I love my Acer Aspire Revo r3610
by davidnielsen
After my desktop died and I had no money to replace it I started using my Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop as my main machine, for the task it was pumped up with another gig of ram but it too started to die. As money is short I had to look around for a quick replacement that would do the trick. I could either build my own or buy something prebuilt, I long ago swore that I wouldn’t waste time building anymore so this left me with the choice of one of these new nettop machines. Having played with with an ATOM powered netbook I was a little skeptical of the performance potential of such a setup for desktop tasks but this was after all a dual core ATOM capable of SMT and 64bit computing, additionally it has the nvidia ION chipset and GPU instead of the under performing Intel parts. Finally the machine comes with S/PDIF sound output and beefy 4 gigs of ram (one of these are taken by the GPU), you also get a set of USB speakers and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo.
The good parts:
The machine is easily mountable using the VESA compliant mount for your monitor, the performance is surprisingly good. The desktop feels snappy and there always seems to be a bit to give from even under load, even video playback without hardware acceleration (I haven’t yet made VDPAU work) is smooth. All your basic hardware is functional out of the box and the machine is very quiet. You get a plentiful 6 USB ports but access when mounted on a monitor they can be unhandy, there is HDMI output but I haven’t had a chance to try this as I lack supporting hardware finally the revo features eSATA. In short a very extendable and capable machine that comes equipped for a multitude of use cases.
The bad parts:
The S/PDIF output is placed on the topside of the machine when mounted in the VESA mount, meaning your fairly inflexible optical cable will hang from a height with no decent way to make it look good without breaking it – a modest suggestion for the next revision would be to put it on the bottom. You need the proprietary nvidia driver to make this run at it’s full potential, something I would rather avoid as I am uncomfortable using it. My Revo came with Windows 7 Home which I now have to fight to get refunded for, for an average user it does mean that you get a machine that will work when you turn it on but I would have liked the option to pick no OS or Linux preinstalled. Finally the wireless keyboard and mouse doesn’t work with Linux for some reason and Google turns up no immediate help as to making them work – mainly here I am interested in the keyboard as I love my trackball. *update* I solved this problem and posted an update here.
All in all, the Revo r3610 is an impressive machine. I am very pleased with it and would wholeheartedly recommend it, not just as a second machine or a media center, it actually makes for a fully sufficient desktop machine and it is a great bargain.
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Good post. I love mine too. I’d like to attach mine to my monitor. Do you know exactly whay I need? I don’t know where to begin to look or even what to look for.
As for the performance of this little gem, it’s more than adequate for most normal everyday tasks. And thopugh it’s not a business machine, it can handle mid sized spreadsheets and the like acceptably.
My only knock on the whole system is the paltry documentation. As for ACER tech help, well I asked them about how to mount the thing to a monitor and they had no clue what I was talking about or I wouldn’t be writing here.
My apologies for not answering early, I have to admit I have been avoiding the blog for a while.
My VESA compatible mount was in the package, along with the screws I needed. Then it was just a matter of clicking the Revo into place after attaching the mount. The whole thing took maybe 5 mins and I have to say it is working great.
I have yet to experience any job that doesn’t run well enough for me for me to care deeply about the ATOM chips some what underpowered computing capabilities. It is my primary machine and I am enjoying every minute I use it.
Thanks for the reply.
Unfortunatley, that didn’t come with mine 😦
I found one on an auction site but I’m not paying US$69 for it. B-)
For that price it looks pretty good on my desktop!
Cheers!
[…] 16:39 (Hardware, Linux) Tags: acer, aspire, r3610, revo, update, wireless keyboard In my previous post on my beloved r3610 I mentioned that I was unable to make the bundled wireless keyboard work. I […]
Hello!
A few day ago we bougth three Acer R3610. Unfortunatelly we forgot to check if Acer provides driver for xp.
I try to find dirvers to the following devices but no success:
– network controller (lan &wifi too)
– sound card controller
The most important to find an XP lan driver.
If you have any xp driver, please post a link…thank you.
Hello
Today I managed to successfully install all drivers for Windows XP Pro after hours of frustration.
The network driver you’ll find is on the ACER website however rather than picking the R3610 – try the R1600 [here you’ll find Win XP drivers].
For the Audio i used a combination of Realtek and Nvidia drivers. These you’ll find on the manufacturers website.
Hope that helps.
Also, the Wireless Network Card has been installed using the Atheros AR5007EG and i’ve connected to two different [brands] access points with ease.
The LAN card comes up as a NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet in Device Manager
Thank you for the information, I am glad people are helping out to make sure this great piece of machinery is filled with awesome even on platforms I don’t personally use.
[…] April 2010 at 16:43 (Uncategorized) I love my Revo but lately I discovered a small audio problem wherein I would need to reinitialize the soundcard […]