The centrino chipset is very well made and can be used to do non cpu intensive work on battery power for up to 3 hours
As for performance... well it smokes my desktop Athlon XP 2400+ (Throuroughbred B). The specs int benchmarks show 30% better performance than an Extreme Edition 3.0GHz Pentium IV on some applications... this is IMPRESSIVE! the centrino works at half that frequency!! Of course averaging test results, the centrino comes out with a more humble 10% gain, and these are integer test only! When comparing both cpus globally, the pentium4 comes ou on top but not by a big margin... that's a win for the centrino!
Knowing this is a Centrino laptop, it is only natural to expect a long battery life and good performance. The battery runs out in almost 6 hours when the computer is idle (meaning noone is doing anything with it) using frequency scaling to cut down CPU and chipset power consumption. Normal usage drains the battery in about 3 hours which is well within the Centrino territory. Heavy usage drains it in about 1h-1h30 (linux kernel compilations or dvd burning, etc). These values were measured in linux
There is a smartbattery system controlling the batteries, and charger(s). This is an autonomous integrated system to control power drain from the batteries or external power (AC) and charging processes. The smartbattery system is better than legacy control mode in many ways:
The big problem is that linux does not YET support smart batteries so there may be no information whatsoever about the battery state or external power. Big problems just about to be solved.
As of today, there are 3 methods to access smart battery information:
Which of these drivers/technologies will remain, be accepted and largely used? I don't know yet, but I thing we'll soon find out.
Modules: snd_intel8x0, snd_ac97_codec
Just a standard 15,4" LCD WXGA screen with a standard resolution 1280x800 pixels. Works well with console (fonts get fattened due to resolution ratio), frame buffer (best setting for console usage) and Xorg display modes.
Modules: fglrx (binary form: taints the kernel)
The ethernet controller is a Broadcom BCM4401 100Base-T transceiver and MAC controller. The driver for this network chip was originally written by David S. Miller and distributed under GPL. It is included in the main kernel source and is called b44. Both the hardware and driver work very well.
A VERY useful feature about this network card is its ability to autosense crossover environments. The computer can be directly connected to another computer (network card) using a straight (non cross-over) twisted pair ethernet cable.
Modules: b44
The laptop is based on a centrino cpu and architecture, so the wireless network adapter is the internal (uPCI) Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG. There are open-source linux drivers for this wireless card BUT because of the firmware license imposed by the manufacturer, it is impossible to distribute it with the kernel. This all means that although the driver itself is included in the kernel source tree as of version 2.6.14, the firmware must be downloaded separately.
Fortunately, almost all Linux distributions spare the users from having to fetch firmware images manually.
Modules: ipw2200
Modules: uhci_hcd, ehci_hcd
Modules: ohci1394
Modules: mousedev, evdev, psmouse
The built-in DVD-recorder is a Lite-ON slimtype SOSW-852S. Can read and burn CDs and almost all DVD types. By construction, it can read and write double-layer DVDs although the firmware inserted by ACER made it unable to do so.
Double-layer recording capability can be enabled by reflashing the drive's firmware. The CD Freaks Forum gave me all the information and tools necessary to make it happen
Note: The described procedures that enable double-layer recording can be dangerous to your hardware, not mentioning your warranty! I cannot be held responsible for whatever you do, whether it works or just fails forever. You are on your own!
Modules: ide-cd
