Shiny new Acer Aspire E1

I’ve been bending Karl’s ear recently about my laptop. After posting not so long ago on Snark about how it was just fine for a near-7-year-old laptop, I think I must have jinxed it. Suddenly it was creaking at the seams, not coping with what I was throwing at it. Of course, now I’m actually working instead of aimlessly browsing the Internet (although some of that too) the demands placed on it and my expectations have gone up. Despite an SSD upgrade last year and more RAM (advertised as supporting only 1GB but running happily with 6GB) it was chugging.

Cue the great laptop hunt 2013. My needs were thus:

  • Bigger resolution
  • Better graphics
  • Faster processor
  • Under £800

The last been my absolute highest can’t spend more than this budget (but, as it turns out, above and beyond what I needed to spend anyway!)

I had started searching through the Dell site, as my Vostro has been fantastic over the past 7 years; the Dell small business support being great on the ooh.. 2? occasions I needed it. But I was looking at around £500+ for a reasonable laptop and Karl thought he’d be able to better that.

Karl’s searching turned up a couple of contenders on Laptops Direct who seem to specialise in bargain laptop deals. Karl ummed and ahhed over the Acer brand laptops as it’s known for budget laptops (some of those linked are <£300!), until I pointed out that our netbooks are both acer and we’ve had no issues with those even though they’ve been dropped, beaten by the kids etc.

In the end I settled on the Acer E1 laptop because I thought it had the best balance of tech while still being the right side of cheap. Tech specs as follows*:

  • Intel Core i5-3210 2.5GHz with turbo boost up to 3.1GHz
  • Intel HD Graphics 4000
  • 15.6″ HD LED LCD
  • 4GB DD3 RAM
  • 500GB hard drive

* interestingly the site reports the processor as 2.3GHz, the sticker as 2.5GHz and control panel is reporting 2.6GHz – make of that what you will!

Thoughts so far

Considering Karl’s labelling of this Acer as a ‘budget’ laptop, I’ve been fairly impressed so far. It’s a plastic casing but with highlights in a glossy silver finish you wouldn’t spot this at a glance and visually, the little blue LED indicator lights are a lot more attractive than the great big orange things on my old Vostro.

I went to pick the laptop up to move it to my desk and was surprised by how light the machine is. I expected it to be heavy because of the size (it’s wide); I don’t know if it’s just a feature of modern tech (bearing in mind the age of mine) or this specific laptop but it’s surprisingly lightweight. I can easily hold it in one hand which I wouldn’t dare do with my old one for fear of snapping my wrist.

In terms of speed I’ve been blown away so far. Delays on my existing tech, like taking a second or two to display a folder full of images, are just non-existent on this. It sounds daft that the difference of a second or two could be that big a deal but I’ve really noticed it when ploughing through my huge todo list, trying to fit a million tasks into Oliver’s nap time for example. The 9 second boot time from hibernate to desktop is pretty damn tasty too.

Last but not least is the battery life. Although my laptops spend most of their life as desktop replacements so can be plugged in at the mains, if I’m moving around rooms to avoid sticky fingers and a drool trail, I like to know I can do so without dragging a cable behind me. When the laptop arrived I was transferring data, installing (and uninstalling) software etc for over 2hrs and still had more than 50% battery by the time I was finished.

I’m not blown away by the keyboard – I don’t like that the arrow keys are half the size of all the others – but I imagine that will be no more than a minor niggle once my fingers adjust to the slightly different layout. If that’s the only thing that I have to complain about by this time next week I’ll consider this a win.

Laptops Direct answered my email queries quickly and the laptop was despatched the day I confirmed my order. I’d be happy to recommend them for future hardware purchases.

Now all I need is for my clients to pay on time this month so I can pay for it ;)

Posted on: May 19, 2013 · Category: Review 0

False Economies

One of the things I see other people fall into the trap of too often with this budgeting lark (no, not me, far too smart.. cough cough) is buying into false economies. In other words, investing in something that appears to be a bargain but doesn’t really benefit or save money in the long run.

One thing that springs to mind is this Approved Foods website (short-dated / clearance food), which I’ve actually seen popping up on my Facebook timeline quite a lot recently. With my new financial goals in mind I had a flick through, popped about £7 worth of stuff in my basket (RRP roughly £55) and went to checkout. However, they have a minimum spend of £15, which in itself is fair enough but meant I’d have had to waste £8 to go through with it. Seems counter-productive to me.

Perhaps it’s just the timing of my visit, too, but I found a lot of the stuff listed on the site to be junk food and non-essentials. Stuff like jarred sauces may seem a bargain listed at 80p or whatever, but I can make a better tasting, healthier sauce at home for much less and have it go further too.

I found the same thing applies to a ‘Baby Budgeting’ blog I flicked through recently. I don’t want to link because the author might think I’m singling her out/picking on her (I’m really not) but her posts were on things like Boden clothes, Seraphine maternity wear, frugal valentines gifts; surely all of this stuff is frivolous over-spending on brands and unnecessaries and the truly frugal thing would be to avoid them altogether?

I know, I sound like Scrooge already.

Posted on: January 30, 2013 · Category: Budgeting 8

That time of year…

I know when cold and flu season is approaching for one rather unique reason…

Hits to a rather, er.. “interesting” old post of mine fly through the roof.

I have to say, if men suffer from sore testicles when they get a cold, it’s no wonder they moan so much. I can’t imagine that’s much fun. Oh wait, probably a bit like bleeding from your uterus once a month… I feel my sympathy draining away! :P

Posted on: October 29, 2012 · Category: Interwebs 5

Update on Jamie Timbre

Following on from my post on Jamie Timbre’s fraudulent attempts to sell tickets to seminars that don’t exist I have a few updates.

  • I’ve officially lost count of how many fake profiles are associated with Timbre’s fan page. Thankfully, Facebook is fantastic at removing them as soon as they’re reported (hence lots of broken links in my first post)
  • I’m not the first to call Jamie out on this; see this comment from another school acquaintance
  • We have independent confirmation that Jamie does not work at Microsoft / has never done a show for the radio station “New York’s Z100″ (sent via email):

    I read your post about Jamie Timbre. Also wanted to let you know that he claims to have a radio show on New York’s Z100…I called the radio station myself and asked when I could expect to hear his show. Of course, they’d never heard of him. I also made a point to call the Microsoft office in New York and ask to be connected to Jamie Timbre. They searched their entire New York employee database and found no one by that name.

  • Timbre has me blocked on Facebook and Twitter – so he knows I’ve busted his little (fake) empire

The sad news is that the only reason I can find for this somewhat creepy behaviour is to increase his scoring for an online social networking game ‘empire avenue’ (see Jamie’s profile). Basically, you’re scored based on your activity, allowing you to buy “stocks” in other people which boosts your score/online currency for the game in turn. More currency = the ability to ‘pay’ people to like your page/follow you on twitter. I cannot figure out which came first, though: Jamie’s narcissistic and mostly fake fan page, or his participation in the game.

Update, 17th August:

Of course it’s BS. That’s why Facebook, Eventbrite, EmpireAvenue etc have all removed your fake profiles, seminars etc. Oh wait…

Posted on: August 16, 2012 · Category: Interwebs 6

Jamie Timbre is a Grade A Fraud

In July 2007 I outed Jamie Timbre for conning hosting customers out of hundreds of dollars by claiming they owed charges on DDOS attempts that had never happened, e-mail spam that was not the customer’s problem, etc. Shortly after, Timbre shut down his hosting ‘business’.

Fast forward to 2012 and I receive an e-mail from someone who went to school with Jamie. He found my articles on Frozen Midnight Hosting and Timbre’s previous antics and wanted to give me the heads up about some odd new behaviour…

[Read more...]

Posted on: August 13, 2012 · Category: Interwebs 29