Anyone heard of Acer Laptops?

sausagefans

ormus wrote: »

agreed.
after say dell toshiba and sony, acer must be in 4th place.

They have, I think, also been in the top spot at least in the last two years.

nullogik

Casual wrote: »

Hehe!

I looked on Tesco's website (thanks for the hint) and sorted through all the brands of Laptop. There was 'Tesco Value' and I thought crikey.......turns out it was only a laptop bag. Jeez - what next....Tesco Value making laptops!

Well you might actually have hit something there. They've already entered the software market with a £20 Tesco branded office suite, albeit based on Ability Office, but making PCs is something I can well see Tesco doing. Watch this space!

Blacksheep1979

nullogik wrote: »

Build quality is good and they offer a wide range for all budgets. Acer would definitly be one of the top three manufacturers I would look at if I were in the market for a laptop.

I don't know where you get the idea that build quality is good - and the reason they are cheaper than the likes of IBM, Asus etc is because the quality is nowhere near the same.

Personally I would never buy an Acer laptop, just seen and heard of too many problems.

DKLS

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

I don't know where you get the idea that build quality is good - and the reason they are cheaper than the likes of IBM, Asus etc is because the quality is nowhere near the same.

Personally I would never buy an Acer laptop, just seen and heard of too many problems.

I would second that, Have recently made a corporate decision to use Dell or Toshiba notebooks, All the Acers in the company we have had problems with except mine

nullogik

On the contrary, I've heard read many reviews and know a few people who have Acers that are happy with them.

Toshiba haven't had good press in the past especially with regards to build quality, though no doubt they've improved it since then. Secondly, Dell's build is good but they use non-standard parts (especially on their desktops) which means your limited in upgrade capabilities and spare parts options. Dell has recently received a lot of bad press about their customer service.

Just because a computer is cheaper than others it doesn't mean build quality is skimped on, it might just mean that profit margins are lower on each pc/laptop, and not a decrease in product quality?

Blacksheep1979

The reviews on Acer products are good as for the money they provide alot - however very few reviews last longer than a few days - and from my experiences alot of Acer laptops start failing after a few months.

Non standard parts in Dell may have been a problem in the past, not so much now but for a laptop thats hardly a concern as you aren't going to be swapping parts.

Yes I agree that profit margins may be less - but build quality on an Acer is definately far below the likes of the manufacturers I mentioned above.

Idiophreak

I got a cheap acer lappy a couple of months ago and it's fine.
(I work in IT and like to think I know a thing or two about PCs)

It's def. a cheap lappy, there's no doubt about it. The quality is nothing like the same as my dad's uber-dell, or the gfs vaio, or indeed gfs sisters ferrari acer.

It does, however, seem better all-round than the dell machines for the same money(my mum has one) and at the end of the day it does the job.

I bought the cheapest one from ebuyer (around 380 I think) and it's sound - need to upgrade the ram (512-1gb) and/or reformat it (so much preinstalled junk!!), but aside from that it's fine. It's not great - but what do you want for <£400? A rubber biscuit?

Casual

Thanks for all the comments and helpful words guys - I think I've learnt a lot about computers today. Both with me surfing and researching and from you useful MSE'rs!

My next two questions therefore (simply encouraging debate y'see...;) ) are:

1. MS Vista - good thing or bad thing for a home user?
2. Where can I get me a cheap recent version of MS Office?

Thanks guys,
Catherine

Blacksheep1979

Personally I wouldn't bother with vista, numerous reasons including lack of maturity, some progs still not ported over(drivers too), a less powerful (or less well memory spec'd) machine may struggle - and also you may start to find lots of windows xp products coming down in price now.

milla

Hi Catherine

Does it need to be MS Office ?
You might like to take a peek at this : )http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1165333976,77878,

: )