Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

chrismscotland · 16 Oct 2011 at 21:19

Hey guys, just wondering if any of you have upgraded from your 3810/8371 to anything new and if so what did you plump for?

HarryPainful · 16 Oct 2011 at 23:15

Mine is still going strong, used everyday for the last 12 months, using it now!

chrismscotland · 16 Oct 2011 at 23:28

HarryPainful said:
Mine is still going strong, used everyday for the last 12 months, using it now!

Glad to hear it! I sold mine a few months back, struggling to find anything similar now to replace it at a good price, looks like its going to be the Lenovo x121 to replace

fraxos · 18 Oct 2011 at 16:33

playagiron said:
Hi,

really like the new BISO dragonuk found.

But I wonader are there any news regarding the small size SSDs that could be installed besides the standard HDD?

The Kingston - SSDNow V-Series 30GB still costs 80 EUR or more, which seems very much for such a small and slow SSD. Would be great if other SSDs would work also as I feel my machine gets slower and would like to speed it up. Any experiences with other SSDs??

Cheers
playagiron

There is finally an alternative and a very good one at that!

These guys sell very fast half-slim SSD all the way up to 128GB:

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/mydigitalssd-half-slim-sata-ssd/

and here is a review from a user:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...half-slim-sata-solid-state-disk-reviewed.html

chris10230 · 18 Oct 2011 at 17:41

fraxos said:
There is finally an alternative and a very good one at that!

These guys sell very fast half-slim SSD all the way up to 128GB:

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/mydigitalssd-half-slim-sata-ssd/

and here is a review from a user:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...half-slim-sata-solid-state-disk-reviewed.html

good find shame that UK shipping is $35 for a laptop I use irregularly the 40 quid of the drive ok but another 20 for shipping that's hard to justify... I wish I could justify it! maybe a ssd for my desktop first would be a start

fraxos · 19 Oct 2011 at 22:38

dragonuk said:
The ATI graphics are overclocked by default when you install the bios.

If you get a program like "GPU-Z" when you run it you will see the ATI graphics are running at 550mhz core and 750 mhz memory.

The default is 450mhz core and 600mhz memory.

Don't forget you can overclock the cpu to 2ghz instead of 1.4ghz by overclocking the fsb to 250mhz instead of 200mhz.

You just run this exe and its done. Simple. You have to run it everytime you restart your PC though.

Download - http://www.mediafire.com/?k5lz3qaijq8wunm

dragonuk,

How did you get it to 2Ghz? As far as I am aware given the multiplier of 7, the max speed should be 1.75Ghz?

mentalmike · 20 Oct 2011 at 18:50

After a bit of advice. Had my TM8317G since start of last Dec. Just turned it on today and noticed that just the bottom left is darker than the rest of the screen. I can see the start button but it's just darker than the rest of the screen. Is this part of the backlight that's stopped working?

MasterPlan1 · 21 Oct 2011 at 10:26

mentalmike said:
After a bit of advice. Had my TM8317G since start of last Dec. Just turned it on today and noticed that just the bottom left is darker than the rest of the screen. I can see the start button but it's just darker than the rest of the screen. Is this part of the backlight that's stopped working?

Yup, it's still under warranty, give them a call they'll pick it up, replace it, send it back, same thing happened to mine after a year too.

dragonuk · 22 Oct 2011 at 17:42

fraxos said:
dragonuk,

How did you get it to 2Ghz? As far as I am aware given the multiplier of 7, the max speed should be 1.75Ghz?

You can get it to 2ghz by using a feature in the cpu called IDA.

Intel Dynamic Acceleration technology (IDA) is a feature that boosts CPU performance when the CPU is running single-threaded applications.

This means it can run at x8 multiplier. So 250mhz x 8 = 2GHZ .

Normally this only runs x8 multiplier for one core on the cpu at a time. However with the modified bios you can set it to run x8 multiplier on both cores if you so wished.

It won't be that noticable difference though.

playagiron · 25 Oct 2011 at 19:18

chris10230 said:
good find shame that UK shipping is $35 for a laptop I use irregularly the 40 quid of the drive ok but another 20 for shipping that's hard to justify... I wish I could justify it! maybe a ssd for my desktop first would be a start

I agree shopping is expensive. And there is no distributor in Europe so far.
Still, I took the plunge and got the 64GB version and it works now great in my 3810. Not a completely new machine, but much faster starting, plus 0%noise!! Really awesome and 64GB is enough for a Win7 Installation plus my most important docs and complete music collection, so my HDD now almost always sleeps
(see here some benchmarks: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ace...10t-other-interesting-tidbits-machine-29.html)

In terms of speed, it seems way faster than the earlier 32GB versions.

Ash98 · 16 Nov 2011 at 23:39

Hey guys, my Timeline 8371's battery suddenly stopped working. I can only use my laptop with the AC Adapter plugged in. I've tried loads of things on the net, but I'm not sure if it's that 1.28 custom bios I installed that's causing it. Can anyone please help? If not, i'll wait a few days to make sure it's not a temporary thing and then i'll buy a new battery. Do you recommend the 9-Cell batteries on eBay or are they not trusted?

dragonuk · 17 Nov 2011 at 20:32

Ash98 said:
Hey guys, my Timeline 8371's battery suddenly stopped working. I can only use my laptop with the AC Adapter plugged in. I've tried loads of things on the net, but I'm not sure if it's that 1.28 custom bios I installed that's causing it. Can anyone please help? If not, i'll wait a few days to make sure it's not a temporary thing and then i'll buy a new battery. Do you recommend the 9-Cell batteries on eBay or are they not trusted?

Hey Ash98,

Thats actually really strange because my battery has actually done the exact same thing pretty much the same time as yours as well which is weird.

My battery still says its charged but when i unplug the ac adapter it turns off.

Changing the bios didn't change anything.
I'm pretty sure the modified bios couldn't have done anything permanent to the battery, so the bios seems unrelated to this issue.

What is your battery number ? As some were affected with a firmware problem.

My battery says manufactured by Simplo and the white label with the barcode (first 10 digits is whats important) says:

BT00607108

Which was one of the affected batterys. I'm not sure if this is what was to do with it.

Ash98 · 19 Nov 2011 at 16:48

Hey dragonuk,

Thanks for responding. My battery also says "Manufactured by Simplo" and the first 10 digits of the barcode is "BT00607108" just like your one. Can we update the firmware somehow?

Thanks, at least I'm not alone with this problem!

EDIT: The 1.28 Bios update says "Improves charging of the simplo battery." so thats why i think its a bios problem. PS, sorry I replied a bit late, internet was down for a few days.

dragonuk · 20 Nov 2011 at 17:27

I contacted acer and told them about my battery.

I'm sending it to them and they are going to update the firmware on it. Will see if that fixes it.

Ash98 · 20 Nov 2011 at 21:39

Cool, if it does solve the problem could you give me steps on how to send it to acer? Thanks

lewism · 21 Nov 2011 at 21:36

Still using mines, Starting to get a little bit tatty though. Think its time to clean the paintwork and screen.

playagiron · 22 Nov 2011 at 13:38

I'm also still using mine after eon and half a year, still very happy with it.
Compared to the new ones on the market, it is not the strongest in terms of processing power but still largely sufficient for most of my work.

I have not found many notebooks <1.6kg with 5h+ battery life and a 3D graphics adapter at less than 1000 Euros, so hope it will live on for a loong time to come.

Only problem I noted it that the plastic palm cover starts to wear of (the color comes of on the very outer border and next to the touch pad on the right side, most likely from finger scrolling. I wonder if it will be possible to replace the cover one day its gets too ugly...

GaryS · 30 Nov 2011 at 21:48

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced the following with their 8371, when I turn it on unplugged from the mains on battery it works for up to 30 mins before freezing and I have to hold down the power to reset. It never happens on AC power. Could it be a dodgy battery, connection or something?

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

dragonuk · 6 Dec 2011 at 01:45

So got my battery back today from acer support.

And its just the exact same. Won't power up from the battery.

They didn't tell me what they did or anything. So don't know what the people at the service centre did. Still doesnt work anyway

Rambo · 6 Dec 2011 at 14:47

@dragonuk: that's awful!

Perhaps it has something to do with the battery contacts (either on the battery or the notebook itself)??