The Acer 3400, yet another Ferrari-themed laptop
By Peter Rojas 
posted November 15th 2004 1:58PM
posted November 15th 2004 1:58PM
Does Acer do anything besides Ferrari-themed laptops these days? Sometimes it sure doesn't seem like it, this latest one is something like their third or fourth one of these. Anyway, besides the red casing and Ferrari logo, they're packing their new 3400 with AMD's new 64-bit 3000+ processor, a 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card, built-in 802.11g WiFi, Bluetooth, 512MB of RAM, a DVD+-RW drive, and a 15-inch display.
Just when you thought it was safe to come out, along comes this crap.
Regardless of whether or not the Ferrari branding looks silly, these Acer Ferrari series laptops are actually very good gaming machines and have a strong following among laptop gamers. Check out the discussions at http://notebookforums.com if you want to learn more about the mobile gaming culture.
I want a Pontiac Bonneville themes laptop. I'm talkin my first car, a 1981 Hooptie! Big phat display, phatty hard drive, the works... :) And, to keep with the theme, terrible battery life (like gas milage).
-Dennis
Go and get a HP zv5000z instead. Much cheaper and even better system specs. Who wants to pay $600 extra to get a Ferrari Logo on a notebook? Common people.
Yeah Stefan, I'd love to have the NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX440 that comes with the HP ZV5000Z over a Radeon 9700 [which comes with this stunner]. It's all moot anyway, NVIDIA is about to roll out 6800's for laptops, so if you want to have a great gaming experience on a laptop wait until Q1 2005.
Seriously.
And it's nice to see early adoption of A64's. I employ a one for my desktop machine and there really is nothing like it, and some of them can overclock a mile.
i.e. I was able to overclock my 1.8ghz A64 2800 to 2.4ghz, on air, with a few aftermarket fans and heatsinks. :)
Do you guys see A64 becoming successful this early? It sure seems like AMD has hit a homer.
I forgot to mention the awesome LCD monitor you'll get with the HP; 15.4" WVA WUXGA (1920x1200)
Stefan, what are you high on? The specs and "better preformance" is not on par with this laptop. That 1900xwhatever resolution doesn't exist for the model you prescribe. Google the specs of the modelname your referring to and you'll see your misquoting.
Stop trolling.
Who buys this Ferrari themed crap. I always am seeing Ferrari laptops, camera, etc. In my opinion it looks stupid.
I don't know if you were joking, Stefan, but the mx440 is at least 2 mobile generations behind the mobility radeon 9700 and is nowhere near the performance level. plus it has half the ram
Christopher,
Go to the HP web site and price out one of those babies. For $1849 you'll get the above mentioned monitor plus a Ahtlon 64 3700, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, Wireless and the whole nine yards.
Christopher,
Look, here is the quote from HP:
Operating System Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional with SP2
Processor AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3700+ (2.40 GHz)
Display 15.4" WVA WUXGA (1920x1200)
Graphics Card 64MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) 4 440 Go +1394 & 5-in-1
Memory 1.0GB DDR SDRAM (2x512MB)
Hard Drive 80 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
Primary CD/DVD Drive FREE Upgrade from 8X DVD to DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
Networking 54g(TM) Integ. Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
Productivity Software Microsoft(R) Works/Money
Primary Battery 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
price $1,899.00 * mail-in rebate − $50.00
price after rebate $1,849.00
OK your right, but you can still get a comparable notebook from other companies for $400 less.
Uhh, these Ferrari laptops all include a better video card than that HP machine. Even my now year-old Ferrari 3000 has a better card - the mobile R9200 with 128Mb of RAM. And oh yeah, they all include DVD+/-R drive too.
What's that HP? *free upgrade* to DVD/CD-RW combo? Oh boy!
One negative thing though -
It takes several minutes after initial startup to blow away all the idiotic Ferrari-theme sound/video/desktop/links garbage installed on the Ferrari machines. Once you get them back to basic Windows or your preferred Linux distro, they are rock-solid.
Thankfully, most owners are less enamoured of the sound of a F1 engine than
Rob Enderle seemed to be in his review.. :P
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1472864,00.asp
http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/06/190241&mode=thread
the hp does look like a pretty nice notebook for the price --- with the debilitating exception of the graphics card. It's like these guys picked ultra highend parts in every category, and then just decided to throw in a three year old graphics card. What the hell!
Just order a zd7000 I got mine well under $1600.00 after discounts and coupons and have a GO5700, 17" screen 1680x1050 1Gb PC3200 memory, 7200rpm drive and 3.2Ghz. All it needs is a rear view mirror to see that ACER Ferrari POS in, :)
Has anyone heard if the Acer Ferrari line will offer a wide screen aspect, or is one out already that I've missed?
RW
Well it appears that I am not the only one so peeved at Acer theyre head spins.
I got my travelmate 1yr and 8 mos ago and always treated it like gold...my second laptop...was my baby.
However there was always an overheating issue with it that acer simply told me that I needed to make sure there was proper ventilation....ok so I put the laptop up on a rack that was wire and was 6 inches up high.
This made typing a challenge but to keep it from getting hot I sufficed convienence over a overheated machine....which consequently still got oven hot....could have baked cookies under that rack below the laptop.
Another call to acer and now I get this "all laptops get hot if left on too long"....um excuse me but a half an hour is too long?
I think not!
I had gotten this laptop through this technical school that included these oh so wonderful acers as part of sighning up.
So I had some ammo.
I called the other students and found that with three people, they had the same issues as I did.
I cannot stress enough how much I think that Acers suck!
One person sold his acer laptop because of its issues of getting too hot and shutting down. The other has sent his in for repairs to the mb because it simply got too hot. The other still has hers but she hardly ever uses it because....you guess it...it gets hot.
I am now looking at a very dead laptop that is just barely 8 months out of warranty and no relief in sight.
I cannot afford to get another and my credit...like acer....sucks so getting one on credit is way out of the question.
I'm smelling a class action lawsuit my friends...if I can muster enough people, I think that its dooable.
email me if you have these issues on your acer laptop at network2004@comcast.net
Well, what in the world is wrong with fairness here?
This Acer Ferrari 3400 has a few things I like (reason why I ordered two.
- Third iteration of design and processor, whatever they did not figure out in the first two, they should have corrected on this third gen.
- The superd Athlon 64, undoutebly just barely above similar P4 chips, but ahead is ahead.
- Very good (if not excellent) video card.. 128 MB, heck my iMac G5 has 64 MB in a 20" display/
- Great DVD Burner
- Beauty and class
They only down points maybe a standard 4K RPM drive but at least it is big and only 512 MB RAM.
But yo ucan get it for 1,895 at PC Mall.... if you want more then you are an idiot for thinking you are going to.
Well, what in the world is wrong with fairness here?
This Acer Ferrari 3400 has a few things I like (reason why I ordered two.
- Third iteration of design and processor, whatever they did not figure out in the first two, they should have corrected on this third gen.
- The superd Athlon 64, undoutebly just barely above similar P4 chips, but ahead is ahead.
- Very good (if not excellent) video card.. 128 MB, heck my iMac G5 has 64 MB in a 20" display/
- Great DVD Burner
- Beauty and class
They only down points maybe a standard 4K RPM drive but at least it is big and only 512 MB RAM.
But yo ucan get it for 1,895 at PC Mall.... if you want more then you are an idiot for thinking you are going to.
Well, what in the world is wrong with fairness here?
This Acer Ferrari 3400 has a few things I like (reason why I ordered two.
- Third iteration of design and processor, whatever they did not figure out in the first two, they should have corrected on this third gen.
- The superd Athlon 64, undoutebly just barely above similar P4 chips, but ahead is ahead.
- Very good (if not excellent) video card.. 128 MB, heck my iMac G5 has 64 MB in a 20" display/
- Great DVD Burner
- Beauty and class
They only down points maybe a standard 4K RPM drive but at least it is big and only 512 MB RAM.
But yo ucan get it for 1,895 at PC Mall.... if you want more then you are an idiot for thinking you are going to.
>
Obviously written by someone that will never be able to afford anything Ferrari.
I configured a Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 with essentially the same specs as this Acer. It was $2,965 after a $400 rebate. The only real differences were the Dell's 17" 1920x1200 display, 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6800 Ultra, and wimpier Pentium-M 2.13 GHz processor. Not to mention that the Ferrari looks infinitely better. If someone can configure a computer like the Ferrari with a better price, please. Let me know.