Acer Aspire 3000

The Acer Aspire is, or more accurately was, a basic entry-level laptop. I say was as you probably can't buy one new any more, but this may be useful for someone buying one second-hand.

I bought my Acer for simple tasks such as browsing the net etc, I have a powerful desktop PC that I use for game playing etc and so I was happy to buy a cheap and low-spec laptop such as the Acer.

Specifications:

The laptop has a 15 inch screen which is fairly small compared to most modern laptops, but fine for just surfing the net etc.

It comes with a Sempron CPU running at 1.8Ghz, which is fine when running Windows XP (The default O/S) but I think it would struggle with Vista, especially when you consider that you get 256 MB RAM.

The 40GB hard drive is small, but again if you are only surfing etc then that should be fine.

The laptop isn't wireless enabled but there is a slot for you to plug in a wireless adaptor card, these cost £10-£20.

The unit is fairly lightweight but battery life is only just over and hour which is a little disappointing.

Experience
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I bought my Acer back in September 2005 for £450 as I wanted a cheap laptop that I could use mainly for going on the internet and playing some basic games.

This laptop was fine for that, it struggled a little bit when I tried to do too many things at once, such as surf the net and play a game at the same time, but in general it handled everything I threw at it without too many complaints. It was easy to setup and I was using it within a few minutes of getting it out of the box.

Problems
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After around 14 months (typically just out of the 1 year warranty) the laptop started to have problems recharging. If I fiddled around with the lead it was OK but soon it stopped working.

Thinking that the PSU was the problem I ordered a replacement, the manufacturers own make cost around £50 and that solved the problem for a month or two only.

I took the laptop to be repaired and was told the problem was where the power supply connected to the motherboard. The only solution was to replace the entire motherboard at a cost of around £150. Three months laters the laptop was fixed, apparantly the parts were hard to get.

Everything was fine again but a few months later the same problem began to manifest itself and I decided to buy a new laptop for £290, I wasn't prepared to pay another £150 for a repair as I felt I was just throwing good money after bad.

Overall
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I can't recommend this laptop as although it can be considered good value for money for what it does, it seems to have a major design flaw. I've read about a lot of people who've had similar experiences to mine. Had the laptop gone wrong after 3 years then I would probably forgive it as it is after all a budget laptop, but 1 year or so is way too short.

If you can find one of these in working order for say £50 or so second hand then it's probably worth taking the risk on it breaking down, but ask the seller if there are any problems with it recharging.