Acer Aspire 8942G Core i7 Owners Lounge

[kizwan]

Originally Posted by ErikO

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 The UK site had an outdated driver, i.e. ver3 in the filename, with the USA site having a ver5 in the filename.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.
............................

Try ATI 10.3a preview driver at underground dot amd dot com.

kizwan

[Umbreon1960]

Originally Posted by ErikO

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.

Yes, the these high gloss displays can be reflective, and annoying at times. I have been banging away on my keys since i got this thing, but no squeaky keys on mine!

I am curious about the color balancing, can you tell me what you did? I thought the colors were pretty good, but I would like to adjust according to what you did and see if I find it makes any noticeable difference. Right now I have the gammma, brightness and contrast all at the default levels - i thought the colors were pretty good out of the box.

If anyone knows a good color testing utility on download.com they can point me to - Thanks in advance!

I had no expectations that I would be able to blow away all the latest games with the unit - I would need the i5 or i7, plus a 7200 rpm drive, to really max out that, and i am not certain this unit can be upgraded to the higher level chips.

For the price i paid (1k CAD) I am very happy. The machine is on sale at Staples.ca for 1049 CAD at the moment.

BTW, anyone know about the ram questions i posted? going to 6 or 8 gig of ram would be the easiest boost to the machine, but I am having a devil of a time trying to figure out what ram to use.

[wirag]

I have a big problem with my brand-new Aspire 8942G laptop.
I have set fingertip-login instead of normal win-logon. It was fun until tonight, when my husband tried his finger to log on too much.
The system is asking now for a password in a DOS like screen in blue rectangle, and never asks for my finger again.
My win-logon password does not work. It must be a factory set BIOS password, that I don not knowor heard. It is also not written in my manuals.

Anyway, I cannot start up my Acer laptop anymore. Can somebody help me pleeeease?

[ErikO]

Originally Posted by wirag

I have a big problem with my brand-new Aspire 8942G laptop.
I have set fingertip-login instead of normal win-logon. It was fun until tonight, when my husband tried his finger to log on too much.
The system is asking now for a password in a DOS like screen in blue rectangle, and never asks for my finger again.
My win-logon password does not work. It must be a factory set BIOS password, that I don not knowor heard. It is also not written in my manuals.

Anyway, I cannot start up my Acer laptop anymore. Can somebody help me pleeeease?

I had this problem the other day too. I just hit the power-button off, and re-tried until it accepted my finger.

You need to remember which fingers you registered with the program, and try each one fairly slowly. I have since found the left finger I used seems to be detected most of the time.

When I had the problem, the password I used failed also - and I promise you I know what that password is!

[ErikO]

Originally Posted by Umbreon1960

Yes, the these high gloss displays can be reflective, and annoying at times. I have been banging away on my keys since i got this thing, but no squeaky keys on mine!

I am curious about the color balancing, can you tell me what you did? I thought the colors were pretty good, but I would like to adjust according to what you did and see if I find it makes any noticeable difference. Right now I have the gammma, brightness and contrast all at the default levels - i thought the colors were pretty good out of the box.

If anyone knows a good color testing utility on download.com they can point me to - Thanks in advance!

I had no expectations that I would be able to blow away all the latest games with the unit - I would need the i5 or i7, plus a 7200 rpm drive, to really max out that, and i am not certain this unit can be upgraded to the higher level chips.

For the price i paid (1k CAD) I am very happy. The machine is on sale at Staples.ca for 1049 CAD at the moment.

BTW, anyone know about the ram questions i posted? going to 6 or 8 gig of ram would be the easiest boost to the machine, but I am having a devil of a time trying to figure out what ram to use.

I used the Catalyst Control Center, from ATI. It allows you to mess with the screen in some detail. I used the MUCH BETTER screen on my Clevo M570RU as a reference, opening two copies of the BBC website, and adjusting the Acer until I could see all the colours.

When buying RAM, go for 8GB, and find the lowest 'timings' you can get for DDR3. So you will need 2 x 4GB, at the lowest timings. I know OCZ claim to have DDR3 @ 4-4-4-12 & 1333MHz, but I don't expect you will find that in a mobile module. Let me know what you find, eh?

[wirag]

No matter how many times I switch off and on again, it never asks for finger-logon. only the DoS like blue rectangle, asking for a password, that I have never set and have no knowledge of.
Very depressing having a brand new shiny black laptop, and now way to start it up.

[Umbreon1960]

Originally Posted by ErikO

I used the Catalyst Control Center, from ATI. It allows you to mess with the screen in some detail. I used the MUCH BETTER screen on my Clevo M570RU as a reference, opening two copies of the BBC website, and adjusting the Acer until I could see all the colours.

When buying RAM, go for 8GB, and find the lowest 'timings' you can get for DDR3. So you will need 2 x 4GB, at the lowest timings. I know OCZ claim to have DDR3 @ 4-4-4-12 & 1333MHz, but I don't expect you will find that in a mobile module. Let me know what you find, eh?

LOL, the catalyst control center- - which comes with every acer unit loaded with an ati chip, is of course where i viewed the factory defaults, etc. But it is useful to know that you used another computer for your adjustments. I am going to seek out a utility to help. To my eyes, my screen colors look great so I guess i will do some digging to see what I am missing.

Likewise on the ram, of course 2 x4gb is needed, per my post #15 on this thread.... the issue has been on the timing. If you refer to that post , you will see I noted 2 aspects to the chip timing with which I was not familiar. There are a number of 4gb mobile modules available, but they are not cheap and before I spend the money on 2 of them, I want to nail down the timing issue I noted.

I may just have to roust one of my electrical engineering buddies to give me the timing answer, my major was math, not engineering -but I know any chip designer/engineer would know the answer in a sec.

[Umbreon1960]

Originally Posted by wirag

No matter how many times I switch off and on again, it never asks for finger-logon. only the DoS like blue rectangle, asking for a password, that I have never set and have no knowledge of.
Very depressing having a brand new shiny black laptop, and now way to start it up.

You will have to contact acer (your unit does come with an international warranty). Unfortunately for you, your system did what it was supposed to do when it detected multple "illegal" entry attempts. Have your proof of purchase handy. You may be able to boot it via a port, but if you did not make a backup prior to this event, your not going to have much fun reloading your machine with all the drivers and op system, unless you have prior experience with this type of activity.

Personally I find fingerprint readers on notebooks to still be an iffy technology. For my friends who have sensitive data or info on your computer I suggest they use PGP to encrypt the files, or pgp encrypt the whole drive. PGP is open source, and pretty easy to use.

[Ericool]

Originally Posted by Umbreon1960

LOL, the catalyst control center- - which comes with every acer unit loaded with an ati chip, is of course where i viewed the factory defaults, etc. But it is useful to know that you used another computer for your adjustments. I am going to seek out a utility to help. To my eyes, my screen colors look great so I guess i will do some digging to see what I am missing.

Likewise on the ram, of course 2 x4gb is needed, per my post #15 on this thread.... the issue has been on the timing. If you refer to that post , you will see I noted 2 aspects to the chip timing with which I was not familiar. There are a number of 4gb mobile modules available, but they are not cheap and before I spend the money on 2 of them, I want to nail down the timing issue I noted.

I may just have to roust one of my electrical engineering buddies to give me the timing answer, my major was math, not engineering -but I know any chip designer/engineer would know the answer in a sec.

I remember reading some where that the 64 bit system on Windows 7 can only use 3.8 gigs of ram. So why do you want to add more?

[kizwan]

Originally Posted by Ericool

I remember reading some where that the 64 bit system on Windows 7 can only use 3.8 gigs of ram. So why do you want to add more?

That is memory limit for 32 bit OS, not 64 bit.

kizwan