Acer Laptops?

S

seven7seven

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2003
Messages
305
Reaction score
1
Hi all,

I'm in the market for a new laptop and this is currently the best deal (for what I want) I've found:

Acer TravelMate 5710-101G12 (LX.TKC06.002): Intel Core 2 Duo T5500, 1024MB (1*1024 DDR2-667), 120GB SATA 5400rpm , DVD SuperMulti writer, 15.4" WXGA Crystalbrite (1280x800 resolution) TFT , Mobile Intel® 945GM Express Chipset with integrated 3D graphics, Gigabit Ethernet & 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, Windows XP Pro, 6cell battery, Acer 1 year collect and return warranty
(link)

I'd like to please know your opinions on Acer laptops, especially their quality and support?

Oh, and if anyone knows of a better deal please let me know :)
I'm looking for: Core 2 Duo, >= 100gb, 1GB ram (1x1024 though cause I wanna upgrade the memory soonish), 15.4" or 14" and 802.11b&g.

Thanks a lot, really appreciate the help!

God bless & kind regards,

Richard :)
 
I recently got a Travelmate and the quality isn't bad at all. Feels like a solid unit, obviously not as good as a Lenovo or a Vaio, but at the price it's pretty darn good.

Support is great as well. My headphone jack broke after about three weeks, they collected it from work and gave me a brand new laptop, but swapped the hard drive so that I didn't lose any of my data.
 
I had the oppposite... I wanted to upgrade the RAM... its simple process of screwing off a backplate and popping it in, any techie could do it, and they even give you instructions on doing it in the box.... needless to say, Acer SA told me that if I even think of doing it my warranty will be void... they wanted to charge me double the price of me doing it myself...

And mines keys have also started popping off... damn annoying, as the laptop is perfect condition...
 
Another odd thing, the little nipple in between the keyboard damaged the screen on mine... there's a section where the screen is darker, right where the nipple goes!
 
TravelMate 6460

The laptop itself performs well... Just annoyed with Acer SA, got the job done in Aus for 1/3 cost.

Also, remove the nipple... doubt you'll use it.
 
xrapidx said:
Another odd thing, the little nipple in between the keyboard damaged the screen on mine... there's a section where the screen is darker, right where the nipple goes!
Click to expand...

Which model is it? Because mine didn't come with a nipple
 
TravelMate 6460... it stics out and touches the screen when the laptop is closed... overtime it damaged the actual LCD... I tossed in the dustbin about a month ago. Took me awhile to figure out what was causing it...
 
xrapidx said:
Another odd thing, the little nipple in between the keyboard damaged the screen on mine... there's a section where the screen is darker, right where the nipple goes!
Click to expand...

HEHE, he said nipple..... twice :D:D:D
 
I have a Travelmate 4672 CoreDuo with 1Gig RAM 15.4 widescreen & 802.11b/g ATI Radeon 1400.

It's a little over a year old. I had one problem with it. The del key stopped working. Acer picked it up at my office and had it back to me within a week. I must say, I really love this lappie. At the price to performance rate, it really was a steal. Nothing comes close to Acer in that department. Mine is still 100% perfect, but if you are going to be a worrier about quality, you can extend the 1 year warranty to 3 years for like R800 or something. Bang for buck, nothing comes close to acer.
 
I personally have an Acer and have sold a bunch more (>10). The quality of them is very good. I have only had one screen with a dead pixel and only one machine has broken down. The problem is that their support stinks. I had to leave the one machine that broke down in their shop for 10 days and they still did not fix it. It actually took an email to overseas before they even started looking at it. Upgrades are expensive as someone mentioned and doing it yourself voids the warranty. I recently had a case were I could pretty much replace most of the components on the machine for a 1GB memory upgrade on a PC (R2500). Needless to say, we are doing the upgrade ourselves and will deal with the warranty if it arises later.

One final note, you need to submit your extended warranty papers online within 1 month of purchase (if you want it) otherwise your extended warranty is not valid.

To sum up, the machines are of excellent quality. The local operation stinks.
 
Thanks for all the feedback!

I was scared by the mention of voiding the warranty by installing other RAM yourself (since I plan to) and I had a glance at the warranty myself. This is what it says (that is relevant):

This Limited Warranty does not extend to:
<snip>
1.2 any Product that has been damaged or rendered defective (a) as a result of use of the Product other than for its normal intended use, failure to use the Product in accordance with the User’s Guide that accompanies the Product, or other misuse, abuse, or negligence to the Product; (b) by the use of parts not manufactured or sold by Acer; (c) by modification of the Product; (d) as a result of service by anyone other than Acer or an Acer Authorized Service Provider
Click to expand...
(link)

It's the same standard exclusion stuff that I know at least HP has too (installed some Kingston RAM into an HP a few months ago so I checked up on the warranty implications first).
So according to the warranty, installing 3rd party RAM yourself does not void your warranty except if the RAM and/or installation damages your notebook.

What did Acer support say?

Thanks,

Richard :)
 
Last edited:
I phoned them when I wanted to do it, also to check warranty, and the woman said if I so much as remove the backplate they'll void my warranty.

I eventuall went to hellopeter
Comment one
Comment two

They wanted to then charge me R250 excl. vat for a 1 minute job, and then gave me some bull excuse as to 'why' someone else had to do it.
 
STAY AWAY FROM ACER.

There are far better brands at similar prices.

My 8204WLMi has the following faults (18 months old)
Battery life down to 13%
lid has got about 7cm of "free play" (Acer wants to charge me R4500 to fix it!!!)
Webcam broken
Bluetooth broken
rubber stops under it are coming off
firewire broken

And it's not only mine

Of the 5 Acer notebook I sold to client, every single one has had to go in for repair. From broken boards, broken LCD's down to keyboards stopped working.

During the same period I sold about a dozen HP's, Toshiba and ASUS notebooks. Only one HP had a failed hard drive within warranty.

There is a good deal currently on a LG. I am not very familiar with the brand but it is solidly built (has good feel)

Link here:
http://www.ngrcomputers.co.za/f12k29ab-series-notebook-p-4482.html

By I would always recommend a good Toshiba A120
http://www.laptopdirect.co.za/laptops__toshiba.php?page=2

Don't be put off by the slightly older CPU, you wont notice the difference between a 2000 series Core2 and a 5000 series. The latter only has slightly better battery life. Something that is negated by the Acers puny 6-cell battery anyway.

Pick the right product first and then start shopping for price. but forget Acer, the products bad and the support even worse.
 
xrapidx said:
I phoned them when I wanted to do it, also to check warranty, and the woman said if I so much as remove the backplate they'll void my warranty.

I eventuall went to hellopeter
Comment one
Comment two

They wanted to then charge me R250 excl. vat for a 1 minute job, and then gave me some bull excuse as to 'why' someone else had to do it.
Click to expand...
Ok thanks for the info. I think the support centre told you a mistruth, but on hello peter they said: "The reason for ACER preferring to do the memory upgrade is that if the client upgrades the memory & if anything goes wrong due to the memory causing the fault, the warranty is void."
Which is inline with what the warranty states and makes sense.

If I go for it, I'll probably try order it with an extra 1gb pre-installed, will cost slightly more but will save any future warranty hiccups.

Thanks Sapphiron. I've read more bad stuff about Toshiba's support that Acer's support though, and the same with good stuff. I really like Toshiba's (owned one already) but I need decent support.

Is the Core Duo really worth getting if I can for almost same price get Core 2 Duo?
Thanks! :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X