I purchased my laptop at Christmas via the Park catalogue, it arrived in November 2008. Since then I have used this for my work, entertainment and job seeking. It’s a pretty basic laptop if you ask me, well I may be a tad bit off of hand here as this is indeed my first laptop, therefore I have no other experiences on how other laptops work- but I’m gunna give a review a try all the same which may be a bit tricky, so iff this isn’t to your liking- I did warn you. Memory I feel that the storage is very poor, with only 80 GB which is divided into two sections, one of which is almost impossible to get to the other contains everything that keeps the laptop working. I feel that this is not enough. It’s not good for those that use the laptop for entertainment purposes. For example, I used to have loads of memory left however, after I installed Sims 3, this was not the case. Meaning that I now have to buy an external hard drive because of the lack of memory. I know many of you will say this is your own fault for installing the game on, however, I feel that a laptop is made for all purposes, meaning that it should have a good amount of memory on. Battery Life I feel that the battery life is pretty good with an average of 2 hours once fully charged, however
it never lasts 2 hours. The good thing about it is you can charge it while you are using it- I understand that with some other laptops this can be a bit of a problem, however with this one it is perfectly fine. One thing I have found is that the battery life never really sticks to the predicted time it has left, this will only be accurate if you leave it in a room and just don’t touch it. However, if you are using it all the time for internet purposes and work, this tends to take the battery life out pretty quickly.
Another thing that I have noticed about this laptop is the fact that It has a tendency to crash, and not recover itself. Which means the only way that you are then able to recover it is by taking the battery out and restarting it, which I feel is not the best solution for a laptop. However, if you do wish to use the internet after this has happened it’s best to use it on the safe mode with networking Admittedly everything turns out a bit bigger but you connect to the internet quicker- manually. And it works much faster.
Internet connection- it’s relatively good for finding an internet connection, I don’t know whether this is due to the LAN detector being strong or my internet being good, I just couldn’t say. However, it finds the internet and connects, the annoying thing about it is that you can stay in the same place, not have the phone go off and you still lose the internet connection, once again I don’t know whether this is the laptop itself or the internet. I have a pretty good feeling that it is the laptop though.
Shortcut buttons
Down the left hand side of the keyboard area are 7 shortcut buttons all of which perform different tasks- as I’m not a man I’m going to admit that I haven’t used all of them as I’m scared of what they will do. However, I know how annoying it is when you go to press tab but you press the ‘lock’ button instead so that the computer goes to sleep for a bit until you can log yourself back on. Good thing that it resumes everything including that 10 page essay you were just typing up and forgot to save.
The cursor/mouse thing Just the same as any other laptop however, it’s not that little red ball thing in-between some buttons it actually is a pad before the keypad in which you roll your finger over and the curser follow you.
Value for money For what I paid for this it isn’t worth it, I paid over £400 for this laptop- however, since I had bought it my partner informed me that he had purchased the same laptop a few months to a year before me and it cost him much cheaper, one word: Ooops. So going on the fact that I got ripped off and looking at what he paid for it, £200 or around that for this laptop is perfectly reasonable as it’s cheap and cheerful and does the job.
DVD viewer
When I first put a DVD into the DVD disk drive, nothing happened. I was a bit confused, until I decided to download VCL player, then it worked. I’m one of these people that likes everything to be on it when I but it, therefore I was a bit naffed off when I found out that it wouldn’t play DVD’s unless I downloaded something else to take up more memory. CD’s are able to be played and ripped on this system as well as burning them onto your hard drive, however- watch the memory disappear. The system has good speakers built in, somewhere. And you are able to mute them if the sound gets a tad bit annoying.
Overall
It has a nice shape, black- although pink would have been nice, not too bulky for a huge screen in which is PERFECT for watching dvds, although it blacks out a few times to same power. The wi-fi thing gets a bit excited as it goes crazy when it sees a few internet connections that are avalaible, i suppose it's best to have it overactive than underactive... It consists of 4 usb sockets which is very good if you are using it for work and which to backup as many things as possible, and using the webcam at the same time. Almost forgot to mention it, it doensn't have a built in webcam! How annoying! I am really getting stuck here, so I will update if I find something else to write about. I purchased this laptop originally to get me through college, that did the trick and got me through my A-levels. Now I use it for entertainment and writing reviews. I feel that I must say if you are purchasing this for school and college make sure that you don’t use it for entertainment and that you have a family computer that you can do this with. However, if you are in uni- make sure that you get a cheap hard drive to accommodate this. Good luck, and don’t say you haven’t been warned.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) positive aspects include the speed, apperance/design of the laptop, and the enhanced performance. (-) i have a matt black laptop and it shows dirty finger prints.
Advantages: Cheap, portable, DASP, Wireless, Vista Home Basic, Acer GridVista Disadvantages: Small Hard Drive, Could use a RAM upgrade, Battery life of 2.5 hours
Advantages: Cheap, portable, DASP, Wireless, Vista Home Basic, Acer GridVista Disadvantages: Small Hard Drive, Could use a RAM upgrade, Battery life of 2.5 hours
Sep 15th, 2009
very helpful by (100%):
