i'm pumped...ordered new laptop

xXaNaXx

Gawd
Joined
May 15, 2003
Messages
954
so i was researching laptops that i could get that would play games decently for when i got my tax return in, and i came across the Acer Aspire AS8943G-9319. it's pretty much the best system for gaming that i could find for the price.....and it looks sexy as hell too, IMO.

then as i was waiting for some of my paperwork to arrive in the mail so i could complete my taxes, it sells out.... :(

so i spend a few more weeks poring over other laptops and trying to make a decision on one, and have it pretty much narrowed down to either the HP Pavilion dv7-4280us (on sale at the moment for $899 direct from HP, btw) or the MSI FX700-056US for $879.

i check my bank today and my tax refund finally got here, so i started going back over my wishlist at the egg, and had pretty much decided on the HP system, when i decide to see if the Acer is available anywhere else than the egg.

so i scroll up to click on it and copy the model # to do a google search, and......i don't see the "out of stock" text next to it anymore!!! :eek::eek::eek:

needless to say (after still doing a quick google search to see if it could be found elsewhere for cheaper), i ordered it. it should be here either tuesday or wednesday, and i can't wait! it's gonna be hard to find another system with the specs AND looks that this one has for cheaper than this....

specs:

Intel Core i7 740QM (1.73GHz)
18.4" LED Backlit 1920x1080 resolution
4GB DDR3 1066 (upgradable to 16GB in 4 slots)
500GB 5400 RPM (plus the capability to add a 2nd hard drive...i.e., SSD for OS/Programs)
Blu-ray reader/DVD Burner combo drive
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 w/2GB DDR3 VRAM
Gigabit LAN
802.11b/g/n WLAN


does anyone else have this system that can give me some feedback on what i can expect from it? i mainly play WoW when i play games (so this one is probably a bit of overkill, although it should let me turn everything that i want to max settings), but i also wanted something that i could play any upcoming games that strike my fancy....i was thinking about giving Rift a try, so that should benefit from this system's specs nicely.
 
Looks like a solid buy - though I wouldn't expect to run Rift at high settings, it could run well with a heavy amount of tweaking (tons of graphic options in Rift, a lot of which kill performance on laptops I've come to find..). WoW should run pretty well at Medium to High, I've found that water reflections and full screen glow effect give me the hardest performance hit, so High or Ultra with those two things turned down/off should work pretty well I think. :)
 
yeah, i played in the Rift beta, and it was giving my C2D 3.6Ghz/Radeon HD6870 desktop system some troubles at the higher settings, so i don't expect to try running that on all high settings on this laptop...but i think it should still run fairly strongly at mid-range settings without much trouble....especially considering the resolution is a little lower than my desktop system (1920x1080 vs 1920x1200).

as for WoW, i will likely stick to the 2nd-highest water settings (Good), with shadow quality set to the lowest, and turn down the ground clutter to low (don't like all that stuff on the screen, anyway....gnomes like to hide in that shit, lol)......so i'm betting that most of the rest of the settings should be fine at either ultra or the next step down without much worry.

i do intend to replace the hard drive with a 320GB 7200 RPM drive (the one that's currently in my econo-lappy) and just use the one that comes with it for storage....then eventually upgrade to a SSD once i get a bit more money to do so (along with either 8 or 16 GB of DDR3 1333).....and more or less as soon as i get it, i will be reloading Win7 (and ONLY Win7) without all the bloatware crap that most manufacturers like to stick on there, so that should help improve the performance a little as well.
 
You can likely have the details for wow at full blast. Before I took a break, I ran the game at full blast on my 5870m.
 
well, i got my laptop yesterday (last night) when i got home from work....haven't had a lot of time to do much with it yet, because i had to go through the process of creating the recovery & drivers/applications discs (5 DVD's total, including burning time & verification). i also went through the process of uninstalling a bunch of the bloatware/trials that are included, but ended up running into some issues when trying to update the video card drivers/software....enough so that i ended up just running the recovery image to put it back to defaults so i can start over.

so far my main complaint with the system is the screen....not the resolution or quality, but the glossiness....i HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE super-glossy screens......if there's ANY lights on anywhere nearby, it picks it up and puts a glare on the screen, which bugs the HELL out of me. i'm probably gonna end up trying to find a cut-to-fit anti-glare coating that i can put on it, it's really that bad. anyone have any suggestions on a good matte screen protector? it's LED-backlit and gets REALLY bright, so i'm not worried about loss of light output, especially since i turn it down to about 50% already anyway, and i'm not a professional photographer or anything that needs super-accurate color reproduction.

otherwise, the picture looks great (thankfully, no dead pixels!), even if there is a little bit of viewing angle issue...but i will mostly be the only one looking at it, so anyone else looking over my shoulder will just have to deal with it.... :D

gonna mess around with it more when i get home tonight, get all the windows updates installed, uninstall all the bloatware/trialware (again), set up all my preferences, install my essential programs (firewall/antivirus and a few others), then do a defrag on it and create a backup image of the installation that i can reload on a whim if needed and not have to go through all that crap again.

after that (if i still have time before going to bed), i'll probably load up some WoW and a couple other games and give it a proper test-drive...you know, actually start having fun with it. ;)
 
^^^
Yeah, I just ordered a new notebook and cutting out all glossy screen options made the choice easy.

I simply will not ever have a glossy screen on a notebook which is something that will be in all sorts of lighting conditions. Desktop is great with a glossy for vibrant colors but it stays in a dark corner in the room.
 
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