performance, she preferred the keyboard of her IBM ThinkPad over the Ferrari 4000 keyboard.
The touch pad on the Ferrari 4000 was the most responsive I’ve ever used, but for doing any work for an extended period of time, a mouse is still a better choice— which is why Acer included the Bluetooth wireless mouse with the Ferrari 4000. Although the size and styling of the mouse is a plus compared to some mice, the lack of any kind of indicator showing how much charge is left—whether built into the mouse itself similar to some of Logitech’s cordless mice, or even a software-based System Tray icon, is hardly reassuring. And contrary to the documentation, it did not work as a regular USB mouse with the batteries removed and the charging cable attached (which could have been a bit longer). With batteries, the mouse is heavier than a regular full-sized corded mouse, with responsiveness that varies between average and below-average. I personally prefer something lighter to carry around in my bag on a daily basis that has much more responsive performance and better precision, so my Salamander Red Razer Diamondback mouse is now occupying the compartment in my notebook bag where the Acer Bluetooth mouse used to be. The mouse also flaked out on numerous occasions, forcing me to push the Bluetooth button at the front of the notebook on and off several times and underneath the mouse, before it finally started working again.
I was surprised to find that the Ferrari 4000’s 100 GB hard drive was split into two 50 GB FAT32 partitions. As it turns out, Acer eRecovery requires the second, empty FAT32 partition to store backup images—the rationale being that all of your programs and data would reside on the C: partition, while the eRecovery backups would be stored on the D: partition. Storing backup images on another partition on the same hard drive may be fast and convenient, but if the hard drive crashes, not only do you lose your current data, but everything you backed up as well. Since I make image backups of all my systems to my Buffalo TeraStation NAS on a regular basis with Acronis True Image, needed the full 100 GB disk space and prefer Windows XP’s NTFS file system over FAT32 for its better performance and reliability, I used Vcom’s Partition Commander Version 9 to convert the drive into a single 100GB NTFS partition, while still maintaining the option of using eRecovery from the Acer’s hidden partition or CDs to return the notebook to factory condition if I choose.
One totally bizarre and unexpected issue I encountered with the Acer Ferrari 4000 was with NTI’s Backup NOW! 4. When backing up and restoring files with Backup NOW! the program changes the case of files that it backs up. For example, backing up a file named mywordfile.doc would be backed up and restored as Mywordfile.doc. I was able to duplicate this anomaly on several other machines that I installed the software on.
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