Speed of 751h - is it usable?

[Wyrd]

I've got the opportunity to pick up a 751h before leaving on a business trip (2 wks), but no shops in my area allow me to see a running version of the (damn) machine! Not even boot it up.

So I'm hoping I can get a little bit of help from you users to decide.

So how long does your Acer Aspire One 751h take to boot into Windows XP? Do you have 1 or 2 Gb ram?

How long does it take to shutdown ? I've heard the horror story of 1 minute to boot and 2 minutes to shutdown on the italian review.

Is it usable to watch the usual torrented tv shows (like those encoded by eztv) without shear or dropped frames? your cpu usage while watching that?

Can you basically use it to work on without going nuts ? 2 tabs on Firefox, a word doc and winamp without it feeling ... slow / underpowered?

Did you overclock it? If so, what difference did it make to the questions above?

Thanks a lot for your answers, I hope it will help me and other users out. I'm torn between getting this one now, or just keeping my regular laptop (6lbs+) and waiting for the next generation.

 

[Bols]

So far I would say performance is slightly better than expected. Boots to desktop within a minute, shuts down in shorter time (never timed it though). More important for me: it suspends and recovers in about 5 seconds. This is after all the bloatware has been removed, though. Antivirus, Google desktop, and all that stuff must be uninstalled.

Two or more tabs in firefox is not a problem. I've now got 2GB ram, but it worked like a charm on 1 too. To me, It does not feel sluggish in regular usage. Obvious exception: HD/HQ video using Flash in a browser (youtube or similar) simply will not work. And regular 720p video is on the absolute limit of the processor capability, but rumors are that hardware-decoding fixes that. I overclocked to 1.55GHz, which made 720p acceptable. However, it is not prime95-stable on anything over 1.42Ghz.

I guess this may not be the computer for everybody, I believe it is necessary to consider how many cpu-intensive background processes and tray applications is installed. But I intend to use this for some serious work (programming while on travel), and think it seems like a good solution. To me, the display and weight more than compensates for the cpu-limitations.

Bottom line: no serious number-crunching, video editing, or youtube HD blooper-videos...but sufficient for browsing, office-work, and hopefully programming.

 

[Wyrd]

Thanks for that answer. I'll go and pick one up.

For programming, I guess we'll just have to take a 2-5 minute break every time we launch a compile...

 

[Wyrd]

Just for others, I'm going to answer my own questions now I've had a couple of hours with the machine:

So how long does your Acer Aspire One 751h take to boot into Windows XP? 45 seconds to desktop, wifi ready in 60s.
Do you have 1 or 2 Gb ram? 1Gb
How long does it take to shutdown ? 25 to 30s

Is it usable to watch the usual torrented tv shows (like those encoded by eztv) without shear or dropped frames? Works perfectly with VLC even reading from a Flash USB Key. No lost frames reported by vlc.
your cpu usage while watching that? 15% normal size, 30-50% full screen.
Can you basically use it to work on without going nuts ? 2 tabs on Firefox, a word doc and winamp without it feeling ... slow / underpowered?
No issues here. Works great.

Did you overclock it? If so, what difference did it make to the questions above?
Not yet, I'll report back when I'll had the time for some testing.

my Issues:
My HDD did a ticking noise for several hours, with a few intermittant beeps. A crash and a blue screen from disk IO followed. If this happens again, I'll return it to the store. Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics reports that all SMART HDD tests are passed with success. I'll run a full test as soon as possible to check on the health of the HDD.

Does your HDD make any kind of noise? Beep? Or cause a pause in your browsing?

 

[hamsterhead]

Hmm...no strange HDD sounds for me.

Glad you're enjoying it besides that, though.

As for 720p...hmm...I wish I was smarter to explain this better but...it seems different aspet ratio clips run better than others? Ones that leave black bars at the top and bottom seem to be running at full frame rate with Media Player Classic (there could be a dropped frame here or there, but I wasn't seeing it...I do think it was pretty close to 100% CPU useage at the time though), but those that full the full screen (TV episodes in 720p, for example) aren't getting a good enough FPS for acceptable viewing. Now, this is just with media player classic and the Klite codecs...I had tweaked around with other things, but I somehow made my video start tearing, so went back to this.

Flash video...I read somewhere else (I think a sony vaio p board) that if you right click and uncheck enable hardware acceleration, that it gives a bit better framerate. That didn't make sense to me, but I tried it, and I think it really did help (granted it was like midnight and I was groggy).

BTW, I'm using google chrome instead of firefox and find it pretty zippy as well.

 

[Bols]

Hmm...no strange HDD sounds for me.

Glad you're enjoying it besides that, though.

As for 720p...hmm...I wish I was smarter to explain this better but...it seems different aspet ratio clips run better than others? Ones that leave black bars at the top and bottom seem to be running at full frame rate with Media Player Classic (there could be a dropped frame here or there, but I wasn't seeing it...I do think it was pretty close to 100% CPU useage at the time though), but those that full the full screen (TV episodes in 720p, for example) aren't getting a good enough FPS for acceptable viewing. Now, this is just with media player classic and the Klite codecs...I had tweaked around with other things, but I somehow made my video start tearing, so went back to this.

Not too weird. The black bars means that the clip is somewhere around 1280x540, which is less work to decode than 1280x720.
However, see my other post about this: DXVA actually works. My 751 now decodes 1080p, smooth as butter with no dropped frames, while using only 15-20% cpu.
I needed the absolutely latest GMA500 drivers directly from Intel, and the Cyberlink DVD 8 codec. I'm on Windows 7 right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it works on XP too.

 

[RiXst3r]

Where did you get the latest windows 7 drivers? EDIT: n/m... found them: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product ... 1&lang=eng

I switched back to XP because I couldn't find any windows 7 drivers other than the ones that come down windows update, which work pretty good...

I am sticking with XP now though for a while... boot up time is down to only 28 seconds, 13 second shut down time, and suspend/resume is like 4 seconds! I also wrote some batch files using command line options for setfsb to keep the unit clocked at a stable 1.4ghz... and then use "hibernate trigger" to trigger that batch file anything the computer comes awake.

 

[Felix[GER]]

Greetings from Germany,

I´m glad to found a board/community for my new Netbook. The Acer 751 is avalible here since the end of may, and i got one of the first. It´s a white one, with the Z520 CPU, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD and the 5200mh 6-Cell battery. Paid 429€ for it.

Actually using Windows 7 RC1 on it, works very well. Thanks to this board, i was messing around with some drivers and SetFSB. But the MSI wind (N270, 1GB) my brother is using feels a bit smoother in Windows 7. Maybe you could describe what drivers you are using (i.e. VGA, Chipset) or if you did some other Tweaks (disable some Aero features or so).

For Video Playback i got the best Result with MediaPlayer Classic HC and a CoreACV-Codec. The 720p Trailers i got from Divx7 runs completly smooth. Thanks for the Driver Bols and Rick

Here are some are some screenshots why i love my Acer 751. With that HD resolution you can really "work" on these Netbooks, what is the main purpuse for me as a student.

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/6517/desktop2h.jpg
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/8476/desktop1h.jpg

As you can see, i´m using Google Chrome as my main browser. Mainly because i like the arrangement of the Tabs over other browsers. I installed an extension called Adsweep which blocks advertising (especially Flash banners) very reliable.

Greetings,
Felix