Ubuntu Blog

End of a Love Affair with Acer September 12, 2007

I was in love with Acer laptops. I bought my first one, an Acer Travelmate 290 LMi in my second year of grad school. I did pay ~ $1200 for it, but it was awesome, right until the moment there were errors with the hard disk controllers about 3 years later. When I sold it for parts on ebay, it still retained more than 3 hours worth of charge in it’s battery. The finish and the quality of parts spoke loud and clear. I liked the simple looks, the ruggedness, and above all, the dependability.

So when I had to find a replacement, and was short on time and money, I settled for another Acer. An Acer Aspire 5003 LMi. Piece of junk. The plastic looks cheap. The “Aluminum” next to the keyboard is poorly spray painted plastic. The area next to the touchpad, and the left-click button have lost all their paint due to repeated use, and then look white. All within a year. For the last few days, occasionally, I would open up the laptop, and the display wouldn’t work properly. Loud cracks can be heard at the hinges when I open it up. I’d usually fix the display problem by opening the lid to an angle where the display worked. Today it failed completely. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the display to display anything coherent. The quality of the parts, and the “casing”, is terrible. I admit, this was a cheap laptop, but it had what I needed at a minimum. I am not someone who buys the cheapest thing around. I buy computers with exactly the minimum I need. This one has a Broadcom wireless card, but I thought I could live with that for a bit. I don’t need a separate video card – I never play games. I do need a large screen, and a DVD-burner – well, you get the point. I would have gladly paid $250 more to Acer for the same laptop with better quality.

Personally, I have vouched for Acer laptops, and have directly influenced my friends into buying at least 3-4 Acers. Now I feel like an idiot. I have to try something new. I don’t like how ThinkPads are designed with the recessed screen and clunky looks and all. The Sony Vaios I have known through friends and others have all been terrible – each of them making the trip back to Sony at least once. That leave the glitzy HPs and the Dells. I’d rather have a MacBook or the Pro, which looks infinitely cooler. Wish I had the money for a new MacBookPro. It has way more features and power than I need, though. Anyways, I feel much better having written this – may those that I recommended Acers to find it in them to forgive me!