including full sized actual applications with specifically created scripting code This keeps the cost of the benchmark within reach of the aver...

Page 29: ...isfying all but the most extreme power users The circled System Tray icon is Acer s Launch Manger Launch Manger is the utility that you can use to enable or disable Bluetooth or Wireless LAN support and configure the Easy launch buttons located above the upper right hand corner of the keyboard You ll see this the first time you use Launch Manger to disable Wireless LAN support The circled System T...

Page 30: ...errari 4000 The notebook is s a real head turner wherever I take it Whether I was reading E Mail working on a spreadsheet playing games or watching a movie AMD s Turion 64 ML 37 Mobile Processor teamed up with ATI s Mobility Radeon X700 video Gigabyte of RAM and spacious speedy hard drive easily ran circles around my previous Intel Centrino powered Toshiba Tecra A2 and the bright sharp 15 4 wide s...

Page 31: ...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 al...

Page 32: ... sound system is powered by the ATI s 4730 audio controller with Realtek s ALC250 doing Codec duty Acer ships CyberLink s PowerDVD 5 0 with the Ferrari 4000 While it s not the latest version it gets the job done The Acer branded PowerDVD player is skinned to match the Ferrari color scheme Ice Cube kickin ass in xXx State of The Union I went to NTI s website and looked for an update Unfortunately t...

Page 33: ...e will scan your laptop to determine if you can pull down the latest Catalyst Mobility Radeon drivers If your laptop isn t on the rather short list of approved vendors then you will not be able to download them from ATI s site nor will you be able to install the regular Catalyst drivers standard and NET Catalyst Control Center versions which will immediately tell you that the graphics chip is not ...

Page 34: ...ore burning them without having to split a movie onto multiple DVD discs It won t work with copy protected movies though NTI File CD is the packet writing software for CD RW and DVD RW discs You can design your own CD and DVD labels and jewel case liners with NTI JewelCase Maker The NTI WaveEditor is your typical WAV file recording and editing utility As razor thin margins continue to shrink and c...

Page 35: ...sn t in fact they ve gotten better Although it s not an absolute must it would have been nice if the integrated Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controller supported Jumbo Packet Frames Finally tweakers looking to enhance system performance will undoubtedly be disappointed by the rather sparse Phoenix BIOS Version S3A17 on my unit which allows only the most basic of settings necessary for configuring the...

Page 36: ...ckage SignalUp Wireless LAN and Bluetooth Wireless supported Bluetooth Wireless Mouse included with notebook FineTouch ergonomic keyboard with Soft touch coating and generous sized touchpad with a separate 4 way scroll button Slot loaded DVD RAM drive supports dual layer media 5 in 1 Card Reader and a generous number of I O ports makes the Acer Ferrari 4000 one of the most versatile and flexible n...

Page 37: ...les Display 15 4 WSXGA TFT LCD 1680 x 1050 resolution 16 7 million colors Graphics ATI Mobility RADEON X700 with 128 MB of external DDR VRAM supporting ATI Powerplay 5 0 Microsoft DirectX 9 0 and PCI Express DualView support external display at up to 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution 85 Hz MPEG 2 DVD hardware assisted capability S video TV out NTSC PAL support DVI D true digital video interface support...

Page 38: ...bs Power ACPI 1 0b power management standard supports Standby and Hibernation power saving modes 71 W Li ion battery pack 2 5 hour rapid charge 3 5 hour charge in use 3 pin 90 W AC adapter Special keys and controls 88 89 key Acer FineTouch keyboard Built in touchpad with 4 way scroll button Four easy launch buttons Two front access buttons WLAN LED button and Bluetooth LED button I O ports 124 pin...

Page 39: ...igs n reviews com All trademarks used are properties of their respective owners Copyright 2003 2007 by Barry Little All Rights Reserved Mobile PC 2001 ACPI 1 0b DMI 2 0 Cisco Compatible Extensions CCX Warranty One year International Travelers Warranty ITW ...