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What do you think of Acer's quality?

M. Malone

M. Malone

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 11, 2004
677
2
a friend of mine is buying an Acer, I tried to convince him to try the new Core 2 Duo MacBook, but he needs a windows machine, in any case, he is thinking of going with Acer, this machine has amazing specs, but what are specs if the quality is crap...what do you guys think of Acer, all I know about Acer is that it's a sponsor on Michael Schumacher's Ferrari in Formula 1 :D

in any case, it's an Acer Aspire, here are the details
Check it out

thanks in advance
 
Acer are terrible. The last Windows pc I had was an acer laptop. Awful build, terrible customer service.
 
mrkamputee said:
Acer are terrible. The last Windows pc I had was an acer laptop. Awful build, terrible customer service.
Click to expand...

terrible compared to what? don't compare them to Macs, what windows computers you can say have good quality?
 
My cousin tries to persuade the family to buy acers. The 3 that resulted all have the most hideous keyboards...

Theres no passion in them, just cheap plastic.

Having said that, the acer monitor i have is really very good. But screens and computers are very different objects.
 
I have an acer travelmate 220. Screen died, hd died, battery died (twice), inverter board is gone, power adapter died, optical drive died, eithernet died...... It cost me twice as much as its retail worth to keep it running for two years.
 
so-so

Not very good quality. I have a friend who's on his 3rd Acer ferrari (?). :eek: It has alot of ports (HDMI too!), but he's had so many issues he plans on selling it and going with a FalconNorthwest fragbook.

I have another friend who has a Tablet from acer and he likes the whole tablet experience, but he says its terribly underpowered and it comes with only a 14" screen.
 
I have an Acer Aspire 3620. It is the best labtop I have ever had (but I want a MacBook Pro:( ). I have had no hard ware problems with it has been flawless with and I get about 3.5 hours of consistent battery life. The casing is very durable and rugged. The only thing I had to do was reinstall the OS as soon as I got it (they did a messy instillation) it took 30 minutes to do and I have had no problems with it whatsoever.

The only downside (on mine at least) was they formatted all partitions in FAT32 for some unknown reason. Its an easy fix....but it takes a while and I haven't bothered to do it.
 
Acer are on a par with Toshiba in my opinion (not so great). Tell him to go with ASUS or a Thinkpad, or if they aren't options then HP or Sony.
 
After a year of use my Acer Travelmate 800 the screen died. We decided to start using it as a desktop instead, hooking it up to an external monitor. After a few months of that the video died as well. Acer customer service said it would cost $450 for them to even look at it. I took my money elsewhere and have since vowed never to buy an Acer product ever again.
 
yeah..if you get a windows notebook....lenovo thinkpads are teh BEST quality for that. Or if you are thinking around the price range of an acer..i would get a dell....not an acer
 
Don't touch Acer with a barge stick!

My dad kitted his entire office out with Acers and they have almost all gone wrong (8 of them). He was without some of them for months on end.

Poor build quality, slow machines. They look great on paper, but the motherboard architecture is nothing like a MacBook and of course the OS is ridiculous.
 
Jericho2550 said:
terrible compared to what? don't compare them to Macs, what windows computers you can say have good quality?
Click to expand...

Well, it's not unreasonable to compare them to the mac portables at all, but, I wasn't comparing them to anything... acer just build bad machines, in my opinion at least. I had a lot of problems with them, they were completely impossible to deal with when I had to send the laptop back some six times for repairs, each time they would collect the machine and return it with nothing fixed, a few dents, and a sarcastic note from one of their engineers.

Anyhow, Acer soured me enough to switch to a mac, so maybe it's the best thing for your chum in the long term.
 
If you have to go for a less 'brand' name why not Asus? They build the Macbooks and their own line-up ain't bad. They seem to be priced equally as keenly as Acer where they're available.
 
I've owned only Thinkpads, then I got an Acer Ferrari, and the drop from quality was pretty disappointing. The Ferrari ran extremely hot; I couldn't set it on my bed without it overheating half of the time. The screen hinges were kind of wobbly (but not as bad as my aunt's Gateway), the left arrow key fell off a lot (since day 1), and the finish and paint rubbed off on the palm wrests.
It was a pretty powerful machine, and ran pretty much any game I threw at it, but it's physical build quality was less than perfect to say the least.

The mobo died from a 3 foot drop onto carpet.
I'm getting a Macbook.

Also surely someone else has mentioned it, but tell your friend he can Windowfy a MacBook.
 
hmmm....It seems like I got really lucky an got a really nice one. Mine is flawless. Keep in mind though, a lot of these people posting on these sites are switchers and switched because of a bad experience. People's opinions from this sight will be very biased.


edit: grammar
 
M. Malone said:
a friend of mine is buying an Acer, I tried to convince him to try the new Core 2 Duo MacBook, but he needs a windows machine, in any case, he is thinking of going with Acer, this machine has amazing specs, but what are specs if the quality is crap...what do you guys think of Acer, all I know about Acer is that it's a sponsor on Michael Schumacher's Ferrari in Formula 1 :D

in any case, it's an Acer Aspire, here are the details
Check it out

thanks in advance
Click to expand...

The links broken..... Anyways, I have an Acer Aspire 5100M, and I cannot upgrade that system to 7. I tried, and tried, and it keeps giving me a headache. Tried removing the ram, 2 rams, power supply, video card, switching hard drive...... It STILL DOESN'T BOOT UP WINDOWS 7..... I know it installs, placing the username but at the end after a third reset, it goes into an Acer screen, and then updates, and then....... Blinking cursor on a blank screen. Windows will not move.

Anyways, I reverted the system to bad vista, and if only there was a bios update. Its impossible to find, and the bios update is in the European site, but it doesn't work on a North American computer. So I am wasting my time. I called in customer service, and they told me that they will not pay the shipping and handling. I have to pay it, and in order to do that, I have to pay $60 from home to the plant, and $60 back from the plant. Bad customer service, bad quality, and bad buy.

If I were you, stay away from Acer, eMachines, and maybe gateway. These Desktops are useless. Buy a Mac, Leveno IBM laptop or a Dell if I were you.
 
Detinator73 said:
If I were you, stay away from Acer, eMachines, and maybe gateway. These Desktops are useless. Buy a Mac, Leveno IBM laptop or a Dell if I were you.
Click to expand...

Agreed, for the most part. My department supports several road warriors now, and I've used/supported/owned several different laptops over the years.

As of two years ago, I would have added HP to the "buy" list. Not so much anymore.

Mac, Lenovo, perhaps an Asus.

Following that list, on to the Maybes: HP, Toshiba, Dell, Sony.

Under NO Circumstances (IMO): Acer, Gateway (are they even in business still?), eMachines (also wondering if/how they have survived)...

In any event, do your homework and review the deal. I avoid "limited quantity special deals" like I avoid dead raccoons. These special deals are usually orphans, refurbs, or from the Island of Misfit Toys.
 
IMHO, Acer = cheap, plasticy junk.

And I have a plastic Macbook. :D I bought an Acer laptop - and sold it within three months. It was absolute junk. But I never had an hardware issues, if that matters. Its just that the case was coming apart at the seams after just 3 months. I ditched that thing while I had the chance.

The only PC brands I'd touch would be HP or Lenovo. (Dell has horrible support, so no way.)

EDIT: So I eat my words... I just bought a new Acer... oh well. This one seems OK, but its still cheap and plasticy compared to my wife's Macbook.
 
Lenovo ThinkPads are pretty good from the consensus. The Dell Precision that I own is a very good machine. The only other brand of laptop that I would consider getting would be a P or FX-series Gateway, one of the 17"'ers. Of course, there's the Macbook.

I would stay away from Acer. I had a monitor of their once that performed well in the response time department and can recommend it for a cheap gaming monitor if one doesn't mind backlight bleed (AL2216W, IIRC). Their laptops, however, don't compare to the recommendations above. From looking at my friends' Acers, their surfaces collect mucho dust, keys come off, run hot, and generally don't perform well in comparison to other machines; not to mention the machines' additional features smoke poles as well.
 
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