Acer Aspire 5920

When my trusty Compaq laptop finally died after five and a half years' loyal service, I was dreadfully disappointed but managed to pull myself together and start searching for a replacement. After searching in several places and having several telephone consultations with my dad (who knows far more about these things than I do), I settled on the Acer.

My primary consideration was price, and at under £400 this laptop was less than half the price of my previous laptop. Acer has a good reputation, or so I'm told, and this was another important factor.

When I received the laptop I was very impressed with how it looked. To be honest I really wanted a purple laptop from Dell, but couldn't justify the extra price. However, the black surface is smart, smooth and sleek, and the greyish-white keyboard and screen area looks a lot nicer than you might think. It is a lot lighter than my previous laptop too, despite being a couple of inches wider - this is very handy when you're going home on the train and need to take it with you.

This laptop comes with Windows Vista Home Premium. I have heard mixed reviews about Vista, and would rather have gone for a laptop with XP, but now that I've been using the computer for a few months I really feel that Vista is an improvement in every way but appearance - I preferred the way that XP looked, and the way files and folders (especially music folders) appeared with XP but I accept this is just a personal preference. While at home, for example, I was able to connect to my brother's Vista laptop (shared files and music) using our home wireless network very easily - when I tried to do the same thing using our family's desktop computer with XP I just couldn't work out how.

The laptop has built-in wireless capability, which I understand is pretty standard these days but after using an annoying USB-connected dongle with my old laptop I'm enjoying the novelty.

The laptop has four USB 2.0 ports, which is great for connecting your camera, mp3 player, mouse etc., and a great improvement on my previous laptop which only had two. The Dolby surround sound is great for watching movies, and you can adjust the sound for when you're listening to music. A webcam is built into the computer, which I must confess I don't use, but it's a nice touch if you want to be able to see the person you are speaking to on Messenger.

The only downside is the graphics card - I don't know anything about computer graphics but even I can tell that these aren't so great. However, I think this would only be a problem if you are a serious gamer, which I certainly am not.

Overall, this is a great budget laptop if you use your computer for browsing the internet, writing letters and other documents, storing photos and music as well as watching films or listening to music. It would be ideal for a student who didn't want to take loads of CDs or a DVD player away to uni with them. The hard disk is massive so most people would be able to fit their entire music collection on here, plus their digital photos. On the basis of my experience with this laptop, Acer definitely deserve their good reputation.

I've had my laptop for just over two years now. I've had a couple of issues with the computer running slowly or crashing, and one of the USB ports no longer works. However, overall I'm very happy with the laptop and I would consider replacing this with another Acer laptop when it finally dies.