# Acer A0722-0473



## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

Hello,

I noticed that this notebook will be on sale starting this Sunday at target for 198 dollars.

Acer A0722-0473 11.6" Notebook: AMD Dual Core 1.3GHz, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD, Windows 7 Premium. They call it a notebook but I am not really sure if it should be considered notebook because it's so small. 

Anyways I was just wondering if this was a good deal and or if it's even a good laptop. I'd upgrade the ram to 4 GB right away but still I mean how does it compare with say the Acer Aspire 4530 1.9 GHZ 2 GB ram that I bought for 126 bucks back in July. I can't go back to my specific one but this one is basically the exact same except mine only has 1.9 GHZ not 2.0 and only 2 GB ram not 3 GB and it only has an 80 GB hard drive not 320 GB also it had XP pro not 7 but that's besides the point. 

So I was wondering which one is better since we are looking at getting another laptop or 2 actually but I was just wondering if it was worth it to buy the one at Target or even at least consider it or should we try and get another one of the 4530's or similar to it. My sister who is in 7th grade needs one for school and schoolwork so word and internet and online web browser based games and stuff. Also my older brother who is going back to Colorado wants a new or newer one than what he's got.

He has an Inspirion 1525 which has a Pentium Dual core processor 1.8 or 2 GHZ I forget, 2 GB ram and runs Vista and I just wiped it and did a complete OS re install but it's still just running sluggish and he mainly uses it for the Internet and listening to Music and watching movies maybe. Also he really notices it sluggishness when trying to watch youtube videos like he said he can't even do since it just is so slow. But mainly internet and music are his main concerns. 

So we were thinking of getting again one of the 4530's or something similar that would be better than his that runs on a Pentium Dual core at either 1.8 or 2 GHZ. Anyways I think the Athlon X2 processors are better or faster then the Pentium dual cores.

So yeah sorry this is kind of long but hopefully you guys can offer some suggestions. Also would it make a big difference if I upped the ram to 4 GB on the Dell Inspiron 1525 and maybe put Windows 7 on there, would that help with any sluggishness or would even going back to XP be better or is it just time.

Thanks,


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## iRiguez (Nov 5, 2011)

Well, what are you planning on doing on this laptop? For simple web browsing and email, it should suffice. Anything more then that, it won't really do you any justice by getting it.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

Hey,

Ok well it'd be a little bit more than just simple web browsing and e-mail. Anyways I was thinking that it was pretty much not too powerful.


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## SUEOHIO (Jan 30, 2007)

All i can add to this is you get what you pay for. With that screen size it sounds more like a netbook rather than a notebook/laptop.As far as the inspiron you can add more ram but if theres no windows 7 drivers for it then you will have to use vista or xp on it.It might be running slow for other reasons not related to it needing more ram.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

OK,

Wonder what other reasons could cause it to be running slow since I just did a fresh OS install.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

It's a netbook. It's cheap because there's little demand. You can get more powerful, larger full-fledged laptop for around $400.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

OK even though they say it's a notebook it's really a netbook.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

A netbook is a type of notebook. The term "netbook" has fallen out of favor.


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## SUEOHIO (Jan 30, 2007)

To me personally a netbook is not much more than a toy suited better for kids as a first computer. For anyone else a full sized notebook/ laptop with at least a 15 inch screen is far better for most types of computing needs. But thats just my opinion.As far as it running slow it could be that theres a lot of things in there that might not be needed right now such as documents, pix, music, that can be saved to cds/dvds or a disk defrag and cleanup sometimes helps.Adding more ram helps if the computer can have some added if say it only has 512mb.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

OK well he has 2 GB and it can have up to 4 GB whether or not that will make a noticeable difference compared to say upgrading from 256 to say 768 which makes a noticeable difference or 1 GB. I mean it just seems that after doing a fresh OS install it should run better and definitely not sluggish to the point where you can't even watch youtube videos. But do you think that having lots of pictures and music on the drive could/can make it run sluggish also what if the drive was upgraded to a larger/faster drive because I am pretty sure his is a 5400 RPM or something it's a 12- GB. Also he just told me that the computer is empty he didn't put anything back on it yet after I did the fresh OS install. So it's empty and he was trying to use it and it just ran so slow that he didn't wan't to do anything else with it. So I am just still wondering why a laptop that has nothing on it and has a decent amount of ram/ ok or decent processor runs sluggish after a complete wipe and re install.


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## SUEOHIO (Jan 30, 2007)

Well if its a fresh reinstall and plenty of ram and a big enough harddrive then im stumped.Hopefully someone else will have a better answer for you.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

OK but yeah just weird that with nothing on it like it locks up even at the log in screen like he starts to type in his password and then 5 seconds later or more it finally types it all in and then it just locks up or when downloading a file I am in Firefox and I click save file and it locks up there and says not responding but then finally goes after a while. So I mean he said I can do whatever I want to it since he was like yeah I don't even care anymore especially since he has all his stuff backed up onto an external two actually. Also I have noticed that on the back there is a vent for the heat and fan and while it's not getting hot it is getting warm and the fan seems to at times be really screaming or whining kind of like an airplane just not as loud. The fact is though I am not really doing much to where the fan would need to go I was just either downloading a file or this time downloading a Firefox update. So maybe the fan needs replacing. It's not caked with dust or anything and it quite clean and free to my eyes so I mean could a fan that is going bad cause issues like this.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

Here is an attachment with an image of what the temps are of the laptop most all except the HD are quite high so could that be a factor. also on another note I guess the laptop has 3 GB ram installed and it's running Vista Home Basic 32 bit. also with there being nothing on the laptop why does it show that there is 21 GB used I mean there is no music or pictures or documents of any kind there is minimal software installed Firefox, Chrome, VLC Media Player, AVG 2011, CCleaner, Defraggler, Spyware Blaster, SpeedFan and Foxit Reader and that's all I've installed everything else that's on there was on there from the fresh OS install. but there is no bloatware or anything so why is there 21 GB used up already. I know he was having this problem before I did fresh wipe and so it would say he only had a few GB left on his hard drive which is 137 GB when he only had like 70-75 GB used so there was like 60 some GB that was magically disappearing so could there be a hard drive issue. it's I believe 150-160 GB total but 9.8 GB is allocated to the recovery drive. 

Well I guess my windows folder has 14.7 GB used up


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

I have a 1525. It runs Win7 beatifully. It came with Vista, running Vista it is a dog. The Vista drivers will work with Win 7. The only thing is the Internet Homepage button does not work with Win 7. No big deal.

As far as the disappearing disk space goes. Run Disk Cleanup, More Options, Clean up Restore Points. This will remove all but the most recent Restore Point. These can accumulate and take up a lot of space on your disk.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

alright that's something I'll have to consider since I actually think the specs to run Win 7 are less then for Vista.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

On another note Speedfan has a hard drive test thing in it and it says that 

your hard disk has 16 pending sectors. Those are sectors that couldn't be properly read and that the hard disk logic is waiting for a write operation to try to remap to a spare sector (if available). According to the Reallocated Sector Count attribute, your hard disk seems to have available spare sectors. A simple disk surface scan won't be enough to force the remap operation. You need a read/write surface scan to remap the sector. The best option should be a tool that knows about what should be read from thhe at sector so that it has some option to apply the best fix to the missing data.

The overall fitness for this drive is 0%.
The overall performance for this drive is 100%.

So could the drive possibly be going out or have problems causing the sluggishness that is being experienced. I mean what are pending sectors anyways and are they even bad I mean most of the other stuff is good or very good.

The drive is a Hitachi HTS543216L9A300


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

You can download the Hitachi Drive Fitness test from here http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT and test the drive. This would be a better indication of the drive health than a third party test.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

OK but in the mean time what are pending sectors anyways if you happen to know.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

I have no clue. I don't use Speedfan


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

ok well I am running the Hitachi Drive Fitness test right now so it will take some time. I didn't do the quick scan the one that said 2 minutes I went to advanced and click Scan the Whole Media since I always prefer to do the more thorough scans whenever possible.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

I hope it passes all the tests for you. Replacing a hard drive right now is going to be very expensive. I just checked the price on a 320Gb WD drive for my 1525. 6 months ago I purchased this drive for $44 from newegg. The price is now over $100 for the same drive.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

Well the test results said one or more sectors corrupted. So I will try and repair and see.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

I think that you will see a significant improvement with Win7 on the 1525. I would suggest not going with any version below Home Premium though. I run Win 7 Professional or Ultimate on all but two of my computers. Win 7 Home Premium on one, and one old Dell Dimension B110 I still run XP Professional.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

OK well i ran the sector repair on the drive and now there doesn't seem to be any pending sectors and the fitness and performance are both 100%


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

That is good news. I tried the SMART tests in Speedfan, reported some errors on my Hitachi Drive as well. But the Drive Fitness test shows no errors. I think it may be a minor issued with speedfan.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

ok but yeah mine actually showed some corrupt sectors so hopefully it's all better but the darn laptop is still running way to hot check earlier post for an image of my temps.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

If you remove the access panel on the bottom of the laptop, you can blow the dust out of the cpu cooler fins with some compressed air. I do this on mine on a regular basis. My temps never get above about 42c.


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## bbgarnett (Apr 21, 2011)

OK well I removed the access panel and there was like no dust, absolutely nothing anywhere so I mean not sure what else could be causing the high temps. I mean how much of a difference do those cooling pads/mats actually make if used one. Also If I go to windows 7 how can I install it so that I don't loose the built in recovery drive that's built in as the D drive. Can I just have it format the C drive but leave the recovery drive alone or will it just erase everything automatically.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

I have never used a laptop cooling pad so I can't say from experience, though some people say they work.

If you do a clean install of Win 7 you will lose the ability to use the recovery partition. THe install will only delete the partition if you tell it to during installation. I am not sure if you use an upgrade version if you would retain the ability to do a factory restore, but that may be a possibility. I used a Retail version of Win7 Pro and did a clean installation, purposely deleting the Recovery Partition because I will never go back to Vista. I use Acronis Truimage to Image the drive on all my computers, i do th images on my laptops connected to my network to drives on my main desktop. If I need to reinstall the image because of a hard drive failure I do so using the recovery disk that Acronis let me make. This reinstalling the image actually takes less time to do than a new installation. It would allow you to restore the hard drive back to the way it was before the Win7 installation. There are also free programs that you can download to do the same thing, but I have never used any of them.


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## SECULAR01 (Nov 11, 2011)

I think this Acer is a good compact laptop for travel. At 11.6" screen, it is just right for grab and go activities. Keyboard is a little small but doable. For heavy work, a full size 15" might be more comfortable to use; however, yet this model still has great features, i.e., web cam, etc. The online specs say the system can ONLY support 1024 MB of memory, which is only about 1 GB. Is this enough to manage Windows 7 and other stuff? Don't know. Last, why wait till black friday, this is a great price...buy two...save!!


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