Acer Ferrari - The $2,000 Windows XP Laptop from 2005

Greetings and welcome to an L G R thing and hold your horses folks because I've finally fulfilled a boyhood fantasy owning a Ferrari , well , a Ferrari laptop but whatever , close enough , I guess this is the Ferrari 4005 W L M I from Acer , which sold for about $2000 when it launched in the summer of 2005 .

And yes , this is an official Ferrari licensed product emblazoned with the same iconic prancing horse badge as all their vehicles since 1947 as well as the equally iconic Rasa Corsa red paint used by Ferrari and other Italian manufacturers since the 18 twenties , though not as much of said red as other Acer offerings like the Acer Ferrari 3000 , which was a horse of a different color .

Indeed going all in with the high gloss Ferrari red paint scheme .

By comparison , the 4000 series is more restrained , aesthetically opting instead for red highlights and a lid topped with real carbon fiber for an extra dash of motor racing flare , which let's be honest , while it was claimed , the carbon fiber helped eliminate lid flex and reduce weight .

The main reason it's here is because they thought it looked cool .

The whole lid is coated in a glossy plastic resin too .

So it still feels like plastic regardless .

And any weight saving attributes are overshadowed by the sheer girth of the rest of the machine weighing in at around £6.5 or 2.9 kg .

And that's without the battery installed .

So , yeah , the Acer Ferrari is fully decked out with mid two thousands portable computing power as you'd expect for a machine that cost twice as much as the average laptop at the time .

But beyond its exotic branding and flashy shell , what did you actually get for your $2000 back then ?

Well , Windows X P for one thing , which was still the latest Microsoft Os since Vista wouldn't hit store shelves for another year , you also got an AM B Tyrion 64 M L 37 C P U running at two gigahertz allowing for an upgrade path to 64 bit versions of Windows if you desired though , you only got one gigabyte of D D R 3 33 ram by default .

So upgrading to its maximum of two gigabytes was a common choice and the laptop screen itself was quite respectable for the time with a matte finish , 15.4 inch T F T L CD displaying 16 by 10 aspect ratio resolutions up to 16 80 by 150 driving .

This is an A I mobility radon X 700 graphics chip set with 128 megabytes of video memory , something we'll definitely be trying out with some Windows X P gaming classics for storage .

There is an admirable 100 gigabyte 2.5 inch 5400 R PM hard drive inside around twice the capacity found on most other laptops of its day .

Also nice is the eight speed DVD R W combo drive capable of burning both DVD and CD rewritable diss though originally , it had a bright red slot loading drive .

So I assume it died or something because it only had this tray loader when I bought this second hand .

And in terms of ports , well , check this out on the left hand side , you've got 15 pin V G A output gigabit ene and 56 K modem jacks .

A USB 2.0 port , a micro firewire connection and a PC M CIA card expansion slot .

Around back .

There's a proprietary PC I express connector for an optional docking station and both D V ID and S video output ports on the opposite corner .

And on the right hand side , there's a Kensington Lock 19 volt power connection , the aforementioned DVD burner and three more USB 2.0 ports making a total of four .

It keeps going along front as well with a five in one memory card reader that handles S D M MC and XD cards as well as Sony memory stick and memory stick pro to the right is a built in mic and infrared port led status indicators ports for both headphone out and microphone in and light up buttons for toggling Bluetooth and 802 11 G wifi .

The front here is also where you find the laptops speakers , these two little things off to each side , they sound ok .

But they're still one of the weaker aspects of the system .

You'd think they could have found room for larger ones above the keyboard because , I mean , look at all this unused space .

Acer could have had even more room too if they didn't add those extraneous quick launch buttons up top or used this unusual smiley face looking key arrangement as for the keyboard itself .

Yeah , it's fine .

It's no think pad keyboard , that's for sure .

But it gets the job done with halfway decent plastic caps and key travel of about two millimeters .

The smiley face arch layout takes a minute to get used to , but it's spread out enough that I didn't have much trouble .

What bothered me ?

More were these dedicated Euro and dollar sign keys down here exactly the same size as the arrow keys and positioned right up against them .

Making the arrows feel a tad strange to use by touch alone and the soft rubbery material surrounding everything .

Well , while I'm sure it was comfortable back in 2005 , it's starting to deteriorate and get sticky an unfortunately common problem with devices using this stuff .

Speaking of aging disgracefully , this track pad definitely shows its age .

The touch surface is comically small compared to the rest of the machine .

The button's silver finish wears down easily and it has one of those four way scrolling switches in the middle that I am not at all fond of .

Fortunately , they've included a Bluetooth mouse as well with matching Ferrari emblem and glossy red accents and yeah , it's pretty decent .

Again .

The rubbery bits are slowly melting a decade and a half later , but otherwise it's a comfortable enough mouse for 2005 .

All right , enough of that .

It's time to crank the Acer Ferrari to life and take it for a test drive .

Yes , that was a picture of Michael Schumacher's formula one Ferrari instead of the typical Acer post screen .

A nice touch .

Indeed .

And I hope you're not opposed to constant fan noise because the exhaust fan is always audibly spinning at this speed or higher .

Unlike an actual Ferrari , though the exhaust note leaves something to be desired .

Well , bring on that windows X P now originally vs Acer Ferraris came with a Ferrari F one Windows theme complete with screaming V 10 noises on startup .

Unfortunately , when I got mine , the drive had been completely wiped , including the recovery partition .

And while it did come with the restore C DS holding all the drivers , unless you have that hard drive partition intact , you can't restore the entire thing as it was from the factory .

So I chose to manually recreate my own Ferrari theme on a fresh X P installation .

I was able to get some of the original stuff off those recovery disks though , like the Ferrari World screensaver , a simple and quite frankly boring slide show that flips through a handful of formula one photos .

There's also a set of wallpapers acting as a Ferrari themed calendar with 24 backgrounds to choose from one for each month of the year 2005 and 2006 .

Again , all of them featuring Ferrari F one cars .

You'd think they would include at least one or two of their legendary road cars in the mix .

But oh well , Acer also included a whole bunch of software , most of which I chose not to install because Bloke , I did set up the launch manager app which lets you adjust some default startup options and change the function of the shortcut keys .

And I had to try out Acer grid vista , something I saw repeatedly mentioned in old reviews and marketing material .

See those extra buttons along the top right of each window .

Yeah .

With this running , you can quickly snap windows into place along different grid patterns in windows .

XP something I do all the time in more modern operating environments .

So I'm actually going to keep this installed .

I like it .

And of course it came with a DVD player application an Acer branded version of cyberlink power DVD .

Nothing too special here .

But I got to say this L CD panel seriously looks fantastic for 2005 .

I had a Toshiba satellite in oh five and it wasn't even wide screen , much less this high resolution .

Nor were the colors this vibrant with viewing angles this wide .

But yeah , it's high time for some mid two thousands gaming .

And for that , I've got five choice titles , Unreal Tournament 2004 , Sim City four , Deluxe , Doom three need for speed , Most wanted black edition and of course crisis , I'm using FRS to display the frame rate in the top left .

And for each game , I'll be using the normal default settings suggested in each game's graphics options running at resolutions of either 800 by 600 or 10 , 24 by 7 68 .

It was just easier this way rather than trying to make these particular games at a 16 to 10 aspect ratio anyway .

Yeah , as you can see from the U T 2004 footage here gaming on the Acer Ferrari 4000 is absolutely within the realm of possibility .

Frame rates into the hundreds aren't uncommon at these settings .

And while it dips below 60 during moments of particularly high intensity , it was nothing that got in the way of flagging endless bots on deck 17 Sim City four on the other hand , well , this game was brutal on any system especially when building a larger city like this , which is exactly why I wanted to try it out as expected .

Most of the times you get frame rates in the low double digits , even down into the single digits .

And honestly , this is still like 10 times better than any of my P CS could run it back then , much less my laptop .

The fact that you can even tell what's moving around when you've got multiple disasters going in a large city here is still truly impressive .

Despite the objectively horrible frame rate , moving on to Doom three , you can really get a good idea of how powerful this system was in oh five .

Check this out again , I'm running this at normal settings .

It can run even better than this if you lower the resolution and graphics options .

But yeah , at the time , this was probably the most technically advanced game on the market .

And the Ferrari 4005 with its A T I .

Radeon X 700 does a great job running Doom Three at over 30 F P S .

Most of the time , the most notable issue here is the chugging 5400 R PM hard disk which results in stuttering whenever it's trying to load another chunk of whatever chunky gameplay chunks need loading .

Still crazy stuff here .

This kind of performance on a laptop would have blown my mind wide open as you might expect need for speed most wanted also performs admirably at least on medium settings , it's not a consistently high F P S or anything , especially with all the physical destruction going on .

You'd have to crank it all the way down to manage a smooth 60 on a regular basis .

But when I played this on my desktop back then I was getting frame rates in the mid thirties .

And I mean , that's just kind of how it was , man .

I'd forgotten how fun this game is .

So we better move on before I blow entire afternoon racing around Rockport .

Besides , we've got to find out if it can run crisis and the answer is yes , yes , it can cause the Acer Ferrari 4005 is a beast , especially with the max two gigabytes of ram installed here .

Sure .

Crisis is just barely playable at this mix of medium to low settings .

But the fact that it's even halfway there in a laptop from 2005 .

Yeah , this is better than I expected .

At least with its infamously hard to run graphics and physics tech though .

I guess this is just what happens when you spent $2000 on a desktop replacement laptop in the mid two thousands .

Uh man money .

It buys things like top of the line portable computers which the Acer Ferrari 4005 clearly was on launch and seeing as I never came close to affording this back then , it's been a blast playing around with it .

But would it have been worth the original asking price of two grand though , after all , upon looking at old benchmarks and doing my own testing , this was easily among the most powerful laptops in the market .

However , it was still priced a few 100 bucks higher than similarly specked machines which I assume stems from the Ferrari fluff carbon fiber lid .

Aside , there's nothing important here that separates it from a non Ferrari laptop .

It's more of a status symbol , bragging rights situation than anything else .

And that's just silly still , I suppose that's what you sign up for .

Great performance , high price loud exhaust , prancing horse upfront .

Yep .

It's a Ferrari , right .

You know , it sure was tempting to go with a click bait title for this one .

Something like F G .

I had bought a Ferrari from 2005 , but I resisted .

You're welcome .

And I hope you enjoyed the video if so , I've got more coming out each week .

So stay tuned as always .

Thanks for watching L G R .