Acer Aspire 8942G Core i7 Owners Lounge

[aleicgrant]

Where in the USA can you get these from?

[exmeaguy]

By the way, anyone with answers to my questios earlier about memory? Thanks.

You said in your one message that the 8942 does not have Bluetooth. Isn't there a key on the left side for Bluetooth? Do you think it is included but not turned on? It seems cheesy for any manufacturer to not include something so useful and so inexpensive at that laptop price point.

[ErikO]

Where in the USA can you get these from?

Sorry, Newegg USA sold out, and I'm in Shanghai, China on business, and took 3 days to order one when asked. Newegg here didn't have a tenth of the choice of the USA, so I went to an Acer approved dealer.

They got four in, and he was surprised that all of them went straight-away, and they had to hold the final one for me.

Can anyone answer my Q?

[ErikO]

You said in your one message that the 8942 does not have Bluetooth. Isn't there a key on the left side for Bluetooth? Do you think it is included but not turned on? It seems cheesy for any manufacturer to not include something so useful and so inexpensive at that laptop price point.

It seems many people are complaining about whats included or not.

Mine came with:

Bluetooth, N standard wifi, 640GB 5400rpm disk (I added an Intel SSD to that for OS boot), backlit keyboard, ATI HD 5850 1GB, 4GB DDR3 @ 1066MHz, Blue Ray player (very fast for DVDs), 1080p 8ms 18.4" screen, 720p webcam(best I've seen),and six internal speakers (I guess they have the room). I though the flat keyboard might have been a problem, but I'm taking to it very well, surprisingly. However, each time the computer boots, the backlight comes on, which I don't like as I touch-type and never look down anyway.

With the Intel SSD, it proceeded to load Win 7 x64 in a record time for me.

I'm going to drop in my Intel 5300 wireless card (triple antenna), and the top i7 processor within the next few months. If you do the same remember there is no option in the bios to change the CPU multiplier if you plan to overclock. But I knew that before I bought, so no complaints there, other than what a loaded of b0llox it is that Acer can be so restrictive.

If I get any Q's I'll try to answer them...but I'm a busy man...

[aleicgrant]

so again, anyone bought one of these in the US? I cant find them anywhere

[Umbreon1960]

Where in the USA can you get these from?

They are not yet available in the USA according to what I can tell. However, if you live close to the Canadian border you can zip across and buy one at Staples. You might even be able to order one and have it delivered to a US address (check out www.staples.ca and investigate their shipping options I guess, or call them).

[Umbreon1960]

You said in your one message that the 8942 does not have Bluetooth. Isn't there a key on the left side for Bluetooth? Do you think it is included but not turned on? It seems cheesy for any manufacturer to not include something so useful and so inexpensive at that laptop price point.

My point exactly. The key is their on the left side, but does not work for my unit as it does not have bluetooth. Considering that internal bluetooth costs a manufacturer almost zilch, it is cheesy in an extreme!!

[kizwan]

Interesting!! Even with i3 it scored higher (Windows Experience Index) than my Dell. It will be great playing games & working with 18" display. I have an old 17" Acer Aspire 9420 & even though it is an old specification, it still great when watching movies because of the big screen.

kizwan

[Umbreon1960]

It seems many people are complaining about whats included or not.

Mine came with:

Bluetooth, N standard wifi, 640GB 5400rpm disk (I added an Intel SSD to that for OS boot), backlit keyboard, ATI HD 5850 1GB, 4GB DDR3 @ 1066MHz, Blue Ray player (very fast for DVDs), 1080p 8ms 18.4" screen, 720p webcam(best I've seen),and six internal speakers (I guess they have the room). I though the flat keyboard might have been a problem, but I'm taking to it very well, surprisingly. However, each time the computer boots, the backlight comes on, which I don't like as I touch-type and never look down anyway.

With the Intel SSD, it proceeded to load Win 7 x64 in a record time for me.

I'm going to drop in my Intel 5300 wireless card (triple antenna), and the top i7 processor within the next few months. If you do the same remember there is no option in the bios to change the CPU multiplier if you plan to overclock. But I knew that before I bought, so no complaints there, other than what a loaded of b0llox it is that Acer can be so restrictive.

I am assuming you know you can turn off the backlighting (Fn + F9). My only complaints were the lack of bluetooth (which is easily rectified with either a mini usb bluetooth or an expresscard bluetooth) and the keyboard flatness (to which I am still adjusting).

I am curious about the ssd drive - did you put it in the second bay? I opened everything up back there, and it appeared to me that the 2nd bay was not usable, although i just glanced at it. If you could post some detail about what you did it would be appreciated. I know one could boot from an expresscard drive as well and that would be superfast as the expresscard is tied right into the processor.

I am loving the machine otherwise, it seems that acer learned some lessons from the 8730/8930/8935/8940 series. The webcam image is fabulous, the dvd/blueray drive works great and I have started fiddling around with ability to support multiple displays. I also have an aver media expresscard tv tuner, and experienced no issues with that. The 1394 port has also been super useful for connecting all my video cameras. The 1080p display is stunning, especially in comparison to the 945 display that acer supplied on the prior models - I watched iron man on blue ray and it was awesome.

I know you posted a question about a problem you were having a problem with your GPU driver - did you get that straightened out?

For anyone interested in all the gazillion options available for that expresscard slot, a great resource I used to obtain some harder to find cards is http://sewelldirect.com/componentspe...ls/expresscard which usually has at least 50 to 60 different types of expresscards on hand. It is amazing what one can do with that slot.

Hopefully we will get a few more 8942G owners and get some action going on this thread!

[ErikO]

I am assuming you know you can turn off the backlighting (Fn + F9). My only complaints were the lack of bluetooth (which is easily rectified with either a mini usb bluetooth or an expresscard bluetooth) and the keyboard flatness (to which I am still adjusting).

I am curious about the ssd drive - did you put it in the second bay? I opened everything up back there, and it appeared to me that the 2nd bay was not usable, although i just glanced at it. If you could post some detail about what you did it would be appreciated. I know one could boot from an expresscard drive as well and that would be superfast as the expresscard is tied right into the processor.

I am loving the machine otherwise, it seems that acer learned some lessons from the 8730/8930/8935/8940 series. The webcam image is fabulous, the dvd/blueray drive works great and I have started fiddling around with ability to support multiple displays. I also have an aver media expresscard tv tuner, and experienced no issues with that. The 1394 port has also been super useful for connecting all my video cameras. The 1080p display is stunning, especially in comparison to the 945 display that acer supplied on the prior models - I watched iron man on blue ray and it was awesome.

I know you posted a question about a problem you were having a problem with your GPU driver - did you get that straightened out?

For anyone interested in all the gazillion options available for that expresscard slot, a great resource I used to obtain some harder to find cards is http://sewelldirect.com/componentspe...ls/expresscard which usually has at least 50 to 60 different types of expresscards on hand. It is amazing what one can do with that slot.

Hopefully we will get a few more 8942G owners and get some action going on this thread!

Yes - I got the ATI driver from the USA site. The UK site had an outdated driver, i.e. ver3 in the filename, with the USA site having a ver5 in the filename. USA driver worked first time.

Now that I've had it a week, I can say this, they keys are starting to squeak - no joke! The display is more reflective than my Cleve MR570U, to the point were I'm turning off lights in my hotel room. Even the colours are not as good as the Clevo, and I resorted to using the ATI tool to balance them to an acceptable level.

As for the SSD, there was a second bay to add a drive, with SATA2 connections (no funny adapter required), but I did have to fill the excess space with folded paper, as they do not provide the bracket to hold down the other end of the drive like they do with the supplied drive. The Intel drive really gives off no noticable heat however hard you push it.


3DMark06 score was just over 8500, with my Clevo pushing out 9500 (X9000@3.2GHz, 8GB DDR2, 8800M GTX). In the CPU section of Futuremark's test, the Clevo walked away from the 8942G, finishing in about half the time for that section. But then I knew there's no substitue for GHz when it comes to gaming. I expect my upcoming purchase of the 920QXM will see this balanced-out. I just don't want to order it now, as I'm in China, and due to goto the Phillipines soon too, and I don't want to risk some weirdo customs office holding it.



Now I wonder if I can fit my 8800M GTX in this machine....hmm.