Acer Aspire 5051AWXMi > Reviews (18)

I've had this laptop for 3 days now, and so far I've had no problems with it. I paid £388 for it from LaptopsDirect.co.uk, which I think is reasonable for what you get.

After first opening the laptop and switching it on, you are presented with the Windows Setup Screen where you must enter your name etc. After all that the laptop crashed, and I had to remove the battery to reboot it. However, this is the only time the laptop has crashed.

The 5051AWXMi comes with 512MB RAM by default, which is a bare minimum these days, especially with the upcoming release of Windows Vista which requires at least 512MB RAM. It also has an AMD Turion 64 MK36 2.0GHz processor, which is slightly higher than average for a laptop this price. The Turion processor can lower in speed depending on what you are doing. therefore saving battery life. The 60GB Hard Drive, which turns out to be more like 50GB partitioned into 2 x 25GB sections. This can be quite annoying as all programmes by default install to the C: drive, which then becomes filled up quickly. The onboard ATi Radeon Xpress 1100 isn't brilliant, but it does the job. It plays games such as FarCry, NFS: Most Wanted etc on lowest graphics, but the picture is stretched because it's a widescreen display and the resolution has to be either 800x600 or 1024x768 or the graphics struggle.

The 14.1" WXGA LCD is very clear and easy to read, with a resolution of 1280x800. Finding wallpapers that are that resolution is a little harder, but not impossible. The onboard WiFi is good, it connects and stays connected, as you would expect. I haven't had chance to use the "DVD-Super Muli double layer", as I am confused as to which kind of discs it accepts. Windows says it is a DVD-RAM drive, I've seen on once website it's a DVD+RW DL, and on another site DVD-RW DL.

The laptop comes pre-installed with Windows Media Center Edition, with a free upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premuim (although I'm not sure I'll "upgrade"). Also pre-installed is Norton Anti-Virus with a 90 day licence, and lots of useless Acer software that I uninstalled without even finding out what it was. It seems slightly useless having Windows MCE as there is no TV Tuner, and I can't get the S-Video Out to work.

The Acer Aspire 50501AWXMi is a very good laptop for the money, and I would recommend it for surfing the internet, listening to music and watching videos. It plays games, but not aswell as a desktop for the same price would.