For a rising star in the laptop industry, currently ranked 3rd in the world in terms of market share, Acer could stand to make laptops with less defects and better robustness from the experiences I have had.
I am currently on my second Acer laptop, after the catastrophic failure of my Acer first laptop after 1.5 years of use by December of 2006. The problem with my last laptop was the result of a hardware failure while streaming data from an external hard drive. The failure occurred several times occurring in several system crashes which could finally end with my laptop not being able to boot up.
A 1 year warranty on the system had made the laptop ineligible for any free servicing. Repairs would have cost $800, when a new laptop costs $1100. I decided to purchase a new laptop instead, which turned out to be another Acer laptop for about $1100 with fairly decent specs. The other laptops on sale at the computer store with similar specs ran for an additional $100.
Unfortunately, the new laptop I got was not without problems of its own. The LCD monitor flickers somewhat when I open and close the laptop and just recently, one of the mouse buttons on the touch pad has come loose and now sits with a tilt on my laptop making it awkward to use.
Hardware problems occurring twice over a span of 2 years is unacceptable, especially when a computer is quite important for many of my daily life routines. I have contacted Acer about the problem and they have informed me that it will take at least a week for them to have the problem fixed. In addition, I would have to pay for shipping costs of my computer to the repair center. I have since sent them an e-mail asking if this cost could be waived since it the computer is still under warranty, but I have had no response from the maker since. I find that to be a little bit offensive for a company to not respond. I have found in the online documents that Acer stipulates that the customer is responsible for shipping costs of the laptop or computer to the repair center, but still, simply ignoring my e-mail is unacceptable for a company.
As of this point, I have learned a few things about owning a laptop and the first would be to make sure that you have a secondary computer (preferably a desktop) in addition to having a laptop, as laptops are prone to hardware failure. In my lab, several of my friends (3 of them) over their 2 years of work here have had their laptops fail on them and repair times have
ranged from 2 to 3 weeks. As computers have become ubiquitous in our daily lives, living without one for such a long period of time is incredibly inconvenient. My reasoning for having a secondary desktop computer prevents a person from going without a computer should their laptop have hardware problems and desktops are far easier to maintain compared to laptops.
Should the problems I have faced with all of my laptops occurred on a desktop, I would have had them rectified in no sooner than a day or two by simply replacing parts on my own. A bad monitor connection could be easily fixed and a defective mouse could have been quickly swapped for a new one, both which are extremely hard tasks to accomplish for a laptop.
3 comments:
My Acer has one background LED light on the laptop display (one on the left hand side) fail to light which causes the screen to have varying brightness at the low setting.
Also the "scroll down" mouse button is non functional and the "scroll up" mouse button is barely functional.
Finally there's a glitch with the built-in wireless that I still have not been able to isolate over the years - it hard freezes Windows XP unless if you have at least a single sound channel open. It is a very weird problem. I've done a fresh install from the recovery CD and it still happens.
Thus my current laptop and future ones will be Toshibas, which I haven't had any major problems with up to date.
My previous no-name laptop died after 4.5 years of good use =). Well, sort of died-- the battery is dead but it works plugged in. It's ok, I think.
However, I really think that the IBM laptops are the nicest and most robust. I don't know about Lenovo, but if I had to get a laptop again I would like to get an IBM. It really pisses me off when my computer dies. As I'm getting older I can't afford to lose time anymore. And I agree with Justin's point with the desktop-- I feel more safe on it.
Sacha>>
My dad also had a few problems with his Acer computer a while back too. Looks like Acer might not be such a good brand perhaps. How is the Toshiba holding up so far?
Ida>>
I guess you could replace the battery for about $100 instead of replacing the whole computer. But after 4.5 years, I guess it would be nice to get a new computer.
Yeah, the desktop is nice in the sense that it is a lot easier to maintain compared to a notebook. A notebook is nice because of the mobility.
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