Acer Laptop Computer Parts
Acer laptop computers are no different than any other products presented by the same manufacturer, but still, not all their parts are compatible with other brands. This is the only serious curse of owning a laptop, you cannot choose the components you want in it. Instead, you have to sell your laptop and buy a new one if you want a better chipset, a faster processor, more capable graphics cards … and so on. The only interchangeable components of Acer laptops, or any laptop really, are the hard disk,the optical drive, the memory modules and the internal adapters that are installed in the mini PCI-Express slots. It requires a bit more know-how, but in general LCD panels can be changed in laptops too, but unfortunately due to chassis limitations only LCD panels of the same size can be fitted. Still, many laptop models available today can be fitted with the same diagonal but with higher resolution display panels. If you have luck, you may purchase a very cheap (new) 15.4” laptop with a 1366 x 768 resolution screen and replace it with a 1920 x 1080 resolution panel. This way it will only cost you ~$600, ~$400 for the laptop and another $200 for the high resolution display panel. You should also be able to sell the old panel for up to $100, further reducing the total price of the cheap FullHD multimedia capable laptop.
Standard Acer TravelMate and Aspeire laptops can be fitted with parts mentioned above, but special models like the Acer Aspire One come with additional limitations.
The Acer Aspire One 721 is one of the smallest HD Ready laptop around. It has a 11.6” screen with 1366 x 768 resolution and LED backlighting of course. Inside there’s one of the most efficient chipsets ever developed (before the upcoming Bobcat platforms), but unfortunately it doesn’t support high-end processors, you’ll have to learn to love the installed AMD Athlon II Neo K125 (1.7GHz, 1MBl2 cache). The graphics card is also non-removable, the Radeon 4225 is built into the AMS M880G chipset and offers a reasonable amount of processing power, being able to handle FullHD movies (although you can watch it in FullHD only if you attach an external monitor with the proper resolution).
Acer specifies a 250GB hard drive capacity limit, but this is clearly an attempt to misinform. There’s no real reason why you couldn’t upgrade to a 500GB, 650GB, 750GB or even 1TB and 1.5TB hard drive when they will be available in the appropriate size (9.5mm height instead of the current 12.5mm high models).
Other replaceable Acer laptop computer parts include the battery pack (there are all kinds of replacement and compatible batteries mostly made in China), the keyboard, the touch pad, the internal Wi-FI and Bluetooth modules. The memory size is limited to 4GB, or at least that’s what Acer says, installable in two slots. I would like to point out that other manufacturers specify 8GB as the maximum installable memory size for the same chipset and processor.11
Written by hugepedia, date Nov 25, 2010 in Acer
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[...] a 11.6” HD Ready display panel, featuring the basic 16:9 HD resolution, 1366 x 768, much like the previous attempts of AMD to enter the netbook market. This time however, AMD got it right and entered the market with [...]