• 

  Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi

  Punit Lodaya, Mar 08, 2007 1524 hrs IST

  A laptop which won't burn a hole in your pocket and at the same time offers a fair amount of features and performance.

  Affordable Laptop, Good Design, Targus Bag Bundled Along.

  Average Performance, Low Battery Life, Bit Heavy.

  Expert Rating :

  

  

Page 1 - Introduction Page 2 - Specifications & Bundle Page 3 - The Layout Page 4 - Benchmarks - 3D Mark 03, PC Mark 05 & SiSoft Sandra 07 Page 5 - Final Words

I was hunting for a laptop which won't burn a hole in my pocket and the same time offer me a fair amount of features and performance. To be a little more specific, I was looking for the Compaq V3155AU. But, I was informed that the model is out production, which may come as a shock to many as well. So, I started looking for other models. I wasn't too keen on spending beyond 40K, so my options were limited to low end laptops.

At last, I decided to bank on Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi. It is the Acer equivalent to Compaq V3155AU plus/minus few features. Without wasting time on my shopping adventure, let's hop on to the review.

The Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi is based on AMD Turion 64 MK-36. The Turion 64 MK-36 is a single core CPU based on Socket S1, which was exclusive to Turion 64 X2 dual core CPUs. The Socket S1 is basically a revamped version of Socket 754 supporting dual core CPUs and dual channel memory. It also features 15.4" WXGA TFT LCD screen with the gloss coating which Acer refers to as CrystalBrite. Overall, the laptop looks and feels good, if not excellent.

It continues to have the Folio design which features chic lines, smooth curves, and a cool metallic sheen which is found is most Aspire series of notebooks from Acer.

The Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi originally comes with 512 MB DDRII 533 MHz RAM. That was not adequate for my needs. Hence I put in another 512 MB stick which brought up the total to 1GB. I will differentiate the cost in last part of the article. However, there are two things to note: first, all the benchmarks were conducted on 1 GB RAM, instead of the default 512 MB. Second, the integrated Xpress 1100 graphic core consumes 128MB from the system memory, which leaves a total of 896 MB. We tried changing the number to a lower value in the BIOS and the Catalyst Driver Suite, but nothing was able to change the original value. We have requested Acer for updated BIOS for the notebook, which we hope will solve the problem. But for now, we didn't have much of an option.

The Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi comes with Linux OS loaded. However, for our benchmarks, we installed a copy of Windows XP Professional with SP2 and updated with Autopatcher.

Let's take a look at the specifications.

Page 1 - Introduction Page 2 - Specifications & Bundle Page 3 - The Layout Page 4 - Benchmarks - 3D Mark 03, PC Mark 05 & SiSoft Sandra 07 Page 5 - Final Words

• Which desktop web browser do you use?

• Internet Explorer

  Firefox

  Chrome

  Safari

  Opera

  Other (specify in comments)

  Poll Results View Previous Polls