The great Acer Aspire One/Netbook challenge.

[Sapience]

I shall "effort" some screen shots, I'm going to convert the trail account and see if I can use my old SoA key to use my present Benjimir on the system. Don't even ask why I used a trail buddy Key, it was a long weekend.

Still, I dream of my favorite coffee shop, ice tea, and LOTRO...

Now what color is the Acer Patience has? Curious to know if she's a white, black, red, blue or....pink person.

Hers is the Sapphire Blue model, but she's skinned it. it's also the 8GB SSDD version.

I have the Lenovo S10 ideapad, same guts as the Acer One but a few more options.
10.2" screen
Intel Atom 270 1.6Ghz
160 GB HDD
1.5GB RAM (I'll be kicking it up to 2.5 shortly)
Intel GMA 64MB (shared)

I installed off the game disks so I have the high-res version installed. Using a USB DVD the install was pretty rough (~2 Hours). You could probably DL the low-res client in the same amount of time.

Results
Very Low 25-34 FPS. (15 in combat v multiple mobs)
Low 20-27 FPS (10 in combat v multiple mobs)
Medium 15-23 (6 in combat v multiple mobs)

I was able to 'play' rather well. I took a new character through the intro and then took a walk to Bree.




Thanks for this thread Constock. I'm sure a good many people have just found a new use for their netbooks.

[floon]

If you can do it on the Acer One, then you should be able to do the same thing on any current gen netbook; MSI Wind, Acer One, Lenovo S10, Asus Eee, etc.

Patience has an Acer One and Clover has an Averatec N1000. So let's see how you did it!

I got Lotro to run on my HP Mini 1000. Patches of the landscape would not render, and it was slow, but it did run.

[Gareth420]

My son playing lotro on an early computer:



*note the color upgrade and large screen display*

[Comstrike]

Thanks for this thread Constock. I'm sure a good many people have just found a new use for their netbooks.

Its OK, I'll recover.



Actually the frame rates are rather good on your system. Must be the extra ram and SSDD to be sure. A little bit of WiFi, and a person is in business anyplace. Now if we can just get somebody to try the game on an airplane or cruise ship......

[Patience]

Hers is the Sapphire Blue model, but she's skinned it. it's also the 8GB SSDD version.

I have another skin coming in the mail shortly, too. The blue is my least favorite of the colors (I *really* wanted the brown, would have settled for pink or white) but blue was the only color available when I bought it.

Anyway, my A110 w/8Gb SSD has 1.5Gb of RAM; that model comes with 512Mb stock, but I upgraded it through the nerve-wracking process you have to go through to do so. The Acer motherboards will support up to 1.5Gb; it has 512Mb onboard plus an expansion slot, so if you have a 1Gb model, it's possible to pull the 512Mb that came with it and replace it with a 1Gb stick.

I haven't tried to install LOTRO because of the limitation of the 8Gb SSD drive. I may upgrade the SSD to a larger one, but knowing me will never get around to it. I've also considered getting a very fast 16Gb SD card for the left-hand slot. The 8Gb SSD that came on this Acer is known for being sluggish; it might be fine with Linpus, which shipped with it, but I blew that off in favor of a very stripped-down version of XP.

Finally, this site's forums have been a tremendous resource for general info, tweaks, and info on mods: http://www.aspireoneuser.com. They have a whole forum dedicated to running games on the Acer One.

I am not responsible for any trouble anyone gets into trying to mod their Acers. And honestly, replacing the RAM is not for the faint of heart either, so read up on it thoroughly before attempting it!

-Meghan

[Thoroval]

...The blue is my least favorite of the colors (I *really* wanted the brown, would have settled for pink or white) but blue was the only color available when I bought it.

Is that a hint of impatience? Couldn't wait for the color you wanted huh?

[Sapience]

Its OK, I'll recover.



Actually the frame rates are rather good on your system. Must be the extra ram and SSDD to be sure. A little bit of WiFi, and a person is in business anyplace. Now if we can just get somebody to try the game on an airplane or cruise ship......

I don't know howI did that. Sorry It must be the effects of watching too much History channel. I was watching something about the Comstock load and became confuzzilated!

I would assume the extra .5Gb ram helps a good deal but the lenovo is also the fastest of the current crop of netbooks. I'll be interested to see how much, if any, things improve when I bump the RAM to 2.5GB.

Oh, and Blue is one of my favorite colors.

[Comstrike]

I don't know howI did that. Sorry It must be the effects of watching too much History channel. I was watching something about the Comstock load and became confuzzilated!

I would assume the extra .5Gb ram helps a good deal but the lenovo is also the fastest of the current crop of netbooks. I'll be interested to see how much, if any, things improve when I bump the RAM to 2.5GB.

Oh, and Blue is one of my favorite colors.

Fear not, there are vastly worse ways my screen name can be misspelled. We might have wondered what you were watching had you done so!

What I need now is a wireless mouse. Or one of the touch screen mods.

[jugger181]

Sapience,
How easy is it to self upgrade the memory on the ideapad?

[SGWB]

8 MB of video ram?

You sure it isn't 80... or 800?

I don't think 8 is enough for games from 1995.

Are you kidding me? In 1995 I was sporting a souped up 486DX 120MHz with an Orchid Kelvin 64 VLB graphics Card (plugged directly into the CPU's data bus) with 2 MB of RAM. Who needed 3d acceleration? Not me. That card rocked at "Star Wars: Tie Fighter".

I upgraded that in 1997 to an ATI Expert@Work with a staggering 8 MB of RAM on board. My friends were drooling.

Seriously though, it's easy to forget how far graphics processing has come in such a short time. Real 3d accelerators only started building up momentum in the late 90's. I believe that Nvidia's first, the NV1, was released in 1995, and it was pretty basic and had little support. The Voodoo 1 was I think in 1996. Before then, most video cards did little more than write pixels to the monitor. The CPU did all the rendering. As a result, they only needed enough ram to store a pixel map.

With these netbooks with their integrated graphics, they are not doing much processing on the graphics cards and they don't display a lot of eye candy effects. As a result, they don't need the video RAM either.

[Sapience]

Sapience,
How easy is it to self upgrade the memory on the ideapad?

It's no different than a standard notebook. Remove two small screws and pop off the cover. You'll have both the single memory slot and the HDD bay exposed. The memory is held in by two small tension tabs just like a full sized note. It supports DDR2 667mhz (PC2 5300) upto 2GB. 512MB is built into the MB. And on a related note there are similar fan/mod community forums for the S10 as well if you're curious about it.

[Valinerya]

Fear not, there are vastly worse ways my screen name can be misspelled. We might have wondered what you were watching had you done so!

What I need now is a wireless mouse. Or one of the touch screen mods.

You mean... you can get a mod that would allow a person to use touch control in LOTRO?

Like... I push the skill I wanna use, and it works?

That would be so sweet...

[Comstrike]

You mean... you can get a mod that would allow a person to use touch control in LOTRO?

Like... I push the skill I wanna use, and it works?

That would be so sweet...

There are some fairly involved mods for these little systems, most of which involve putting an overlay over the screen, that give you touch-screen functionality. I'm early in researching this stuff, but as you can imagine, there is a fast growing after-market supply chain. But some of these mods require soldering, which is often where I'll draw the line.

But again, these dinky little systems are $350. Two people in my company have bought them in the last three weeks because they are so bloody cheap, and frankly they do about all you could want out of such a small package.

And for us? They play LOTRO well enough to make it worth doing, so much the better!

[Sapience]

Interesting update. I bumped my RAM to 2GB (the 945 chipset ignores everything beyond that so my 2.5G is capped at 2 accessible).

What it did allow was a bump in video ram from 64MB to 128MB (this again is on the Lenovo S10) after a Bios bump.

Low with most advanced graphics enabled is now possible but distant imposters must be turned off. I'm guessing what I see with them turned on is what Floon saw with some patches of the scenery not loading. Turn it off and everything works fine.

Since all netbooks have roughly the same guts with tiny variances in chipsets I'm willing to bet anyone with an Acer One, Lenovo s10, HP 1000, Averatec N1000, or Asus Eee can achieve similar results. It's playable if you're willing to tweak things a little.

[jugger181]

What sort of framerate are you getting on low now? could you raid?

[floon]

Since all netbooks have roughly the same guts with tiny variances in chipsets I'm willing to bet anyone with an Acer One, Lenovo s10, HP 1000, Averatec N1000, or Asus Eee can achieve similar results. It's playable if you're willing to tweak things a little.

I was in Moria when I tried, where we don't really have distant imposters. I'm guessing that the two terrain heightmaps made it unhappy.

[Sapience]

I ran though Moria ok, but man did it crush my FPS. I went from 20 zoning in to 4 inside.

I did see the missing tiles at one point after the thing went into powersave mode and I kicked it back out.

(You know people are going to wonder if we really work in the same building)

[floon]

(You know people are going to wonder if we really work in the same building)

I think people realize I'm most tolerable at a considerable distance, preferably at distances measured by the ping program.

[Serin36]

I think people realize I'm most tolerable at a considerable distance, preferably at distances measured by the ping program.

To which distance really doesn't matter, since you can ping your localhost, anyone on your LAN, or any external address, regardless of location.

However, if you mean at least 20 tracert hops, then maybe we're onto something. :P

[mac173]

I have to ask this. I tried to run LOTRO on my notebook, and it would lock up every time I tried to log in. The message in the log said I did not have the video resources to run the game.

I a Dell Vostro 1500
Core 2 Duo (1.4 gig each)
106 gig HD (rest is dual booted with Linux)
Intel integrated graphics
2 gig Ram

From what I have read, I have as much or more then these netbooks, so why can't I run LOTRO. I spend 32 hours a week at a second job mostly here and brousing the net. I would LOVE to spend that farming nodes!

[Sapience]

I have to ask this. I tried to run LOTRO on my notebook, and it would lock up every time I tried to log in. The message in the log said I did not have the video resources to run the game.

I a Dell Vostro 1500
Core 2 Duo (1.4 gig each)
106 gig HD (rest is dual booted with Linux)
Intel integrated graphics
2 gig Ram

From what I have read, I have as much or more then these netbooks, so why can't I run LOTRO. I spend 32 hours a week at a second job mostly here and brousing the net. I would LOVE to spend that farming nodes!

As a guess I'd say the Intel GMA in your Vostro is the issue. Not all Intel integrated graphics chips are the same. None are great, but some are designed for very basic functionality. I'm guessing that's your issue.

[mac173]

Well, that was the last vestage of hope for keeping Vista on this laptop. I am already dual booting (in Linux now in fact) and if I cannot game at all on this comp, Ubuntu can do everything else I need.

DANG, you got my hopes up for some LOTRO love at work............

[Comstrike]

This gets my mind turned towards being the first known person to log into the game from a list of odd places. Football games, cruise ships, airplanes, McDonalds, anyplace WiFi can be found.

Hmmmm, netbooks, WiFi, screen shots...I smell CONTEST!

[Sapience]

This gets my mind turned towards being the first known person to log into the game from a list of odd places. Football games, cruise ships, airplanes, McDonalds, anyplace WiFi can be found.

Hmmmm, netbooks, WiFi, screen shots...I smell CONTEST!

Sounds interesting. But honestly, do we really want to know where some people play?

[Comstrike]

Sounds interesting. But honestly, do we really want to know where some people play?

Hey, I don't want to know some of the place I play!

Think of it as "where I get my.lotro.com" thing.