Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

dragonuk · 16 Dec 2010 at 13:10

johnnyfinlandia said:
Yep I have to be quick .. I can get it for £340 with the discount and £412 or less for the 3810TG from the same shop with the SAME processor (or it says SU9400 ?!?).

screen is a plus. I have a Lenovo T61 which I have used for work for 3 years which has been excellent I must admit. The HDMI is the only real stopping point as I have a spare WIn7 Pro on disk.

Ok well £71 extra or something for HDMI :S . Quite a lot. And you get a worse screen

johnnyfinlandia · 16 Dec 2010 at 13:12

kevpuk said:
Hevoset kurssit, I would say

Both machines offer a great spec for the money. Personally, I prefered the 8371 on : non-Glossy screen, integrated Bluetooth, 'classier' chassis (Mg alloy), and better CPU architecture.
HDMI is not so important as I have no real need to connect to external displays; larger HDD is nice, but no biggie; Win7 would be nice, but this can be rectified.....

As many, including me !, have said over the course of threads, go for the right one for you

Yes you are right .. "what is best for me" .. only stopping point was HDMI where I watch movies on one tele .. but I get round it on another tele by using USB (Sony TV). I might put up with that for the benefit of better spec. I thought both had the alloy chassis ?

johnnyfinlandia · 16 Dec 2010 at 13:14

kevpuk said:
Hevoset kurssit, I would say

QUOTE]

Missed that .. heh heh .. I am English living in Finland, but I appreciate the comment "horses for courses" for anyone who can't translate quickly

tbz_ck · 16 Dec 2010 at 14:10

My 3810TGZ has a great chassis

It looks all magnesium'y !

johnnyfinlandia · 16 Dec 2010 at 15:12

gone for the 8371 .. not sure if order went hrough as it showed 0 stock

Paul11 · 16 Dec 2010 at 15:16

they have all gone..

dragonuk · 16 Dec 2010 at 16:17

still shows 11 left here

haz_pro · 16 Dec 2010 at 17:50

my screen still seems to be flickering.

AHH not happy bunny, if i send it off i bet i wont get it back for months!

EDIT: Doesnt seem to happen on full brightness, i really dont want to send it off so i might just put up with it always being on full brightness.

What are the chances its the screen inverter already going?

Culinia · 16 Dec 2010 at 19:10

dragonuk said:
still shows 11 left here

Make that 10 -- I just ordered one

(said 11 left here)

fanphobic · 16 Dec 2010 at 19:56

Fan in AC mode

Am I right in thinking that there is no hope of getting the fan to kick in at a higher temperature than 35C when the 8371 is plugged into AC?

I'm pleased with lightness and speed of the 8371; the only fly in the ointment is the aggravating fan noise which kicks in quickly on AC. So for me it's really a battery-only machine at this point. Which is sort of OK since I work a lot in cafés and it's so much more productive than my good old EeePC 1000H. I suspect if it was quieter, I would be using it for my desk machine as well.

I have tried dragonuk's modified bios - thanks for this - but the official 1.18 is a better bet for me since it's quieter in battery mode for some reason, and as far as I can tell the modded bios makes no real difference in AC mode.

I guess it's not worth trying to persuade Acer to do something about the fan noise in AC mode? Since it's an old model it may not be worth their while...

Thanks for any insight!

Techn · 16 Dec 2010 at 20:09

does anyone know of a good price for the 3810? i cant find any :confused:

they seem to have all gone up in price significantly.

haz_pro · 16 Dec 2010 at 20:28

fanphobic said:
Am I right

SNIP

Thanks for any insight!

On one of the modded bios it doesnt kick in til 45 i think, and that is on AC and batter i believe. IIRC it was said that the fan speed table is the same for AC and battery on the 8371.

fanphobic · 16 Dec 2010 at 20:36

haz_pro said:
On one of the modded bios it doesnt kick in til 45 i think, and that is on AC and batter i believe. IIRC it was said that the fan speed table is the same for AC and battery on the 8371.

Thanks - I'm a bit confused because there was a comment by dragonuk about not be able to do anything about the fan coming on at 35C on AC, and that seemed to be consistent with what I was seeing. But previous messages seemed to imply that the fan tables applied to both AC and battery.

dragonuk · 16 Dec 2010 at 20:55

fanphobic said:
Thanks - I'm a bit confused because there was a comment by dragonuk about not be able to do anything about the fan coming on at 35C on AC, and that seemed to be consistent with what I was seeing. But previous messages seemed to imply that the fan tables applied to both AC and battery.

Yeah I did say that somewhere but a new method has come about and so the fan table for AC can be changed to match battery.

If you try one of the modded bios in this thread a few pages back you will see it stops the fan noise

fanphobic · 17 Dec 2010 at 12:46

dragonuk said:
Yeah I did say that somewhere but a new method has come about and so the fan table for AC can be changed to match battery.

If you try one of the modded bios in this thread a few pages back you will see it stops the fan noise

Thanks, I did try the modded bios at http://www.mediafire.com/?qsn4aoovoba2kuo again this morning in case I had downloaded it wrongly, and I got the same behaviour as when I last tried it; the fan kicks in at around 35C according to Core Temp, both on AC and battery. With 1.18, on AC it comes on at 35C and on battery it's probably 40-something (I just tried to get the fan to come on when on battery and failed).

I wonder if slight differences between models (maybe with and without discrete graphics) is giving different behaviour for different people. Mine's the plain 8371, 1.4Ghz model. It's puzzling because it implies the machine is pretty much ignoring the thresholds in the modded bios. Anyone else have a similar experience?

dragonuk · 17 Dec 2010 at 12:51

fanphobic said:
Thanks, I did try the modded bios at http://www.mediafire.com/?qsn4aoovoba2kuo again this morning in case I had downloaded it wrongly, and I got the same behaviour as when I last tried it; the fan kicks in at around 35C according to Core Temp, both on AC and battery. With 1.18, on AC it comes on at 35C and on battery it's probably 40-something (I just tried to get the fan to come on when on battery and failed).

I wonder if slight differences between models (maybe with and without discrete graphics) is giving different behaviour for different people. Mine's the plain 8371, 1.4Ghz model. It's puzzling because it implies the machine is pretty much ignoring the thresholds in the modded bios. Anyone else have a similar experience?

Yeah that is the right one. And you flashed it from windows yeah ?

I think I might know why (and it is to do with because you dont have discrete graphics) I'll upload another bios for you now please try it and tell me how it goes.

fanphobic · 17 Dec 2010 at 13:02

dragonuk said:
Yeah that is the right one. And you flashed it from windows yeah ?

I think I might know why (and it is to do with because you dont have discrete graphics) I'll upload another bios for you now please try it and tell me how it goes.

Thanks for the incredibly quick response. Yes, I flashed it using Windows XP.

Glad to hear you may have a fix - looking forward to trying it.

dragonuk · 17 Dec 2010 at 13:03

Ok here it is. Try this bios. Should work fine. Just flash from windows again. Let me know what fan is like with AC

For Acer 8371 (without discrete ATI Graphics)
DOWNLOAD - http://www.mediafire.com/?9pgaf9pkacaca1a

fanphobic · 17 Dec 2010 at 13:43

dragonuk said:
Ok here it is. Try this bios. Should work fine. Just flash from windows again. Let me know what fan is like with AC

For Acer 8371 (without discrete ATI Graphics)
DOWNLOAD - http://www.mediafire.com/?9pgaf9pkacaca1a

Crikey, you've cracked it!! Temperature is in the early 40's on AC and it's as quiet as a mouse. Fabulous, you've just totally transformed the usability of this machine. I don't know how you did it but... kudos!!! I'll keep testing but so far so fantastic.

Many many many thanks.

dragonuk · 17 Dec 2010 at 15:37

Glad it all worked