Acer, not so Ace.
 Feb 9th, 2007
Advantages:
Looks alright, cheap, simple, DVD writer
Disadvantages:
Feels and looks cheap, easily damaged, poor speakers
Recommendable:
No
Detailed rating:
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Look & Feel
Comfort & Portability
Robustness & Durability
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  iamasadlittleboy
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Ok I dont usually check my guestbook on here, so if someone needs to ask my anything at all, could t...
Member since:20.06.2006
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Review rated by 11 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
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So I've been borrowing my mums Acer Aspire 3610 since November to help me with my uni work and I must admit it's not as good as it perhaps should be, or maybe i just have high standards. Then again it's not completely bad news, so we'll start with the good news (what little their is) 500mb ram, 1.50 Ghz and all of this for under £400 (with free 3 year complete warranty when my mum bought it). And the DVD writer works fine for me, as do the USB ports and the such. The warranty I'll admit will be persued upon when the state of this becomes worse, but currently it's a case of neccesity for me to use it and so maybe doing my work on it does lead me to disliking it a bit more than I should.
You turn it on and it all starts up fine just like you'd expect it to but then you reach the keys and it all feels a bit cheap and tasteless to me. "Mine" was bought around 18 months ago, and already two of the keys have come off, and the screen blurs certain colours. As well as the two keys that have come off several keys have also become unreliable to say the least, this coupled with the now defunct left "mouse" button and a touch pad thats almost as tempermental as the keyboard and you realise why my mum was given the warranty for free. Ok I'm not a big fan of laptops on the whole, I'm a desktop fan, but still this is poor even by the lowest of standards, and to add injury to insult the battery life is dire. 1 Hour from a full charge just to run (not playing hugely impressive games or playing/writing a DVD) just goes to show how cheaply these were put together. Add in the feel of the drink holder (that is what it is, isn't it?) of which your to scared to even place a shot glass on as it looks like it'll just snap.
The 36GB (or their abouts) hard disk (I'm not sure if it's accurate or just the laptop giving me a random number as that seems minute), is just pathetic tbh, and would put me off buying one for myself. The final nail in it's proverbial coffin is the speaker quality, now fair enough it's not gonna be brilliant surround sound quality movie style thing, but my kettle makes more noise. Making it impossible to properly listen to the radio/CD and make a drink. Terrible.
The extra features if you can look past it's flaws, it has wi-fi (as do all new laptops anyway), bluetooth (which I've never managed to get to work), and 4 usb slots. Also the best feature is the D2D, the data back up system it uses, if your hard drive fails it can be possible to recover windows, then again you're told to write a windows back up anyway which makes this a moot point. If your after a cheap laptop, then this fills that category, if your wanting a good laptop, don't cut the corners and get a Sony, an IBM or an Apple.
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by (64%):
09.02.2007 20:27
Shame when you get something and it isn't as good as you expect, Sue
09.02.2007 18:31
Sometimes the warranty is tricky. Frankly, I dont really believe on the warranty because at the end of the day we have to pay extra. As far as I know, Acer has always a problem with the screen and now you just confirm the lifespan of the battery. It is quite annoying to charge it and suddenly it will be drained! So far, it is useful to me but I think to make it more useful if you tried to explain the positive side of the unit. Nice review
09.02.2007 15:23
Interesting although I suppose you got the 3 year guarantee too so could possibly get the faults sorted out.