Acer, are they any good?

[Rubix78]

I want a laptop, I would like a Sony one but looking at funds and value for money I have come across this which my GF says is a good laptop

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_5920WSMi_Laptop_LX.AGS0X.015/version.asp

Now, do you think thats worth the price?

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Sony_Vaio_FE31Z_Laptop_VGN-FE31Z/version.asp

Thats the Sony one

[chis]

Well, my father had a disastrous experience with an Acer laptop he bought a few years back. Died suddenly after a week. Tech support took ages to get through to, weren't very helpful. First replacement took some weeks to arrive, died after TWO DAYS. Second replacement, a similar story.

I've seen enough Acer desktops to know how rubbish they are as well. So do yourself a favour and save up. Go for Toshiba or Fujitsu Siemens. Or even an Apple Macbook if you can stretch that far.

Edit: Sony gear is nice, but you're paying extra for the name. And, well, it's Sony.

[MarioMark]

I've got that Acer laptop, it's brill!

Me and my friend both bought one at the same time from Comet, and got 5% off for buying two. We've both had no problems with them and neither have dead pixels on the screen; it also runs the new UT3 demo fine!

Go for it!

Supprised it's still that price though, we had ours for that price 2 months ago.

[Fireproofradiator]

I just bought the Acer 7720g. Huge screen, and photos look great on it. Sound is cool too and I quite like Vista. Not terrifically impressed by it's performance on games though - my two year old pc seems to play Half Life 2 better than my Acer does Lost Coast.

Currently trying to work out whether it's actually got a decent graphics card in there cos one of the main things I got it for was playing Stalker...

[MikeRox]

Amazing how different peoples experiences with Acer are.

My work have a bunch of laptops and they're about as solid as they come.

Fireproof, Desktop PCs generally do a much better job of gaming than laptops, regardless of what the laptop spec is, a slower PC seems to do a better job.

[chis]

Toshiba aren't cheap sods: they do give you a recovery CD. There's one good reason to go with them. All the Toshiba laptops I have encountered, including quite a few old Portege's from the Pentium 1 era, still work perfectly. Except for one where the hard disk had died. Probably a Hitachi Deathstar.

I'm surprised whenever I encounter a happy Acer user. They are widely regarded as "bottom-of-the-barrel" PC World boxen, of a similar build to Packard Bell. Don't go near them, save up for a reliable brand.

I don't mean to invalidate or damn the advice given by the other chaps here, but I have a genuine dislike of some manufacturer's PCs, having seen a lot of them die or develop faults in the field. To be fair, though, neither Acer or Packard Bell have the dubious pleasure of Most Dead Boxen Encountered: that honour falls to eMachines. Utterly ****e PSUs.

[Rubix78]

Thanks guys. I don't want it for games really so I am not worried about that. I will be storing a lot of music and films so I need a big HDD.