Acer Aspire 9500

Entertainment notebooks usually come in two sizes: large and very large. Acer’s Aspire 9500 breaks that mold with a slim 17-inch footprint that you can take on the road. It’s a very good machine for watching DVDs, listening to music, and even watching and recording TV. The system’s high-end hardware will make any multimedia maven happy.

For a 17-inch laptop, the Aspire 9500 favors a slim-and-sexy appearance over a fat all-in-one approach. A gunmetal silver-and-black exterior masks a tight form factor, which is uniquely possible for a Taiwanese manufacturer like Acer because it actually designs and builds its own notebooks, from the BIOS to the motherboards. The effort has paid off with a large notebook that’s 1.5-inches tall and weighs only 8.4 pounds.

The prime function of the Aspire is entertainment, which it can do well. The glossy 17-inch LCD supports a WXGA+ resolution of up to 1440 x 900 pixels. DVD video playback looks flawless thanks to ATI’s Mobility Radeon X700 graphics processor, and this system’s 3DMark03 score of 6,126 means that all but the most hard core gamers will be satisfied with the 9500’s performance when playing 3D titles.

When it comes to productivity performance, the Aspire 9500 blazes through most chores, thanks to a 2-GHz Pentium M processor and a whopping 2GB of RAM. In fact, this notebook’s MobileMark 2005 score of 251 is as high as what some dual-core notebooks turned in for this month’s cover story.

With the Wi-Fi radio turned off, the 9500 lasted for well over three hours unplugged, which is a good runtime for a desktop replacement system. The test did not run successfully with Wi-Fi on.

The entertainment software is headlined by Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition, which simplifies the entire experience of creating a music library, collecting and organizing digital photos, or watching a DVD with the ease of pushing a button. The OS is a definite bonus for neophytes who don’t like to wade through six different programs to look at their photos. Media Center dovetails nicely with the Aspire’s integrated TV tuner; for those intimidated by the thought of setting up TV on a computer, the MCE makes everything idiot-proof.

The design, functionality, and software of the Aspire 9500 are all good enough to demand your attention when shopping for a large entertainment notebook, but it’s disappointing that Acer has forgone instant-on capability here, especially considering it has total control over the BIOS and motherboard. It’s not a deal breaker, but it is a bummer.

Besides that omission, the Aspire 9500 gets a lot of little things right. Two rows of quick buttons allow you to easily access Media Center, Internet, e-mail, and other commonly used applications. On/Off buttons for both 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth help extend the battery life, so you don’t needlessly drain the power with unused wireless radios.

A 5-in-1 memory card reader joins DVI and S-Video ports on the rear. Another small improvement is the choice of a slot-loading optical drive over the traditional ejection tray; in other words, the CD/DVD drive “sucks in” discs automatically so you’ll never break another ejection tray.

Acer does not have a large presence in North America, and customer support is limited to telephone and e-mail channels, which are often difficult to locate on Acer’s Web site. However, the company is making inroads into major retail chains like Circuit City, so you’re not limited to blindly buying its notebooks over the Internet.

Overall, the Acer Aspire 9500 is an excellent notebook for entertainment enthusiasts who’d rather have a manageable size and weight over a behemoth that tries to do too much. It’s, ahem, something to aspire to.

Strengths: Big beautiful screen; SPDIF output; Plenty of USB ports.

Weaknesses: TV tuner didn’t work; Fat 32 partitions (disc restore only works with FAT 32 partitions too); No SPDIF input; lousy remote; proprietary dongles; price dropped $300 the very next week… hastening buyers remorse.

Summary: TV tuner didn’t work. Don’t expect Acer tech support to be of any help. There instructions: “reinstall and RMA”. Yeah, you’ve got a hangnail, let’s solve it with amputation.

Later found out that Mobile magazine gave Acer tech an F grade in mid 2005 (worst of the manufactures tested); I unfortunately have to concur. Luckily I drive through Temple, TX on my trips to Austin, so I can “drop in” personally if there is ever an RMA need ;-)

After substantial research and an extensive process of elimination, I found the solution.

Turns out the TV tuner circuitry doesn’t have an adequate preamp (or bad soldering) and thus requires an extremely hot signal. So even if your TV and cable modem work fine, you may need to buy a signal booster (or 2) if you have long cable runs and/or splitters in the line.

Thought the built in capture card would be hardwired to bus (maximizing speed), but later read that it’s likely wired to an internal USB port OR shares the Card bus (which can cause voltage problems). As the decoder exhibits significant delay, I think it’s wired to internal USB. So probably better/cheaper to just buy a different model and an external tuner/capture device.

The SPDIF digital out is the relatively uncommon Mini Toslink (i.e. optical) form factor. This ought to be mentioned in the documentation, as there is also “electrical” SPDIF. This caused some aggravation until I found a website were another consumer lamented how even Acer tech support didn’t even know the difference.

The laptop is quite speeding except when running Media Center or MS Moviemaker; then it’s time to get out the oars. Suggest nixing both progs and using one of the many third party alternatives.

During my TV tuner & SPDIF troubleshooting, I read that MS XP Media Center Edition has a host of crummy DRM issues that could be confused with hardware/software problems, so possible consumers may want to save themselves aggravation by not buying “Media Center” laptops.

Acer also appears to install by default its own “remote assistance” devices on their laptops, which is almost as displeasing as the inanely sized Fat 32 partitions.

I’ll continue to update.

QUICK SPECS
Acer Aspire 9500 www.acer.com/us
CPU	2-GHz Intel Pentium M 760
Operating System	Windows XP Media Center Edition
RAM/Expandable to	2GB/N/A
Hard Drive	5,400-rpm 120GB
Optical Drive	2.4X DVD+R DL 2.4X DVD+RW 2X DVD-RW 4X DVD+R 4X DVD-R 2X DVD-RW 8X DVD-ROM 10X CD-W 24X CD-R 24X CD-ROM
Display/Resolution	17-inch/WXGA+
Graphics/Video Memory	ATI Mobility Radeon X700/256MB DDR2 Video Memory
Wireless Networking	802.11b/g, Bluetooth
Ports	Five USB 2.0, FireWire, S-Video, DVI, VGA (on dongle), IR, parallel, serial, headphone, mic, line out, S/PDIF out, Gigabit Ethernet, modem
PC Card Slots	One Type II
Memory Card Slots	5-in-1 card reader
Weight	8.4 pounds
Size	15.8 x 11.3 x 1.5 inches
Service and Support	One-year parts and labor
MobileMark	251
3DMark03	6,126
Battery Life (Wi-Fi On/Off)	Could Not Run/ 3:17
Wireless Performance (5/50 feet)	10.3 Mbps/ 2.1 Mbps