Acer Aspire AS5542-5416 LX.PHA02.110 Notebook PC – AMD Turion II Dual-Core M500 2.20GHz, 4GB DDR2, 320GB HDD, Blu-Ray/DVDRW, 15.6″ Display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Blue, AMD Vision Premium

3 Responses to “Acer Aspire AS5542-5416 LX.PHA02.110 Notebook PC – AMD Turion II Dual-Core M500 2.20GHz, 4GB DDR2, 320GB HDD, Blu-Ray/DVDRW, 15.6″ Display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Blue, AMD Vision Premium”

1. D. Muniak says:

   May 6, 2010 at 2:09 pm

   I bought the Acer Aspire AS5542-5416 for two basic reasons. I watch a lot of international tennis matches over the internet and was uncomfortable sitting at my desktop for hours on end. The HDMI output on the Acer allows me to connect it to my HD TV and delight in the matches in the comfort of my living room. So far everything facility as I had hoped. Now the terrible news. I opted for the Blu-Ray drive, assuming I would eventually want to view Blu-Ray discs. Hopefully, now I wouldn’t have to buy a separate Blu-Ray player. WRONG!!! The Blu-Ray drive facility fantastic, but when I connect my television to the laptop I get a copy-protection warning. Apparently one of the devices (laptop or TV?) is assuming I’m trying to make a digital copy and the disc will not play. This defeats the whole purpose of purchasing a laptop with a Blu-ray drive installed. While the Acer has a fine HD LED-LCD, I don’t plot on watching many movies on a 15.6″ screen. Besides, the array barely lasts long enough to view and entire full length feature film.
   Rating: 4 / 5
2. Prakash Varkey says:

   May 6, 2010 at 2:24 pm

   I would start by adage , it was a excellent offer from Amazon. They shipped it in time. I am a pleased customer of Amazon for the past many years. For a price under $ 600 , we cannot have another laptop with the same specs.

   It has a excellent processor + 4GB Ram + 320gb Hard disk + Blueray player !! Its not super quick, but handles windows 7 pretty well.

   There are 2 things I didnt like much about it though, the array life is pretty small . I bought this laptop couple of days ago , the array dies quickly . I am trying to charge it when the laptop is completely drained and shut down. Another feature which I didnt like is the touchpad , Its so hard to click on it.

   Overall , I am Pleased with the Laptop. I Give it a 5 star.
   Rating: 5 / 5
3. Eric Rose says:

   May 6, 2010 at 3:46 pm

   Bought here (via J&R), fantastic price on a bluray packing 15″ laptop. 16:9 screen is fantastic for watching movies. Screen looks fantastic, watched Ratattouie (Pixar) DVD and The Bank Job bluray. Both movies looked fantastic. Sound is Dolby Digital, and sounds fantastic on headphones. Built in speakers sound terrible. Via even a cheap pair of headphones, the sound is superb. I heard sounds on Ratattouie that I never heard before.

   Here’s some excellent news: The HDMI port supports both video (duh) and Audio! Yay! When connecting the HDMI to my receiver, the ATI video driver popped up a warning that Audio is not supported. But clicking “help” opened a page basically adage that this is a generic message to warn users that a video card prior to Radeon 2xxx series does not support audio over HDMI, but anything later (including the one on this laptop, the 4200) DOES in fact support Audio. And a quick test (of those two movies) proved that it was Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. The included movie player from Acer sent 1080p and 5.1 sound out the HDMI, and it seems that MS Media player did too. So no additional software is needed to output to 5.1 with both BR and DVD. One final note on movie watching: The Acer movie player worked flawlessly, but when I tried MS Media Player, it stuttered often and was annoying. Facts. So stick with the included (and set as default player) Acer movie player.

   Gaming is NOT recommended. I grabbed the first game disc I had lying around that I had both the disc AND the install key (always hard to find both when you need them), and it was Call of Duty World at War. It was dreadful. At the default 1024×768, it was an unplayable slide show, and at the lowest settings (640×480 and every possible feature set to low) it was still an unplayable 5-10 fps. So that was disappointing, but not a show stopper as we already have two high-end gaming computers in the house, and really what did I expect for under 6 Benjamins?

   I bought this primarily to have a portable Bluray before a live audience laptop and it fits the bill perfectly. As of this writing (2/1/2010), it is the cheapest Bluray before a live audience laptop on Earth (or that I could find anyway, and believe me I spent/wasted a lot of time searching!).

   I have another 2-year ancient Acer Aspire, also a 15″ widescreen, that is heavier with a worse keyboard than this model. I really am pleased with the fit and close of this model. The added keypad makes the keyboard sit left-of-center, which takes a small getting used to, as does the multi-touch touchpad, which is sensitive and hitting it accidently with a 2nd finger causes the mouse to jump around. The vertical scrolling feature on the right of the pad isn’t very accurate (had the same problem on my older Acer). We use Toshiba laptops at work and their scrolling feature is certainly better.

   Some other non-issues: not many stickers. Not much bloatware at all. Comes with MS Facility SE, which DOES read and write word and excel files (you just can’t set those as the default save/open option). Facility SE is advertised based but it gives you the option to buy the non-ad translation. MS Office Student is 60 day trial. The 320GB drive is a single partition (yay!).

   That’s about it. A fantastic deal on a bluray laptop that facility fantastic.
   Rating: 4 / 5