Acer 8371/3810 Owners Thread

I'm sitting here with it at 53% battery with brightness on 3 and intel GPU on my 3810 with Win 7 pre-installed and it's displaying 4 hours 23. I HAVE had a genuine 8 to 9 hours out of this several times now over the month and a bit I've had it
 
Another thought, is the discrete graphics definately not on.

I think i read somewhere in this thread that there is a bug with the driver for switchable graphics meaning that sometimes even if the intel gpu is selected, the discrete will still be powered up.
 
I ran CC Cleaner to see what was running at Startup, and I've disabled a few things, stopped AVG from startup to see what happened and almost instantly Windows reported time remaining as 8+ hours so I'm suspecting that AVG was causing the issue,what Anti-Virus are other folk using as obviously I do need anti-virus software on my laptop.

Chris
 
chrismscotland said:
I ran CC Cleaner to see what was running at Startup, and I've disabled a few things, stopped AVG from startup to see what happened and almost instantly Windows reported time remaining as 8+ hours so I'm suspecting that AVG was causing the issue,what Anti-Virus are other folk using as obviously I do need anti-virus software on my laptop.

Chris
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MSE here, it's very lightweight and appears to do its job according to the few things I've read online and in the AV post in the Windows forum :)
 
LabR@t said:
This work well with Linux?
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Seems to!

Using mine with Arch Linux x64, typing on it right now :D

Battery is at 90% and showing just under 6 hours of runtime. Using the modded bios that allows selecting EITHER ATi OR Intel graphics, selected ATi, and using the latest fglrx. Screen brightness is half way up, WiFi is on!
Everything works except the fingerprint reader, no drivers, though I've not looked into that one. Apparently the microphone can be a problem too as it's attached to the webcam and not the sound card, though I've not tested that for myself.

Machine will suspend but not hibernate. Hibernating results on the machine booting from cold next time with uncleanly unmounted filesystems.

Very happy with it!
 
cokecan72 said:
MSE here, it's very lightweight and appears to do its job according to the few things I've read online and in the AV post in the Windows forum :)
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Im using AVG and it is fine :S

Is MSE microsoft security essentials? Might try that if its really lightweight.
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Well I thought stopping AVG had solved it but it seems to have gone back to 3.5 hours again, I was watching some video last night via Media Player on lowest brightness on the Intel GPU and was quoted 5-6 hours which I'm more than happy with for that sort of activity, I've been using BatteryBar Pro which seems very slow to react to changes in power consumption compared to on my netbook but then I suspect it takes time for it to "learn" the battery,

Will give MSE a try and see how it goes, also does anyone know which Media Player is most efficient? I have VLC, Windows Media and Media Player Classic installed, I had to use VLC on my netbook most of the time so that the player could utilise the Ion GPU for playback but on this I don't need that so looking for most battery life if possible.
 
Good day all,

I'm fairly new to this section of the forum so please go easy on me! Just put in an order for the 3810TG and expect to get it tomorrow :O)
I plumpted for this over the 8371 only because it had Win 7 pre installed and a 500Gig hard drive but it did push the cost up to £425 (inc vat). I assume the chassis is the same as the 8371 which I really like the look of?

Anyway, to my main question, whilst not the main purpose of acquiring this machine (as it's mainly for the missus for browsing and job related activity (teachers planning etc), I was wondering what gaming performance is like. Is it capable of running things like COD4; BF2; BC2; MOH etc at all (and preferably at medium settings), or am I being way too optimistic here? As stated, it's not crucial, but it would be a terrific bonus for me if it could run some FPS games at a playable frame rate.

The other thing I'm unclear about is the switching back and for between the onboard graphics and the ATI unit. Does this happen automatically or, in the event of it being able to run one of my shooters, do I need to manually activate the ATI card?

Thanks for any views

:O)
 
gbdtil1 said:
Good day all,

I'm fairly new to this section of the forum so please go easy on me! Just put in an order for the 3810TG and expect to get it tomorrow :O)
I plumpted for this over the 8371 only because it had Win 7 pre installed and a 500Gig hard drive but it did push the cost up to £425 (inc vat). I assume the chassis is the same as the 8371 which I really like the look of?

Anyway, to my main question, whilst not the main purpose of acquiring this machine (as it's mainly for the missus for browsing and job related activity (teachers planning etc), I was wondering what gaming performance is like. Is it capable of running things like COD4; BF2; BC2; MOH etc at all (and preferably at medium settings), or am I being way too optimistic here? As stated, it's not crucial, but it would be a terrific bonus for me if it could run some FPS games at a playable frame rate.

The other thing I'm unclear about is the switching back and for between the onboard graphics and the ATI unit. Does this happen automatically or, in the event of it being able to run one of my shooters, do I need to manually activate the ATI card?

Thanks for any views

:O)
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I play BF2 quite a bit on my 8371 at medium settings and get a reported FPS of anywhere from 40 to 70 using renderer.showfps in-game. Also I'm just running the laptop at stock (no overclocks)
 
I succumbed to temptation and ordered a 8371 while that shop still had stock @ £345 too good a deal to miss out on.

So Vista business is it that bad? I have a retail win7 dvd here that is already in use on my desktop I take it I cannot reuse that on this? Win 7 works great I understand from skimming this thread or any there any stand out issues with it? I intend to dual boot with linux most likely Debian or Cent OS and from what I have read these distro's should work albeit without the fingerprint reader.

What is the deal with bios upgrades are they essential ?
 
Personally, I don't find Vista all that bad <prepares to get pilloried :eek:>
That said, I do prefer Win7; if I had a spare copy to hand I would use it :)

As for BIOS updates, I put the latest version available on the Acer website - just as a matter of course - but now seem to have a BIOS password in place - D'OH !
 
kevpuk said:
Personally, I don't find Vista all that bad <prepares to get pilloried :eek:>
That said, I do prefer Win7; if I had a spare copy to hand I would use it :)

As for BIOS updates, I put the latest version available on the Acer website - just as a matter of course - but now seem to have a BIOS password in place - D'OH !
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I had never used Vista and expected it to be dreadful from all I had read but it actually seemed alright although I have got Windows 7 on it now there is a chance I might swap back to Vista Business.

On another note I see that from the Discs included with the laptop its possible to downgrade from Vista to XP Professional, by calling Microsoft when activating the key, I wonder if I'd be able to install this on another partition for a Dual Boot or if it would wipe the whole HD when trying to install.
 
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