I bought this laptop on 8 September 2004 and it was even scheduled for second hand sell in January 2006. However, since I changed jobs in the middle of the year 2007, I had to return the Asus and I went back to this laptop again from June to September.
It came with a defective wireless button and in 12 December 2005 the USB controller literally burned. I was not quick enough to call customer service to have it repaired still in its warranty period. Overall, reliability is fair/good.
Linux runs very well on this laptop, except for the battery monitor. It uses a smart battery system and Linux doesn't support such devices, so no battery information is available (battery monitoring can be achieved through a couple of non-trivial techniques - read on the information link below).
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Hardware Specifications
- cpu
- Intel Centrino 705 (1.5GHz, 1Mb cache)
- chipset
- Intel 855GM/GME
- memory
- 1024 Mb DDR 2700 (2xKingston 512MB DDR400)
(replaced original setup of 512 Mb DDR2700 (2xNanya 256MB DDR333 CL2.5)) - display card
- ATi mobility Radeon 9700 (RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]) 64 Mb VRAM
- screen
- 15.4" wide XGA TFT, 1280x800 pixels
- storage
- 60 Gb 4200rpm Hitachi hard drive (IC25N060ATMR04-0)
- optical
- DVD-RW (Slimtype Lite-ON DVD/RW SOSW-852S)
now dual-layer due to firmware upgrade - network
- Chipset integrated AC'97 Analog Modem controller
- Integrated Broadcom 4401 Fast Ethernet 10/100 Mbps network card (BCM4401 100Base-T)
- Integrated Intel (PRO/Wireless 2200BG) internal wireless LAN card (802.11b/g)
- Sound
- Chipset integrated AC'97 Audio controller
Device Compatibility with Linux
This chart represents the compatibility of the main laptop components with Linux. It is not meant to be a definitive guide, because eventually with the growing and further development of existing device drivers, these compatibilities tend to improve.
| Device | Compatibility | Notes | Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Perfect | Where Centrino is not an option, Pentium III is perfectly compatible. | info/cpu hacks/compiler |
| Battery | None | Linux does not support smart battery systems. However there are a couple of kernel patches and/or userland tools that could leak some information. | info/power |
| Sound | Perfect | The sound device is based on an very common intel 801 AC'97 audio controller. This kind of audio controller is well supported by alsa. | info/sound |
| Screen | Perfect | 15,4" wide XGA (1280x800) LCD Screen. Could be brighter. | info/screen hacks/xfonts |
| Video display card | Partial | Best compatibility with proprietary ATi binary drivers, which taint the kernel. These drivers implement 2D hardware acceleration, some hardware 3D acceleration and provide some Xorg features. However some other wanted Xorg hooks are not implemented and vendor support and commitment is not abundant. These drivers could be much better. | info/display |
| VGA-Out | Partial | ||
| TV-Out | Partial | ||
| Ethernet | Perfect | No comments; Just works. | info/ethernet |
| Wireless | Perfect | Not likely to give driver headaches, this chip works very well and has good community support. Monitor mode could be easier to enable though. | info/wireless |
| USB | Perfect | Worked well until it burned. | info/usb |
| PCMCIA | Perfect | No comments; Just works. | |
| IrDA | Untested | ||
| Firewire | Untested | info/firewire | |
| Touchpad | Perfect | Works well, but needs some tweaking to improve usability. | info/touchpad hacks/touchpad |
| Optical drive | Perfect | Reads well most kinds of media, writes well most kinds of writable and rewritable CD and DVD media. | info/optical |
| Analog modem | Untested |
More information
- Acer Travelmate 4001 WLMi information
- In-depth information about the laptop's architecture and devices
- Linux hacks
- Necessary setup routines and other hacks to get some things working (generic hacks; there are not supposed to be laptop specific)
- Acer Travelmate 4001 WLMi links
- Other people's notes on this notebook
