| Acer Iconia 6120 Dual-Screen Laptop |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Notebook | Compact PC | |
| Written by David Ramsey | |
| Tuesday, 26 April 2011 | |
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Page 5 of 10
Performance Testing ContinuedPCMark VantageI admit to being conflicted about PCMark Vantage: it's a widely-used and respected test suite that exercises every part of your system, but the choices Futuremark made when weighing the different system components for each test (shown below) sometimes seem a little strange. For example, note how gaming test #2 weighs hard disk performance for 100% of the score. In fact, according to PCMark Vantage the video card only impacts 23% of the total gaming score, but the CPU represents 37% of the final score. As our tests have already proven many times, gaming performance has a lot more to do with the GPU than the CPU, and especially more than the hard drive or SSD (which is worth 38% of the final gaming performance score). TV and Movies Suite
Gaming Suite*
Music Suite
There's no surprise here, really: the much more powerful Iconia trounces the ASUS netbook, although the latter's ION-based graphics subsystem and SSD allow it to almost equal the Iconia in the gaming suite. The Iconia's much more powerful processor dominates in the TV & Movies and Music suites. PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0The PassMark PerformanceTest allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers. PassMark comprises a complete suite of tests for your computer, including CPU tests, 2D and 3D graphics tests, disk tests, memory tests, and even tests to determine the speed of your system's optical drive. PassMark tests support Hyper-Threading and systems with multiple CPUs, and allow you to save benchmark results to disk (or to export them to HTML, text, GIF, and BMP formats). Knowledgeable users can use the Advanced Testing section to alter the parameters for the disk, network, graphics, multitasking, and memory tests, and created individual, customized testing suites. But for this review I used only the built-in CPU, 2D graphics, and 3D graphics tests (with the graphics tests set to their defaults). PassMark computes a composite score based on the scores of the individual tests:
Again, the Iconia shows its sheer CPU muscle compared to an Atom-based system, with a score that's 4.5 times higher than the ASUS 1201N. The graphics scores seem closer visually, but the Iconia's 2D score is 3 times higher and its 3D score is 3.7 times higher. Although the graphics tests were run at their (very low) default settings, portions of the 3D graphics tests were very jerky, with frame rates below 10fps. AIDA64 Extreme Edition TestsAIDA64 Extreme Edition is the evolution of Lavalys' "Everest Ultimate Edition". Hungarian developer FinalWire acquired the rights to Everest in late November 2010, and renamed the product "AIDA64". The Everest product was discontinued and FinalWire is offering 1-year license keys to those with active Everest keys. AIDA64 is a full 64-bit benchmark and test suite utilizing MMX, 3DNow! and SSE instruction set extensions, and will scale up to 32 processor cores. An enhanced 64-bit System Stability Test module is also available to stress the whole system to its limits. For legacy processors all benchmarks and the System Stability Test are available in 32-bit versions as well. Additionally, AIDA64 adds new hardware to its database, including 300 solid-state drives. On top of the usual ATA auto-detect information the new SSD database enables AIDA64 to display flash memory type, controller model, physical dimensions, and data transfer performance data. AIDA64 v1.00 also implements SSD-specific SMART disk health information for Indilinx, Intel, JMicron, Samsung, and SandForce controllers. All of the benchmarks used in this test- Queen, Photoworxx, ZLib, hash, and AES- rely on basic x86 instructions, and consume very little system memory while also being aware of Hyper-Threading, multi-processors, and multi-core processors. Of all the tests in this review, AIDA64 is the one that best isolates the processor's performance from the rest of the system. While this is useful in that it more directly compares processor performance, readers should remember that virtually no "real world" programs will mirror these results.
And the trouncing of the ASUS EeePC 1201N is complete. The closest the Atom-powered netbook comes to the Iconia is the Queen test, where it's 48% as fast.
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Comments
And how come the cheap and weak 3000maH battery is not user-replaceable? Why even bother giving a battery from the first place?
And, don't believe in the stability of hybrid USBs. Let alone in the known-for-not- being-so-durable Acer units.
Thank you for the review that reveals how spooky the laptop is.
Will wait for at least 3rd generation of this product before even start looking at it seriously.
Indonesian Acer users don't really need Bluetooth v3.0, and most that I know don't even need an internal Bluetooth at alol. External USB Bluetooth is already satisfying as well as easily replaceable in the case of any damage/malfunctioning, since durability is not Acer?s brag-ables anyway, is it? BTv3 is a cheap marketing trick initiated by Toshiba as a cover-up for their poor-sounding (Conexant audio!) and poor imaging (bad webcams) but yet expensive laptops. Yet no one buys Toshiba for that reason!
I agree, a user replaceable battery is a must.
This looks like it has a lot of promise as a dual screen system if you just add a keyboard, and allow the user to look at the system sideways.
Actually, you can change this, but when you do, you get an error dialog warning that the positions and rotations of the displays cannot be changed, and then after about 15 seconds, they switch back automatically.
I assume this is because most of ASUS' included software (like the various Touch apps) require this configuration.
Until now I didn'ti have any problems playing games with arrow keys nor awsd.
Battery CAN be removed, but you have to ipen the coverplate so that you can press 2 buttons. It even have the lock key for battery ((at first I thought I can't remove battery too), but I think there are a lot of alternatives to the build in battery performance (UPS for example - #en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_powe r_supply) or external battery. In case you are watching a movie, you can of course turn off it's second monitor (they can be turned off one or another, or both). My record of battery usage is nearly 3 hours of watching movies (of course my model have even bluetooth 3.0, which models in USA don't have, at least as far as I know, but I am in europe and we have a slightly different model ...)
And best of, the price wasn't even that high ... only 850? (which is something like normal laptops cost in my country - Slovenia).
Click on Completely restore system to factory defaults. It will use these data. And than you can create a disk with factory defaults items installed.
If I install windows on it again, Ill probably need the programs for the touch pad and acer ring right?
Yes, if you reinstall Windows, you'll need to reinstall the Iconia utilities and drivers.
If you don't have a recovery partition and can't make the install disk set, then you need to go to Acer's web site to find and download the software. But I just looked and wasn't able to find anything about the "Iconia 6120", so you might be out of luck there. I suppose you could always call Acer tech support.
"C:\OEM\Preload\Autor un\AutorunX\". Inside that folder look for a file called "AutorunX.exe". Run it, click on "Contents" and install all files you see on the list that appears.
If you don't, please reply and I will try compressing it for you (it is 3 gigabytes large). Hope this helps.
if you get to pack this, can you please send me the share to it... I'm also having issues with getting this Keyboard and Ring to work.
PLEASE!
Anyway, here is the link:
ardentangel.com/iconia/OEM.rar
Anyway, here it finally is:
#ardentangel.com/iconia/OEM.rar
Extract it to your C:\ drive directly (using Extract here option)
After that, go to "C:\OEM\Preload\Autor un\AutorunX\" and launch the program called "AutorunX.exe"
Once it launched, you will be able to get a list with all drivers and applications (programs) to install (which are all already included, so you won't have to redownload them), including the Touch Engine, which actually is the Virtual Keyboard and Acer Ring. There is another thing to install to get all of the Acer Ring applications on the list, if you won't be installing everything that is there (however, I advise you that you do install everything ... don't worry, there are no demo games, that are preinstalled on ICONIA once you buy it).
Anyway, I learned of the existance of this AutorunX appliacation the hard way ... Acer support sucks and they insist that there is NO WAY of getting Virtual Keyboard nor Acer Ring installation executables. But I did managed to get it after all. :)
And that's why I am helping you on the first place, because I know how they sucks now (at least the UK one ... I am from Slovenia, so US acer did not wanted to help me, since they couldn't verify my model number or whatever ...). =P
If you have any more question, ask.
Many thanks...
#store.griffintechnology.com/a-frame
It holds the Iconia very well and there was no movement when using either touch screen.
#store.apple.com/ca/product/H1060ZM/A?fnode=MjA1MTEyODY
thanks david!
First....I booted up the pc for the first time and went through all the steps and to my surprise the ACER WALLPAPER (which i think is VERY cool) was not on the screen....I have looked through ALL the files and folders and cannot find this wallpaper. I am wondering if maybe I was sent the european version (i live in the us) because I also received the USB card reader which I was NOT expecting to get.
Also could someone please tell me what the DIFFEREMCES between the 2 models are and if someone could point me to where I could get that wallpaper, it would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thanks
Mine worked fine for the year or so I had it. I'm sorry you've had so many problems with yours.
I will go home tonight and start playing with it and let you know the outcome.
All, if your system seems unstable, please install the Touch Engine only and not the rest of the MS Touch applications.
edisk.ukr.net/?do=dir#cdir=shared
user name: iconia
password: 123456
Changing language pack tutorial:
youtube.com/watch?v=6lf8lAaop3c
Thank you in advance.