I'm all in favour of a cloud computing future and all that, but for the present, if I have hard disk troubles, I will probably need a Windows 7 restore disc. Acer doesn't supply one with the 1825PT, and even if it did, how would you use it without a drive? Acer's documentation says that I should make my own restore disc straight away using an external optical drive. Well thanks, that's another £66 I didn't realise I'd have to spend.
Well built and versatile
I have another complaint. When being used in conventional notebook mode, the Aspire 1825PT tends to rock backwards when you are using touchscreen gestures. You might say this is only to be expected in a lightweight notebook, but it doesn't feel so light after holding it for five minutes in one hand, I can assure you. It weighs as much as two and half iPads.
The weight is mainly due to the big battery. Acer says it should last eight hours of normal use between recharges. In our standard Reg Hardware lab test - showing a 45-minute video on continuous loop - the Aspire 1825PT kept going for five hours ten minutes before switching safely into hibernation.
Of course, the iPad will play video for almost double that, but it's not yet ready to take its place alongside full-size notebooks as a productivity machine. The 1825PT, on the other hand, is.
Verdict
This is a well-built notebook with reasonable performance compared with general PCs but really quite powerful for its diminutive size. The tablet-mode swivel screen is versatile and genuinely useful for portable applications that make use of Windows 7 touchscreen functions. The notebook's lack of a CD/DVD drive is understandable but annoying just the same, so make sure you buy an external USB optical drive if you don't already own one, otherwise you risk losing your installed copy of Windows 7 forever. ®
More Touchscreen Notebook Reviews |
|||
 Dell
Latitude XT2 XFR |
 Samsung
NB30 |
 Toshiba
Satellite U500-1EX |
 Dell
Studio 17 |
Acer Aspire 1825PT
COMMENTS
CD Drive
WTF is up with the Reg Hardware reviewer and banging on about "missing" CD drives? I have one in my laptop and used it last over 6 months ago. Windows 7 can be installed from USB, and almost everything else can be downloaded or sent via email. Please get the reviewers to state WHY they NEED a CD drive?!
CD's are so 90's.
http://edge.technet.com/Media/Installing-Win7-using-a-USB-Stick/
Touchscreen Ubuntu?
Windows 7 meh, not bothered about Windows even if it is the most reasonable version since NT 3.51. What about sticking Ubuntu on it, what's the touchscreen support like for that? (even with the netbook remix big icons which works a treat on a 7" 1st gen Asus eee netbook).
From a touchscreen point of view if its too heavy to hold and wobbles about if you have it on a desk then really what use is the touchscreen apart from being a bit gimmicky? The iPad is light, fast, long battery life and well suited to mobile applications (e.g. form filling, presentations, email, browsing, watching tv on the loo) and for the same price you get the top end device .. so I'm not sure if its worth the extra few hundred on top of a normal notebook price for the touchscreen element of the Acer even though I'm sure the hardware build is good .. its stuck in the same mould as the other Bill Gates Tablets of old albeit with a better hardware spec ... its just not as touchy or mobily as an iPad, hmm.
The only time I use a CD/DVD drive these days is for ripping media or a new OS install, everything else comes over the network (Wifi,3G or wired) and if you don't trust an outsourced cloud then just connect a NAS or file server (I've a NFS'ed ZFS server with 9Tb of RAIDZed usable space) and run it yourself. USB DVD drives are really cheap if you don't go for the ultra slimline versions and you only need one 8-)
Had this tablet for a month now - mini review
Bought mind from simplyacer.com for £510 +VAT a month ago. I thought the touchscreen would be a bit of a gimmick but have found it so much more intuitive and easier to interact with windows and icons using my finger - far less effort than using the smallish touchpad.
The screen is quite sensitive and the onscreen keyboard isn't as bad as I thought for typing, although I always switch to the real keyboard for extensive CMD prompt or email stuff.
I used it in a datacentre in tablet mode in portrait with the virtual keyboard at the bottom of the screen. It's the nearest I'll get to being a Star Trek engineer with a touch pad mobile device, connecting it into switches to interact with LANs, walking around using wifi to talk with engineers and most importantly to order from Pizza Hut online.
After 2 weeks of light use a piece of rubber fell off that helps to lock the screen flush after coming out of tablet mode. Not good. I've pushed it back in and because I'm now VERY mindful of it there hasn't been a problem since.
As an ordinary laptop it's terrific. Very small, lovely hi-res screen, lots of ram, fast cpu and 9 hours of battery life if used economically. As a tablet it's impressive and Windows 7 makes it far more usable in this format than previous releases. It will impress people, especially using Microsoft Surface (pre-installed). The MS Bing/Globe/Map app is very cool to interact with but is inferior to Google Earth in terms of features. But Google Earth (like Chrome) is totally unaware of gestures and sucks in tablet mode.
The Register's reviewer was very harsh to criticise the lack of a DVD drive. IT DOESN'T NEED ONE! Microsoft have a free tool that lets you create a USB stick to install Windows from. I have a 8GB stick for that purpose with the MS Office setup file on it as well, plus other favourite software. Bish, bosh, job done! It installs quicker from USB than DVD anyway. (All licensed I must add!)
I get his point about not being able to recover Windows if it dies, I would be annoyed about that if I didn't have my own licensed copy of Windows to install in the event of it going t*ts up.
Tablet PC review that doesnt discuss tablet features
Any info on how sensitive the screen is or if there are dead areas near the edges? The stuff on the CDROM drive is just trolling in a review to generate comments, surely.
