Acer laptops

[Nitestorm]

Looking to get an Acer laptop for a relative, but would like to know if anyone has any comments about them..good or bad. How good is Acer support and do they regularly update drivers, etc.

[Ant]

I have 20, 1 year old Travel Mate 230's at work, and found them to be a little unreliable, and not that well made tbh. (very wobbly screens due to crap hinges, and flexible plastic lids)

A few of them have been sent back for various things; hard drive failures, dead screens, DVD drive stopping, and a couple with dead motherboards. (Please bare in mind I work for a primay school, and the kids use these!) I had no problems getting them fixed, but I went through our supplier and not directly through Acer support. As far as our supplier is concerned, Acer support are a bit slow!

Someone else I know has recently bought 3 Acer TM 4050's (i think) and they seem to be a lot better built than the older ones. None of them have had any problems yet. They seem quite nice to be honest.

Driver wise, the drivers for the TM 230's, have been the same for ages, no updates.

They do however seem to be very good value for money if you compare them to other brands such as Dell. I think I'd give them another chance in the future.

Ant

[Jonny M]

Right, their newer machines are a lot better made than the older ones, this is noticable. They are no IBM, but I'd say they are put together better than the Dell Inspirons.

But, and this is a big but, their support is dire. An Acer machine will be great if you don't need supporting on it, but the moment something goes wrong and it needs to go back for a repair, you enter a world of pain. You're better off with a Toshiba to be honest, even the cheapest Toshes are built well, but the tradeoff is they are normally bulkier and not as well desiged as most other laptops.

Acer are cheap for a reason. I wouldn't buy anything from them again, purely due to the awful way in which my support case was handled.

[Nitestorm]

Thanks for the comments. Looks as if the newer machines are better so that is postive. Would of been nice if they had decent support, but guess I can look after any software issues my relative has. Would just be the hardware side of things and might take your advice and deal with the supplier not Acer.

[Ant]

Thanks for the comments. Looks as if the newer machines are better so that is postive. Would of been nice if they had decent support, but guess I can look after any software issues my relative has. Would just be the hardware side of things and might take your advice and deal with the supplier not Acer.

Providing your supplier doesn't just pass you on to Acer directly. I know some companies just give you the details of the manufacturer and expect you to contact them yourself! Bit cheeky I think.

Ant

[5cupa]

i have bought 2 acers over the past year and thought that value for money spec wise they have been excellent, but i guess if i had more of a budget i might have looked to other makes. at the prices there current range is at e.g aspire u cant really go wrong and with the extra 3 years warranty for an extra £60

i havent dealt with there tech support so cant comment on that though