Acer Aspire 5336-T353G32Mnkk > Reviews (2)

When I ventured in the working world back in the mid-nineties, laptop computers were not common place. You had to pay a fair premium to have one, at least £1500 for something remotely decent. Of course back then a solitary gigabyte of hard drive was the norm and also came at a premium.

Of course with the movement of time, technology refines and adapts. Now laptops are probably more in use than your desktop computer of old thanks to wi-fi. My mum and dad were in the market for a new computer, all they use it for is internet so naturally the requirement was to spend little money and not have a spec that wouldn’t be utilized.

The job to find such a laptop was put in my hands and I immediately looked on Amazon who always seem to have some of the best prices on laptops. Acer is a brand where you get good spec for your money. I’ve had my acer for just over a year and for £350 it’s proved fantastic value.

Top of the charts was the Acer 5336, the price was a few pence under £260 delivered. Honestly I had never seen a laptop hit that kind of price point and to be fair, Amazon were selling it for a good deal less than other online retailers.
So what sort of spec would this peanut change give you?

Intel Celeron T3500 Cpu
3Gb Ram, 320Gb Hard Driver
15.3” Screen
Integrated Webcam, Wi-fi, Windows 7, DVD-Writer

Of course that sort of spec isn’t going to be running your games and be suitable for a lot of graphics work. But for running simple tasks, online browsing and general computer stuff its fine. At £260 you’d certainly get your money’s worth if you get a couple of years out of it before things speed up and your laptop’s feels like it’s giving up the race to keep up.

Opening the box, you’ll be greeted with the minimum of clutter, a few slim books shrink-wrapped, the laptop and the power cables.

The laptop weighs just over 2kg, it’s got a good feel to it, obviously some may prefer a more lightweight model but we’re not talking top end here. If you like sitting on the sofa with this on your lap then it’s perfectly adequate. Its build quality is a little on the plastic side, it doesn’t feel and look as slick in its design and construction as some other laptops and my Acer model. But again it all comes back to how much you’ve actually paid for it.

My main negative is about the keyboard. It feels cheap and if you like to touch type then it’s not really got the type of keys you’d associate with a good type flow. They feel like thin plastic tiles rather than keys. The mouse pad is adequate although the buttons could have been less stiff to the touch.

Display wise the screen is fine, looked clear and had a good definition when web browsing. You’d probably get more sharper resolution on other models but again…well you know.

The laptop comes with no backup discs, instead you have to run a piece of software which will create recovery discs for windows and the drivers etc. There’s not really any mention of this on the box so the scenario where you buy the laptop and don’t have any blank dvd’s to hand could be frustrating if you want to get to work.

However the disc creation is pretty straightforward. I had some problems burning the discs but then I think it could have been down to the discs I was using which are at least five years old. I don’t really keep up on dvd disc burning standards.

The webcam is a nice little addition; the resolution on it isn’t very high. Don’t be looking for crystal clear video, you won’t find it here.

Aside from Windows 7, there’s little in the way of software apart from the usual trials for Norton etc. My recommendation is to remove these straight away and go for something free like AVG.

So to sum up, if you’re looking for a sleek looking laptop then spend some more notes and look elsewhere. But if you’re on a budget or just want something cheap for internet access then this is a great buy. For £260 it does everything you’d expect for the money and I would recommend taking it into consideration.