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[Review] Acer laptops, 2480 and 3680

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Synaesthesia
Synaesthesia
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Well a couple of days ago, I received my Acer Travelmate 2480, for the purpose of having a laptop on which to run OS X (cracked). At the same time, a friend of mine asked me to look at his laptop, complaining about pop-ups, viruses etc. I told him to leave it at my house, and lo and behold it was an Acer Aspire 3680, very similar to mine.

 

They both have Celeron M 420 cpu's (1.6ghz, SSE3, NX-bit, HPET, NO speedstep), ALC 882 audio, a realtek network adapter, GMA950 graphics, 512mb DDR-2 ram and a 14.1" widescreen lcd at 1280x800.

 

Where they differ is that the Aspire 3680 has a glossy screen, and uses an Atheros AR5005 wireless nic and the Travelmate 2480 has a matte screen and a broadcom 4318 chip.

 

I installed Mac OS X on both these machines, and it ran without too many problems. The Jas 10.4.7 dvd installed nicely and even detected the Broadcom wireless out of the box (!) on the 2480.

 

I was able to get almost everything working on them, only the ethernet jack doesn't work. There is no fix as far as I know.

 

In 10.4.7 sleep worked on both of them, which is extremely cool, unfortunately with the newer kernels it doesn't work, even Netkas 10.4.9 because the cpu doesn't feature speedstep... :thumbsdown_anim: On the plus side, if you are running a newer version of OS X you can get sound input and output working using the alc 882 patch, which is just great :thumbsup_anim:

 

So far everything runs fast and teh snappy, even with 512mb of ram. This was really surprising to me, considering how many ppl say you need to upgrade. I am going to upgrade to 1gig, just waiting for my memory module to arrive, but in the meantime I have been pleasantly surprised. It is quite a bit faster and more responsive than my Mom's Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz. Of course with 1 gig you can run parallels and multitask more...

 

I know EVERYBODY has commented on how OS X runs better than Vista on 512mb RAM, but it's really true! Vista was SO SLOW out of the box, when I put on OS X I saw what this computer could do! OS X runs fine on 512, even better with more! Vista runs fine on 1 gig minimum.

 

Altogether I am very chuffed with my purchase, it's a nice little laptop, go to newegg.com and search for it for more information, reviews and pictures.

 

If you are looking for a great laptop to run Tiger, then get one of the above for $500-600, and if you want to spend a bit more check out the 5570 model for $700-800 which is just as compatible but comes with an Intel dual-core cpu. Kiss windows goodbye!

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Synaesthesia
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*correction* Ok actually 512mb of RAM isn't cutting it. I can't wait for the extra memory module. It was fine when I was just installing apps but now that I'm actually *running* them, I notice the speed difference big-time!

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  • 3 months later...
Ashhhh
Ashhhh
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Hey, I have the same laptop as you (Travelmate one).

 

I decided to install OSX on it. I downloaded the iso.

I read some guides and how they always say that don't use a rewritable disk. I didn't beleive them. :P I used a rewritable disk and I was wrong. I kept getting the same error after language select. I just burned it on a +R and IT DOESN'T GIVE THE ERROR. I also had a problem with Disk Utility. It wouldn't let me do anything. All the buttons were grey-ed out. But I closed it and opened it again and IT WORKS. I am currently installing it. It is 94 % done.

 

BTW, I am using "Mac OS X 10.4.8 [JaS AMD-Intel-SSE2-SSE3 with PPF1 & PPF2].iso".

 

I will edit this in a couple of seconds.

 

EDIT: {censored}! It wasn't the installation. It was just checking the disk. Have to wait some more.:(

 

EDIT # 2: YAY!! IT WORKS. But none of the network works. And I messed with it. :) I think I need to install it again. :D

 

BTW, THANK YOU!! You really helped.

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Lactobacillus P
Lactobacillus P
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I have a different travelmate, a little older than these but it also works pretty well. It's a travelmate 292LMi Centrino sporting a SSE2 PentiumM CPU, Ati 9700 Radeon Mobility (QE and CI, OpenGL) AGP 64Mb, 2Gb of ram (was working with 512 but 2Gb really makes a difference).

Sound, Graphics is working right after the 1st boot (JaS 10.4.8 upgraded to 10.4.9 with a SSE2 compatible kernel), ethernet refuses to work - did have it working on 10.4.7 before though. It is a realtec device and there are various drivers around for it, still will give it a try.

The 2200 Wifi card works by installing the 2200Wifi driver that can be found on this forum. It only works with unprotected AP's though, but I can easily login to my FON router! ;)

 

it seems that a lot of acer laptops really are compatible with OSX, but there are also quite a few that will not work at all!

 

ADDITION: PCMCIA does not work on this laptop Travelmate 292LMi

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Ashhhh
Ashhhh
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I think I have a solution to your problem. It works if you have the Broadcom one. (I think it works on the Atheros one too)

So, Synaesthesia, this might help your friend's laptop.

 

Here's the link:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=34071

 

It tells you to go to another guide. When there, and when you are about to change "en0" to "en1". Do that and restart. Now if the wireless doesn't work, edit that file again and check if it is still "en1".

If it is changed back to "en0", then edit it again and a couple lines after, change a 0 to 1. so, it looks like this :

 

------------------------------------------------

<key>BSD Name</key>

-------> <string>en1</string> (Change en0 to en1)

<key>IOBuiltin</key>

<false/>

<key>IOInterfaceType</key>

<integer>6</integer>

<key>IOInterfaceUnit</key>

-------> <integer>1</integer> (Change 0 to 1)

------------------------------------------------

 

That fixed my problem and the internet works. :P and Tiger sucks :D. I don't really like it. It is just like Linux for me. :D. Well, I still have it. I hope that ivideo is good.

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  • 2 months later...
leovalles
leovalles
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Hi, just wanted to confirm that acer TM 2480 is a great affordable laptop to run Mac OS X, I have the 2480-2153 (celeron M 430, 1,73 Ghz), intel graphics, 1gb ram, and installed uphuck 10.4.9 a few days ago, everything is working fast and beautifully considering that i'm far from having a dual core processor, only missing sound input and ethernet card, but I'm working fine with the the built-in wireless broadcom 4318 card, and everything else working perfect: USB ports (I connect my bluetooth dongle, HP all in one printer, speakers, etc.) intel GMA 950, sound output (i even connect my USB external speakers and they are detected inmediately), internal dvd-rom/cd writer, external USB dvd writer (made by me with a regular IDE drive and a USB to IDE converter), touchpad, etc. I only need to figure out how to make the mic work (i need it for skype) and I'll have a perfect hackintosh. If anyone know how to solve this issue please post it. I'm not sure what exact sound card i have, i know is realtek HDA, just that.

 

Right now i'm dual booting Mac OS X and ubuntu gutsy 7.10; i completely removed windows vista, and i'm happy i can work with two great operating systems and don't depend on microsoft anymore :hysterical: .

 

PD: Sorry if my english is somehow not understandable, GREETINGS FROM VENEZUELA!!!!

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Synaesthesia
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Hi leovalles! It's an awesome laptop for OSX, no? Mac OS X Leopard runs just as well! (iAtkos v1.0) There is no fix for the microphone under OS X unfortunately, unless you get a usb mic or an external usb soundcard. (luckily they're not very expensive

 

Greetings from South Africa!

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  • 3 weeks later...
leovalles
leovalles
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Well i applied the alc883 kext and all inputs/outputs are now working, now i can use skype with a regular headset. Internal mic is also detected but only noise is heard, haven't figured out why yet.

 

Right now i feel even more confortable with this version of mac os x, but since you're telling me leopard works well too i'll consider go ahead and give it a try... thanks synaesthesia

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leovalles
leovalles
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Hey Synaesthesia, i'm trying to run iAtkos 1.0i but after the succesful install, during the first run i get to the "transfer info from old mac" , when i hit "continue" it just restarts again to the "welcome" presentation. What settings did you use during installation? did you install EFI? did you select any patch. I'd appreciate your help since you are the only person i know that have succesfully installed leopard on the same laptop i have.

 

Edit: found the problem, it was because i was selecting the wifi patch, without it leopard runs through perfectly, although i haven't figured out how to install the broadcom 4318 wifi card. :)

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  • 4 months later...
Shortay
Shortay
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Hey all, found this topic really interesting.

i have an acer aspire 3680, its about a year old, and i have been having some troubles with it, was thinking of experimenting and installing the mac OSX on it, between my uni semesters, just a few questions though, if i manage to get it up and running, would i need to get seperate programs for it, (like word and excell and stuff) could someone explain that to me? and also i run my laptop off a network at home, so we have the central server and we each use a network cables around the house to use the internet and shared drives, would this still work if i was running the OSX, we have wireless connection too, which i need to use at uni, so hope that would work to.

 

i have 512mb memory would that be enough? i was looking at getting more anyway soon, but just never got around to it.

if it all goes horribly wrong i can just go back to XP couldnt i, like it wouldnt damage my laptop? and also, is there chance that i could run it odd the second Hard drive? so i can keep XP on?

 

Ok thats it, enough questions. ANY help on the above would be apreciated

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Synaesthesia
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Yeah, you will need to get Mac versions of any software you want to run. Like Office Mac. As far as I know, currently Wired Network isn't working, you need a USB to ethernet converter or else a PC card with ethernet. Wireless network works for Atheros and Broadcom. I believe yours has Atheros, and should work.

 

512mb is enough Tiger or Leopard should work. Of course performance will be better with 1 gig or 2 gigs. But it's completly acceptable.

 

Yes, you can install XP again, it won't do anything to your laptop. In fact the best is to dual-boot by partitioning your hard drive, and putting both on. A great tool for this is Acronis Disk Director, although GPartED, which is free, does the job too.

 

Alternatively, I believe you can run OS X from a USB external hard drive.

 

I recommend you check out Dilnalomo's guide, it's easy. I recommend using one of the following disks, which you can find on torrent sites: Leo4All or iAtkos 2.0.

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Shortay
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thanks so much for the reply!!!

i will check out that website, i do have an external harddrive its something like 200gb, not sure what brand or anything. its silver with a blue light and has my music on it, thats all i know <_< haha

do you think by having dual boot (my harddrive is already partitioned i think, i have a C and D drive, ) would it be slow on 512 or does it not really matter as u would probably only be running one at a time?

 

thanks again

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Synaesthesia
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Oh, right. When you dual-boot, it does only run one OS at a time. Seeing as your hardrive is already partitioned, format the other partition to HFS+ and use it for Mac.

 

512mb works fine, its good enough to test OS X and mess around. However, with more RAM, you will see a dramatic increase in performance of multitasking and many applications will run way smoother. Totally worth it seeing as 2gigs costs less than $50 these days...

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Shortay
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ok great, hope this is the last question, haha but is an external hard drive partition-able? it would be good if i could install it on that, but i don't want to remove all my files that iv got on there...

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Synaesthesia
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mmm...yes but always back up everything before partitioning a hard drive. Even if the utility says it's capable of partitioning a hard drive without formating it....you never know.

 

If you don't have anything on your drive D, why not use that though? Anyway, do as you please. Good luck :(

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  • 4 months later...
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