Acer Aspire 4720z

1. The Laptop

Manufacturer: Acer

Model: Aspire-4720z

CPU: Intel Pentium DualCore T2330, 1.60GHz

RAM: 1 GB

Hard drive capacity: 160 GB

2. Hardware

CD/DVD: DVD RW reads and writes without problems.

LAN: Broadcom BCM5787M Gigabyte ethernet, works out of the box

Wireless: AR5007EG, incorrectly indentified by lspci as AR242x on a 64 bit system. See wiki page about the card for details on how to make it work.

Sound: In CentOS 5.2, doesn't work out of the box. Intel 8280, uses snd_hda_intel module. Module loads but device has no sound. This can be fixed by installing newer alsa drivers. (See the Additional Information section).

In CentOS 5.3 it works out of the box.

Video: Intel GM965/GL960 works out of the box

USB: Works without problem

Firewire: No firewire port

Media card reader: PCI Express port, untested

Touchpad or other pointing device: Synaptic Touchpad works out of the box

Sense battery level: Works

Suspend (manual): Untested

Suspend (close lid): Untested

3. Additional information

WebCam can be made to work. See the webcam section of http://home.roadrunner.com/~computertaijutsu/acer4720z.html for information if using CentOS 5.2 Note that it requires 3rd party modules, untested by the CentOS developers, to work properly.

In CentOS 5.3 the camera is recognized and installing a program such as luvcview (using the rpmforge repo and running the command yum install luvcview) will enable you to test and use the webcam.

With CentOS 5.2, sound works with later alsa drivers. See the sound section of http://home.roadrunner.com/~computertaijutsu/acer4720z.html for details. It requires a later version of the alsa driver. Like the webcam, it requires 3rd party programs, untested by CentOS developers.

Again, in CentOS 5.3, this is unnecessary and sound should work out of the box.

4. Comments

Although sound, the webcam, and wireless require 3rd party modules, it is a reasonable laptop for the price. (Often on sale for USD $500 or less.)