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Overall Rating

Timeline exceeds my expectations!
Apparently a lot of people have been having bad luck with this machine, but as a veteran Acer user I went ahead and bought one anyway (plus that battery life is just too good to pass up.)

So far, I love everything about this machine. The appearance is very sleek and attractive. At 15.6″ it’s a larger machine, but in no way does it seem “bulky.” I’m impressed at how solid and well-designed it is (definitely lives up to all that “thin and light” hype.)

The display, of course, is just gorgeous (typical of Acer machines.) The keyboard has taken some heat in a lot of reviews, but I have no problem with it. It feels sturdy, is comfortable to work with and has presented no problem with functionality. Personally, I think it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen as far as layout (if not construction.) The touchpad is a bit oversensitive (ie, you have to make sure your left hand is plenty clear of it if you navigate with your right) but otherwise works well, though the much-acclaimed “touchpad gestures” are more annoying than they are useful. The touchpad buttons are also adequate for standard functions, but if you’re an Opera-user like me you’ll probably find them cumbersome to work with for some of the browser commands. Still, overall I’m extremely satisfied with presentation and usability.

As far as performance goes, it’s by far exceeded my expectations. I purposely purchased the model with a stronger CPU (1.4ghz SU3500 Core 2 Solo) and an additional gig of RAM, thinking even that wouldn’t be enough, but this machine just FLIES for everything I need it to do. I’ve got NOD32, email and WMP11 running pretty much constantly, and I’ll typically be switching back and forth between multiple browsers (with multiple tabs,) spreadsheets, documents, Photoshop, folders, etc. No problems whatsoever with it bogging down or even lagging, even in the powersaver mode. Right now, with all of the above running, it’s idling at about 5% CPU and 1.7 GB memory (on battery power/low CPU setting.) I’m very impressed with it’s performance.

Battery life is awesomeness in motion. When you disconnect from AC power, it automatically goes into powersaver mode — it’s a great feeling to hover over the battery icon and see “08 hr 20 min (99%) remaining.” xD

The Vista actually isn’t bad either, despite all the horror stories I’ve heard. After disabling UAC and a couple other services that cause it to prompt you thirty times when you try to delete one thing, I find that it’s very smooth, stable, unintrusive and much more streamlined/intuitive than XP. I’ve encountered a few random bugs, but that’s the OS, not the computer, and it takes time to get familiar with a new OS anyway.

A couple other miscellaneous things I like about this laptop: the cooling system is VERY efficient; it’s consistently comfortable on your lap (even after eight hours,) and the air the fan blows out is barely even warm. The webcam is fantastic, clear and crisp (though admittedly I have little to compare to.) Speakers are excellent too, as far as laptop speakers go. The volume range is great, and the sound is super clear. I didn’t like listening to music on the speakers of my old laptop (Acer Aspire 5100,) because you lost so much of the depth — not so on this machine. There’s very little bloatware on the factory install, and the included Acer apps are useful. Very fast restart from Sleep mode (or whatever it defaults to when you close the lid.) Fast boot, and fast shut down. (Seriously, it’s the little things like that you notice bugging you the most after a while.)

In all fairness, it’s not /entirely/ perfect. For one thing, I noticed a problem with it randomly maxing out CPU at 100% for no apparent reason, and the only way to correct it was with a reboot. This turned out to be two faulty drivers causing a resource leak (VGA and LAN) and was an extremely simple fix (downloaded the correct drivers from [...], ran the setup programs for each and rebooted. Took about five minutes.) but for someone who’s not good with computers it’s a terminal flaw.

There is some bloatware packaged with it (only four or five apps, not bad at all compared to some other machines) which you have to spend extra time uinstalling. And like I mentioned, the touchpad isn’t perfect, and Vista takes a little know-how to get it running right. Also, the keyboard shows /every/, and I mean EVERY single smudge, as soon as you even /think/ about typing on it. It doesn’t really look “bad,” but it doesn’t look good either.

Overall, though, these are all insignificant compared to everything else this laptop is capabale of. I absolutely love everything about it and am extremely satisfied. 5/5 stars in my personal opinion, but considering how the driver problem might impede the average user, 4/5 star recommedation to others.

This particular model here offers the larger hard drive (500 gb,) more powerful processor (1.4ghz Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500,) 4gb RAM and 64 bit operating system, which are all useful upgrades and make it perfectly suited to my preferences, but they’re not really essential. I probably would’ve loved the computer just as much without them, but the price inlcuding upgrades was too good to pass up. It’s even better for the base model (sold at Wally World, for example) — it’s really a fantastic deal considering everything you get.

Anyways, I’ll shut up now. Feel free to comment on this review if you have any further questions.

Good luck to everyone in finding their perfect computer! Hopefully you’ll be as successful as I am. =)