Acer Aspire 5101AWLMi - Turion 64 mobile technology MK-36 2 GHz - 15.4" TFT > Reviews > The Laptop is dead, long live the laptop

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Look & Feel	Excellent
Comfort & Portability	Good
Robustness & Durability	Good
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Cheap, great display,  superb performance, great spec
Disadvantages:	none really

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Please bow your heads and stand a moment in silence to mark the passing of my old laptop, an Acer travelmate 230, which, after four years and one too many blows to the head, finally gave up the ghost and went to laptop heaven with some of my holiday photos still on the hard disk. It's OK, they were still on the cards, so all I have to do is re-edit.

I'm now the proud owner of a new Acer, and it is quite an upgrade on the old one.

For one thing it has the AMD Turion 64 processor, which is apparently dual core. I would buy AMD over Intel anytime.

It has built in wireless which connects so easily that I had to turn it off as I wanted to load AVG antivirus before I connected to the internet.

Speed
It is quiet and very quick, even with 512 Megabytes of RAM it performs. when I get around to putting in the other 512 it will be unbeatable. As it is it runs Adobe Photoshop very well, handles three different browsers and a word processor simultaeneously and has not struggled yet.

Look and Feel
Acer have come on a long way since my first laptop, it is slim, elegant and light.

Memory and Capacity
There are 512 Megabytes of RAM - DDR2 dual channel. Good for most applications.

Capacity of the Hard disk is 60 gigabytes, divided into 2 partitions, one for system files and one for data and backups.

Robustness and durability
Well I've had it a week, written several articles on it, surfed the net and everything works OK if it is like my last Acer it will be fine, so long as I don't drop it like the last one, - A Tip for users: If you buy a house with a stone floor, try not to drop your laptop on it, they don't bounce very well. given normal care I would expect this computer to last a few years.
considering the price I paid this is excellent. it was half the price of my old one, delivered to my home for £394.

Ease of use
It's a windows computer, it's easy to use. I haven't got the hang of the touch pad sticky button feature yet but it's not a big thing.

Range of Extra features
This is good, there is a dual layer DVD burner, memory card reader which takes 5 types of card, including the SD card used by my camera, 802.11G wireless Lan, RJ45 LAN, a Modem (so far unused) and a very respecable speaker system ( for a laptop) The widescreen display is brilliant, something Acer does bettter most is displays.

Instruction Manual
what can I say? it covers all the functions particular to the computer but assumes you know how to use a computer.

Manufacturer Support
I have never needed to use the support, and this is the fourth Acer I have bought. the website offers downloads of all the drivers you might need for the machine.

Value for money
You can't beat this for VFM. Why people are prepared to cough up £800 or more for big brand laptops is competely beyond me. you can get everything you need for under £400, including delivery. You can't go wrong and that's from somebody who has been playing with PCs for 15 years, compared with my Dell lattitude D610, my work laptop, this one is streets ahead on performance at a third of the price.

Downsides? The mouse buttons are a bit clicky and are only three USB ports, but that's not a problem. This model does not have built in Bluetooth either.
I would have no hesitation in recomending this computer to anyone, beginner or profesional.