The sound system on the pebble 5920 is composed of two speakers hidden under Latitude 131L Battery a stylish grill located above the keyboard and a subwoofer built in the underside. The combination produces acceptable results that are well above average for notebook sound. However, having a Dell notebook with a subwoofer in the past I expected a more impressive leap out of a newer notebook. The attached Realtek sound driver has an abundance of options and settings though.

Having a volume dial is a good thing, but the dial sony VGP-BPS9/B Battery has no feedback nor resistance which makes it move at the slightest touch and hard to set to the right volume. It also lacks a "stop point" so you can't know when you reached the top/lowest point unless you are using the on-screen volume display. Its location in the front under the lower "lip" means it isn't easy to reach when the notebook is resting on your lap. Likewise with the headphone ports location at the front which always strike me as prone to stress damage.

For video conferencing Acer included a built-in VGA web cam into the lid handle with built-in microphones on each side. Nothing Sony VGP-BPS9A/B Battery spectacular but all in all not bad for a 15" notebook

Keyboard, Touchpad and Media Controls

The weird looking keyboard is on par with today's average, however, it has a noticeable amount of flex in the right shift area which should not appear in a modern notebook of that size and weight.

The even surface touch pad is responsive and easy to use thanks to the texture sony VGP-BPS9 battery and wide aspect ratio, it's so wide I sometimes found myself inadvertently moving the cursor. Fortunately, you can switch it off and on with the designated FN+F7 combination. Acer managed to squeeze in a third middle button that is supposed to act as a four-way joystick for quick scrolling and navigating.

As expected from a media notebook there sony VGP-BPS9/S battery are plenty of shortcut buttons on the keyboard sides for turning the wireless communication on/off, launching a web browser, email client and the Acer arcade. The right side has a blue backlit media player touch panel.

On Acer's behalf, it looks like the entire palm rest area, keyboard, touchpad and buttons are made of solid non-painted plastic which hopefully means it will not wear off after a while. You may think this gray hue isn't attractive but on the bright side it will look gray even years from now. Add (or subtract) a point for that.

Ports and Features

The 5920 spec list continues with a rich selection of ports: quite an achievement with the back profile blocked. Again I wish some Dell Vostro 1510 Battery of the ports (like LAN and video ports) were in the back.

Software

The amount of bloatware preinstalled with the notebook was quite bearable, but let's take a closer look at Dell Inspiron 1545 battery Acer's "empowering technology." Contrary to what you might think, pressing the "empowering" button does not turn you into a strong black woman, instead it opens a nice looking control panel with an assortment of Acer utilities designed to help beginners take control of their laptop:

* eNet for networking management
* ePower for battery optimization
* ePresentation for external display
* eAudio controls the Dolby home theater sound effects
* eDataSecurity protects data with passwords and encryption
* eLock limits access to external storage
* eRecovery backs up and recovery of data (as well as creates factory restore disc)
* eSettings for system information and settings

Along with there "empowering" tools Acer includes Arcade deluxe, a media control center. All in all it's not a bad package for the novice user, even if there is no real technology here and the name is plain silly. No points awarded because we are not Latitude E6400 Battery about competition when it comes to bloatware.

XP compatibility

This is a new review category I made up. Nevertheless, in a world of Vista-only notebooks it is useful to know whether you'd be able to run your favorite proven OS on your new 5920. Well, you can and quite easily as the supplied Vista drivers are compatible with XP. Thanks to some tips from NBR forums members the install process was even easier, updating the bios to the latest version allowed switching the SATA interface to IDE. Then it was a simple XP install using an old XP SP2 disc. Surprisingly the laptop worked quite well (webcam included) even Thinkpad T61 Battery before I installed the Acer drivers. I have yet to find a way to get XP working in SATA ACHI mode which might be the cause of the HD Tune test results.

Performance and Benchmarks

A distinctive advantage of the 5920 is the Nvidia 8600m GT video card, while not the DDR3 version it's still one of the fastest 8xxx GPU available at the time of the review and certainly the top in the 15.4" form factor segment. In addition, it comes in a MXM II slot with easy access, another high point Latitude E5500 Battery in the specification. Playing games proved once again that even the low T5250 was not the limiting factor in this setup, meaning you don't have to spend money on a higher CPU for that purpose alone.

Having two identical 5920's I was able to pit them against each other it those benchmarks, one running XP Home SP2, the other keeping the original Vista Home premium install.

Heat and Noise

Having so many ports limits the air vent to Latitude E6500 Battery the lower left side, and the lid design comes back to haunt us as it limits the space allocated for the back vent profile. The result is somewhat warmer than appreciated inner idling temperatures with the CPU hovering at 50+ °C and the GPU in the 60°C area.

Under load the left side gets noticeably hotter with the GPU peaking to 90 °C and once freezing on me. The notebook might be designed to handle that amount of heat but I'm still uncomfortable with that. Both machines exhibited erratic fan behavior which would come on at full power for a short burst every few seconds. I'd much rather have it work constantly at a low rpm, keeping the notebook cool and quiet as the fan is silent by itself.

I couldn't find a way to enable speedstepping in the bios. NHC doesn't show the CPU to throttle down while CPU-Z shows only 33% slowing to Latitude E4300 Battery 1000Mhz and SpeedFan wouldn't control the fans. The 8600m GT driver will not allow throttling down on DC power either, nor to downclock the GPU speeds.

This is where a proper ePower management should have let me control the fan operation Latitude E5400 Battery and speed as well as enable an aggressive CPU and GPU throttling. It has some sort of CPU power options but I have not seen any big difference. All points melted down.

Battery Life

Interestingly the XP unit reported an estimate of 3:04 hours on a full good battery and maximum screen brightness loosing about one percent battery power every two minutes idling, while the Vista unit reported an extra hour with a 4:10 hours estimate. Yet another unfulfilled promise by Windows Vista.

Conclusion

Despite its many flaws the Acer Aspire 5920 is one of the best buys today thanks to its rich specification, wealth of features and relative low price. I believe a proper new bios would solve the fan issue and CPU management, and a new Nvidia driver should let us use powermizer to reduce GPU heat. That leaves us waiting for a decent LCD panel from Acer or getting one of those LCD films to enhance the blacks. Like its name suggests, the Acer 5920 gemstone is truly a diamond in the rough and with battery a bit of polishing would shine.

Pros

* Best bang for the buck

Cons

* LCD bright but not brilliant
* No sufficient CPU/GPU throttling
* Annoying fan