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[SMD]

After a long hard couple of weeks researching laptops and getting clued up on the latest tech followed by lots of umming and ahing, I decided to buy this Acer laptop http://www.costco.co.uk/view/product/uk_catalog/cos_1,cos_1.2,cos_1.2.2/175486

It turned up yesterday and I used to for the half hour or so it takes for the initial set up. Today the bugger won't turn on. Quick search on the internet revealed that I should take out the battery and press the power button for a minute but battery is inside so I'm not faffing about with that so its going back tomorrow.

So should I get a replacement or run?

[TheBoy]

Acer have a poor reliability record.

[Steve B]

Acer have a poor reliability record.

Like the bleeding omega then 

[Vamps]

We have 2 Acers, 1'st one is currently back in use by swmbo and was bought in 2007. It was put away when we both bought new ones, but has just been put back into service having out lived a Sony and an HP...............

The second is my current one and is working fine but there is a problem with one of the hinges, it's about 2 years old................

[Kevin Wood]

My Aspire one pro is still doing sterling service. Has been my main "in front of the TV" laptop, and also diagnostic / LPG mapping machine rattling around in car footwells for as long as I've had my Omega. No problems and it's also outlived some much more expensive kit.

A sample size of one on a very much older product isn't that significant, though. I'd take this one back and get something else, I think.

[amba]

Been using an Acer for the past 5 years for my work stuff.Great bit of kit and never had a spot of trouble with it although the poor hard drive sounds like a coffee grinder when its working hard.Has nothing apart from work planning details on it and touch wood its utterly reliable.

[SMD]

I chose this because it ticked most boxes. Slim and 15.6", IPS screen, good battery life' spare mSATA slot for SSD alongside HDD and generally received good reviews. Price was pretty decent too. I planned on maxing out the RAM and fitting an SSD in the future. The processor isn't the fastest i5 but I figured the HDD was the bottleneck and should be rapid once the SSD was in.

I like lenovo and ASUS but battery life is important and they're not as good as Acer (certainly not in the same price range). Needs to be slim too  might just get another

[minifreek]

Iv had an ACER laptop for a few years now, never let me down...

Only thing that has failed is the battery, but thats quite common with most laptops...

I recently upgraded from WinXP 64 to Win8 64 and its running fine....

[TheBoy]

Acer are "designed" to get the biggest numbers for sales spec, rather than properly designed. IMHO, that (along with quite poor manufacturing) is the root cause of reliability issues.  Laptops can suffer from a lot of heat in confined areas, and by their nature have to work with most of the airvents blocked!

This is why the professional stuff (HP Business, Dell Latitude, Lenovo etc) tends to last better than the consumer stuff (Acer, Sony Vaio, HP Presario etc). The notable exception are the Apple ones, which are well designed, if you don't mind being a bit gay. And the OS sucks.

If you think you need an i5 or i7 laptop with discrete graphics and 8G+ RAM, you probably actually need a desktop. If you really do need a high spec laptop, make it premium, business oriented models only.

[TheBoy]

I should add, I'm not a fan of Lenovo Stinkpads (as I sit here in front of an old Lenovo T410, 8G RAM and 256G SSD), but they do have good reliability and are reasonably robust. Bloody keyboard layout does my head in every time I use the bloody thing!

The biggest downside with Lenovo is finding the right drivers should you have to rebuild or upgrade the OS.

[EMD]

Had my Acer about a year now from new , much faster and very reliable  Better than the cr@p Sony it replaced  Free lifetime antivirus too 

[Kevin Wood]

You can't get much worse than a Sony laptop. I'm sure there'll be unanimous agreement on that point.

[TheBoy]

You can't get much worse than a Sony laptop. I'm sure there'll be unanimous agreement on that point.

I cannot argue with that!  Sony Vaio really are crocks of shite. All of them.

[AndyRoid]

I cannot argue with that!  Sony Vaio really are crocks of shite. All of them.

Amen to that

Iv had an ACER laptop for a few years now, never let me down...

Only thing that has failed is the battery, but thats quite common with most laptops...

I've managed to accidentally pop the odd key off the keyboards when catching them with shirt buttons of all things, and they are a bitch to reseat. I personally find the build quality somewhat cheap and weak even in in the general feel of them, let alone using them

Battery wise a bit of careful management will keep it going for as long as you could reasonably expect unless it's a cheap Chinese POS to start with. (My Tosh R630-155 Satellite still gives me roughly 2 to 2½ hours from an original 8+hours and was bought in April 2011).

[LC0112G]

I still use a Dell Vostro 1720 - one of the few that were available with a 1920x1200 display when purchased in mid 2009.

It's totally original - except the screen that I replaced when I broke it, the motherboard that broke on a Ryanair Flight to Munich, the hard-disk that died due to a bad sector (and had a rootkit virus), and the battery which now runs flat in the time taken to boot up. Other than that it's totally original.

I have access to several other early noughties Dell laptops and they still work. Every other lappy I've owned has expired after less than a years abuse.