Toshiba BRnR LX.FR406.035, BRnR 4000, 4005WLMi User Manual

Acer Ferrari 4000 4005WLMi Notebook Reviewed by Barry Little - September 21, 2005 Manufacturer: Acer, Inc. Model: LX.FR406.035

Few names personify the word legend in the world of Formula One racing and exotic dream cars as Ferrari. When Acer, one of the world’s top five PC manufacturers, joined

forces with AMD and Scuderia Ferrari to create the Ferrari 3000 notebook back in

October 2003, they had an immediate winner on their hands. A year later, Acer blew

the industry away with the Ferrari 3200 and 3400 notebooks. They were a tough act

to follow, but like all true champions who never rest on their laurels, Acer went back to the drawing board in their never-ending quest to perfect their racing-heritage

notebook. On May 26, 2005, the Acer Ferrari 4000 4005WLMi Notebook was

born—lighter, faster, more powerful and feature-packed than any of its predecessors. Today, we’ll take a look at this race-bred beauty to see if it’s truly worthy of its namesake.

Whether on the racetrack or in business, strategic partnerships are crucial to

success; so the partnership between the Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team, the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile)—the governing body of international

motor sports, AMD and Acer was a natural and logical choice. Cutting edge technology is crucial to the advancement of auto racing, and you’d be hard pressed

to find a more cutting-edge company than AMD, whose award-winning Athlon™ 64 Processors made them a force to be reckoned with against long-time rival Intel.

Acer immediately recognized that the high profile relationship between one of the world’s top racing organizations and a company who was seriously challenging Intel’s dominance and winning, was a unique opportunity to increase their name recognition and market share. Unlike their competitors who either dismissed or ignored the AMD and Ferrari partnership, Acer knew a good thing when they saw it, and got on board immediately. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Now a little about Acer from their website:

About Acer

Acer ranks among the world's top five branded PC vendors, designing and marketing easy, dependable IT solutions that empower people to reach their goals and enhance their lives. In 2000, Acer spun-off its manufacturing operation to focus on globally marketing its brand-name products: desktop and mobile PCs, servers and storage, displays, peripherals, and e-business solutions for business, government, education, and home users. Established in 1976, Acer Inc. employs 5,600 people supporting dealers and distributors in more than 100 countries. Revenues in 2004 reached US $7 billion.

Acer Ferrari from Past to Present

Below is a table summarizing the features and specs of Acer’s Ferrari-series

notebooks:

Series Processor Operating

Ferrari

AMD Athlon™ XPM processor 2500+

system Microsoft®

Windows® XP Home Edition preloaded

Display System

15.0” SXGA+ TFT LCD

memory 256/512 MB 60 GB or

HDD Optical

higher

devices DVD-

DUAL drive

Dimensions & weight

330 (W)x272 (D)x31 (H) mm

2.93 kg (6.45 lbs.)

3000 Ferrari

3200 Ferrari Mobile AMD

Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64 processor 2800+

Athlon™ 64

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Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition preloaded

Microsoft® Windows®

15.0” SXGA+ TFT LCD

15.0" SXGA+ TFT LCD

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512 MB 80 GB Slot-load

512 MB 80 GB DVD-

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DVDSuper Multi drive

Super

330 (W)x272 (D)x31 (H) mm

3.014kg (6.64 lbs.)

330 (W)x272 (D)x31 (H) mm

Series Processor Operating Display System HDD Optical Dimensions &

processor 3000+ XP Home

3400 Ferrari

4000

AMD Turion ª 64 ML-37 or ML-30 Mobile Technology

system memory devices weight

Edition preloaded

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (Service Pack 2) , or Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition (Service Pack 2) preloaded

15.4” WSXGA+ 185-nit color TFT LCD,

15.4” WXGA 185-nit Acer CrystalBrite color TFT LCD

Multi drive

512MB/1GB 80/100GB Slot-load

DVDSuper Multi doublelayer drive

3.014kg (6.64 lbs)

363 (W) x 267.5 (D) x30.5/34.3 (H) mm

2.86kg (6.3Ibs.)

The Ferrari 4000 arrived in a larger box with additional packing to protect it during shipping.

Courtesy of Acer

This attentiongrabbing design would look just as much at home on the showroom floor of a Ferrari dealership, as it would on the shelf of your local computer store.

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No mistaking Ferrari's commitment to the product here.

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Ferrari's holographic sticker of authenticity.

The inner flap displays multilingual instructions on unpacking the

Ferrari 4000.

The first thing that greets you when you open the box is this Quick-Start fold-out

As you can see, the Acer Ferrari Notebook has evolved quite a bit over the years.

Let's see just how much...

Packaging

FedEx delivered the notebook in a large box filled with Styrofoam packing peanuts. Additional protection was provided by the Acer factory box sealed with tape designed to show any tampering of the contents, and had shipping labels from the Acer plant in China and its final destination at an Ingram Micro distribution center in California. The boxes were in good shape and showed no sign of rough handling or damage.

The Ferrari 4000’s display box has the clean, tasteful and expensive look of a high-

quality automotive publication gracing the glass top of a living room table with its glossy finish. Striking photos of the notebook are set off against a black and carbon fiber-background, with Acer’s corporate logo, “Ferrari 4000” in sleek, red letters, and Ferrari’s world-famous “Prancing Horse” crest. A closer look reveals the brushed

aluminum “Ferrari Official Licensed Product” logo and holographic sticker on the side

of the box. First Class all the way—but then, you’d expect nothing less from anything

with the Ferrari name on it.

Let's get this thing unpacked.

The only thing missing is that new car smell.

All of the software and accessories are in this box.

Here's a closer look at the Quick-Start fold out.

You have to give Acer’s marketing team credit; the box is designed to do more that just grab your attention and protect the product (though it does both exceptionally

well). Opening the box, unpacking it, and removing the Ferrari 4000 from its

protective wrapping invokes almost the same awe and excitement as sliding behind the wheel of the real thing.

The Notebook

To say that the Ferrari 4000 lives up to its four-wheeled namesake would be an understatement. Gone is the predominantly Rosso Corsa (Ferrari Red) finish of

previous models. For this incarnation of the Ferrari notebook, Acer decked the lid of

the 15.4” Wide-Screen LCD display with real carbon-fiber—the same tough,

lightweight material used in race cars—with the Acer corporate logo in the upper left-

hand corner, and the Ferrari crest right in the middle. Acer’s SignalUp™ Technology

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places two PIFAs (Planar Inverted F-Antennas) inside the top of the Ferrari 4000’s

LCD display, creating a perfect omni-directional signal sphere for enhanced wireless network reception even in low-reception areas, as indicated by the SignalUp logo on the red styling strip running along the upper edge of the LCD display.

WHOA!

Unlike the previous Ferrari notebooks, the Ferrari 4000 is decked out with a more conservative black motif with Ferrari Red accents— and a genuine carbon-fiber lid!

Acer's corporate logo in the upper lefthand corner.

The world-famous Ferrari "Prancing Horse" crest sits in the center of the lid.

Let's take a look at the Ferrari's undercarriage. The battery slides into the back of the laptop.

The 71 W Li-ion battery fully charges in 2.5 hours, and lasts for 3.5 hours in use—not bad for a laptop with this much power.

At 14.29 x 10.46 x 1.2/1.36 inches, the black and red-trimmed Ferrari 4000 certainly

isn’t the smallest notebook around—but at a svelte 6.3 pounds with the battery installed, it’s certainly one of the lightest in its class, made possible by the carbonfiber lid. Up front, a pair of 16-bit stereo speakers flank a 5-in-1 Card Reader that accepts Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, MMC (MultiMediaCard), SD (Secure Digital) and xD-Picture cards; a built-in Microphone, Infrared Port, Power and Battery Indicators; a Headphone/Speaker and Microphone jack; a Bluetooth wireless button/indicator and a Wireless LAN button/indicator.

On the left side of the notebook, we find a DB-15 Female VGA port next to the ventilation slots, to connect either a monitor or LCD projector; an RJ-45 port for the

The Wireless Network and FCC certification sticker, with another Ferrari hologram sticker

The 2.5" 100GB 5400 RPM hard drive.

The integrated controllers for the Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet NIC, Bluetooth Wireless Mouse, and the IrDA Fast Infrared port.

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The Acer Ferrari 4000 comes with

1GB of DDR333 RAM. It can be expanded to 2GB; but with only 2 sockets available for memory, you'll have to remove these two 512MB soDIMMs first.

Ferrari 4000’s integrated Broadcom NetLink 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet adapter and an RJ-11 port for the built-in Agere Systems AC’97 56K ITU V.92 modem; a USB

2.0 port; a 4-pin IEEE 1394 “Micro” Firewire port; and one PC Card Slot that accepts

any standard Type II PCMCIA card.

The latch on the left releases the DVD burner; the one on the right, the battery.

Here's the rear view of the Ferrari 4000 with the battery installed.

A DVI-D and S-

video/TV-out

(NTSC/PAL) port lets you connect the Acer Ferrari 4000 to a wide range of supported devices.

The 124-pin connector to park your Ferrari 4000 in an Acer eZDock docking station.

On the right, we find a standard DB-15F

External VGA display port for monitors

and projectors next to the ventilation slots.

From left to right: the RJ-45 port for the integrated

Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet port; the

RJ-11 port for the

Agree Systems AC'97 56K modem; a USB

2.0 port, and an IEEE-1394 4-pin Firewire port.

Moving to the right side of the notebook, there’s a Kensington-compatible Computer Security Lock and the power jack for the AC adaptor; a Panasonic/Matshita Model UJ845S Slot-Loaded, Dual-Layer DVD-RAM burner. Upon closer inspection, you can tell

that the faceplate has been painted red, rather than made of red plastic; yet the color matches the rest of the notebook’s hi-impact red-trimmed plastic chassis and

accents perfectly without the slightest variation. But this is a Ferrari, so you’d expect

nothing less when it comes to quality and attention to detail. There are also three

more USB 2.0 ports next to the drive. Out back is a 124-pin Acer ezDock connector for Acer’s docking station, an S-video port to connect the notebook to a TV or display device with an S-video input, and a DVI-D port that connects to monitors or other devices that support digital video connections. The Model 10696SANYOZF01 Sanyo

Up front is the Type II PC Card slot with

removable dust cover, and the PC

Card slot eject button.

On the left side of the laptop, is the AC Power Jack, and a security key lock that accepts any

Kensingtoncompatible Computer Security Lock.

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The optical drive supplied with the Acer Ferrari 4000, is a slot-loaded

Matshita UJ-845S DVD-RAM drive that

can read and burn to a wide range of standard-sized CD and DVD media— including dual-layer

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Finally, we have three more USB 2.0 ports.

71w Li-ion (Lithium Ion) Battery Pack snaps in the rear of the notebook, takes 2.5

hours to fully charge, and holds that charge for an average of 3.5 hours under normal use. Carefully turn the notebook over, and you’ll find the latches that release the battery and Matshita optical drive, as well as compartments containing the Wireless LAN, hard drive, and memory. There’s also another set of ventilation slots.

Here's a head-on view of the Ferrari

4000. Not only is it slim, but at 6.3 pounds, its one of the lightest notebooks in its class. The series of perforations flanking the ports in the center are the 16-bit stereo speakers which sound surprisingly good for a laptop.

...and here it's disabled. You'll see a similar message displayed for the Wireless LAN and speaker volume.

The Acer Ferrari 4000 is equipped with a versatile 5-in1 card reader that supports Memory

Stick, Memory Stick Pro, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Secure Digital (SD) and xD- Picture Card. Further

to the right is the Internal Microphone and part of the Infrared Port.

Thanks to Acer CrystalBrite technology, everything from spreadsheets and presentations, to movies and games look simply fabulous on the Ferrari 4000's

15.4" XGA widescreen LCD.

From left to right: the other half of the Infrared Port; Power and Battery LED indicators; and an Audio-Out jack for things like headphone and speakers.

The Ferrari 4000 signature logo adorns the LCD display.

Here are the button/indicators for

Bluetooth (left) and Wireless (right)

communications. The laptop powers-up with Bluetooth and Wireless networking enabled by default. Both can be manually enabled and disabled by pressing the appropriate button, or by using the Acer Launch Manager.

The red styling strip running across the top of the Ferrari 4000's LCD display isn't just for looks. Dual PIFAs (Planar Inverted F-Antennas) are installed underneath to improve wireless signal reception—part of Acer's SignalUp technology.

When using the button/indicators to manually enable or disable either the Bluetooth or Wireless LAN, the status will also briefly show on LCD display via the OSD (On Screen Display). Here, Bluetooth has been enabled by pressing the Bluetooth button/indicator.

The Ferrari 4000's "sponsors."

When you’re ready to “pop the hood” and get down to business, you’ll be greeted by

Acer’s gorgeous, high-contrast 15.4” WSXGA+ CrystalBrite™ LCD display with a

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native resolution of 1680 x 1050; Acer’s 89-key ergonomic FineTouch™ keyboard,

and a generous-sized touch pad framed in aluminum-colored plastic with matching mouse buttons and a neat scroll pad button in the center. To the right once again, is the Ferrari’s Prancing Horse crest, and on the left are OEM logos displayed like sponsor decals, of the primary components that power this race and sports car-

inspired beauty: the AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology Processor, ATI’s X700

Mobility™ Radeon

GDDR3 VRAM, and the familiar Microsoft “Designed for Windows XP” label with a

surprising twist: Windows XP x64 Edition is also listed on the “Designed for” label as

well.

The Ferrari 4000’s boot screen consists of a full-color photo of a Ferrari Formula One

car and a simple “Press <F2> to Enter Setup” message at the bottom for entering the notebook’s BIOS. When Windows XP Professional SP2 starts, a .WAV file of the F1 racer shown on the boot-up splash screen roars through the dual 16-bit stereo

speakers, while Ferrari World provides some cool desktop background imagery that changes monthly and displays the latest calendar on your desktop. A Ferrari World

Flash-animated screensaver protects the 15.4” WXGA+ LCD display while impressing passers-by. The surface surrounding the keyboard area, which Acer refers to on the Ferrari 4000 home page as their “Soft-touch Coating,” not only makes for a comfortable palm and wrist rest but feels—not surprisingly—like the surface of a racing slick tire.

PCI Express graphics controller with 128MB of high performance

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Here's the Ferrari crest again.

A close look at Acer's 89-key FineTouch ergonomic keyboard. As you might expect, it may take a brief adjustment period to get used to, and you'll either love it or hate it (I love it).

The generous-sized touchpad is one of the smoothest, quickest and most responsive ones I've ever used on a laptop—but that's to be expected when the laptop is named after a premier exoti-car and race car. The center button is used for scrolling.

At the upper-left, above the keyboard, the Power button on the left fires-up the Ferrari 4000. On the right, the more conventional Num and Caps Lock indicators are joined by a Hard Disk activity LED that's filling in for the MIA Scroll Lock indicator.

Let's get properly introduced to the Easy-launch buttons in the upper-right hand corner, above the keyboard. Working our way from left to right:

Mail, Web Browser, Acer's eManager, and one Userprogrammable

button. All can be modified and configured through the Acer Launch Manager in the system tray.

Ferrari World's

wallpaper applet automatically puts a cool, new Ferrari photograph and calendar directly on your desktop every month.

In the upper left-hand corner of the keyboard, you’ll find a power button and a Caps Lock, Num Lock and Media Activity LED protected under a transparent dome. In the

upper right-hand corner are Acer’s Easy-launch buttons. The button with the Mail icon (an envelope), launches your default E-Mail program; the Web Browser button (the planet with the ring around it) launches your default browser. The Acer eManager button (with the fancy letter “e”) launches Acer’s eManager application. The last button (with the letter “P”) is User-programmable, to launch an additional

The Acer Ferrari 4000 runs as fast

and as good as it looks.

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program of your choice. All of the Easy-launch buttons can be reconfigured to your

liking with Acer’s Launch Manager software.

As with most notebook keyboards, engaging the <Num Lock> key or pressing the <Fn> + <F11> keys changes the keys to on the right-hand side of the keyboard to a numeric keypad for numeric data entry. The <Fn> (function) key used in

combination with specifically-labeled keys perform the usual shift-key functions from blanking and toggling screens when a monitor is connected, to putting the notebook in sleep mode, adjusting the volume of the speakers and toggling the touchpad on and off. The keys are just the right size and have a firm, but quiet touch. The slightly curved ergonomic layout of the keyboard will probably require a brief period of

adjustment to get used to. If your local retailer carries the Acer Ferrari 4000 or other Acer notebooks that have the same keyboard—some of the Acer Travelmate 3000 and 4000-series notebooks do—I’d recommend trying it out in a store first to make

sure that you like it, before making a commitment. The generous-sized touchpad with its 4-way scroll-button is the fastest, most responsive I’ve ever used on a notebook, requiring only the lightest of touches without any skipping or lagging.

This is the Acer Ferrari 4000's boot

screen. Pressing <F2> here will take you straight into the BIOS; Hitting <Alt><F10> will take you into Acer's eRecovery System. Let's take a look.

Acer's eRecovery loads from a special hidden factory partition. Type in the password (six zeroes by default, which can be changed) and press <Enter>

This is the eRecovery Main Menu, which uses the arrow keys for navigation. Press <Enter> to select the highlighted System Recovery option.

Here you can restore the Factory Default Image, which resides on eRecovery's hidden partition, and will erase everything on the hard drive and restore the Ferrari 4000 to its brand new out-of-the-box condition. You can also restore the laptop from an image created on CD or DVD media with eRecovery under Windows XP.

Remember the password you typed in earlier? Here's where you change it...

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....like so. Now let's

reboot and check out the Ferrari 4000's BIOS.

The engine beneath the Acer Ferrari 4000’s hood is a fast and energy-efficient 2.0

GHz AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology ML-37 Processor with a 1GB cache,

mounted in a Socket 754 motherboard powered by the new ATI Radeon 200P chipset, with 1GB of Single-Channel DDR 333 RAM upgradeable to 2 GB. Mass storage is provided by a Seagate Momentus ST9100823A Ultra/ATA 1000 5400 RPM

100MB IDE hard drive with an 8MB buffer and 12.5ms access time.

The Acer Ferrari 4000 uses the ever-popular and widely-used Phoenix BIOS. This is the Information Screen which gives a peek at what's under the Ferrari 4000's impressive hood.

This is the Main Screen where you can configure basic system settings: Quiet Boot determines whether you see the cool Ferrari splash screen on boot-up or the more pedestrian textbased BIOS and system startup info.

You can tell the Ferrari 4000 to automatically detect and use a second external display if detected on powerup, or force it to look for and use both the laptop's LCD and external display for those fussy external display devices that need a little coaxing.

You can activate the Ferrari 4000's Gigabit Ethernet NIC's ability to boot from a network here.

Xpress

Included with the Ferrari 4000 is a Bluetooth rechargeable wireless mouse. Powered

by two rechargeable AA batteries, the full-sized scroll wheel mouse is colorcoordinated to match the notebook with the Ferrari’s glossy Rosso Corsa finish, black rubberized “Soft-Touch” side grips, and an ambidextrous design. With the included USB charger cord, it takes approximately five hours to fully charge the mouse, and the charge lasts about a week and a half under normal use.

Enabling this will bring up a menu of options that will let you choose which device in the Acer Ferrari 4000 to boot from.

D2D is the Disk-toDisk Backup and Recovery system,

which can be accessed by hitting <Alt><F10> while the laptop is booting.

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The LCD Auto Dim automatically lowers the brightness on the LCD display to conserve power when the laptop is operated on battery; then

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With the exception of the Infrared Port, both the Serial port A: and Parallel port entries are useless, as the Ferrari 4000 has neither.

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Adding, changing, or clearing system passwords is done here, at the Security

Screen. Here, the Supervisor Password

controls access to the

You'll probably want to leave this enabled.

brightens the display when the laptop is plugged into a power outlet.

BIOS.

This enables or disables the password protection on the hard drive for the aforementioned D2D utility which is run from a special hidden partition on the hard drive, or Acer Recovery through Acer eManager.

Here, you can select the boot order the Ferrari 4000's available bootable devices.

And finally, here's the Exit screen where you can load system defaults and save or discard any of the BIOS settings.

Acer even throws in a Ferrari Red cleaning cloth to clean the notebook with—a good thing, since the reflective carbon-fiber lid shows fingerprints easily, and the rubberized surface around the notebook’s keyboard has a tendency to show dust, lint, and oils from your hands (or food if you’re an eat-while-you-work person). The supplied cloth handles the typical build up of dust and minor smudges on the lid and elsewhere without any problem, but you may need additional help from a soft, lintfree cloth dampened with cool water for more the more stubborn cleaning jobs. The

26-page User’s Guide has the same black, carbon-fiber and Ferrari Red motif as the notebook, and gives you the basics on operating the Ferrari 4000 (with more

detailed info in the notebook’s online documentation).

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