Acer laptops: better now or still crap?

So a friend is asking me for laptop recommendations, she is looking for something affordable but new so I told her to buy anything with haswell on it, so she came back with the acer E1-572-6870

It looks good for a $500 laptop, has haswell and stuff but its an acer and that brand is famous for crapping out, or "were"? my references are more than a couple years old so I have no idea if acer improved its designs and makes reliable laptops now.

 

Can't recommend Acer... However they do bring in good money when they break. I don't know any other laptop where a failing battery causes the motherboard to overheat AND the keyboard to malfunction among other crap. Took out the battery and it worked fine....

 

That sucks, I can't find a good haswell for her that isnt near a grand, any suggestions?

 

Haswell is new and won't be popping up in anything sub $700 for a bit.

Why Haswell? Does she have necessity for extreme battery performance? Ivy is perfectly fine, and you'll be saving some cash on a higher end laptop (and from a better brand)


AFAIK Acer is still crap and always will be.

 

batteries can do all kinds of weird shit if the right voltages are not getting through

anyway i've had an acer since 2010 and it's still going fine, been used a lot.

i'd recommend toshiba myself but if on a budget just go with whatever's the best spec for the price range, also check out youtube and google for reviews before you buy, also consider what it's main use will be, how many ports are needed and if good spec graphics chips like amd / nvidia are needed.

 

haswell has good graphics performance, that might be why.

 

I CAN recommend Acer.

My dad has run a small computer repair shop for the last 7 years now.

One thing we've noticed is that after all of the Dell's, HP's, Vaio's have died, Acer's still seem to keep soldiering on and the parts are always cheap to replace too.

Granted our observations are from a small sample size but my opinion still stands.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Acer. I'm writing this from an Acer. This Acer laptop rarely gets switched off. When I spilt something on the keyboard, it cost me I think £12 for a brand new keyboard. All the parts are readily available - cheap. My Mum's laptop is an older Acer, and it's great.. even had dual graphics cards.

Acer are definitely a brand I'd recommend. Lenovo are good, too. MSI seem to be popular - two of my ex colleagues had an MSI laptop each I noticed when I visited them yesterday. I'd certainly recommend any of them over the likes of Dell, Toshiba or Sony.

 

Interesting, what about asus? I heard those are good.

About acer I'm worried about the long term because if its dies I'm probably going to have to give her a hand with it.

 

I own an asus laptop and love it but I will say this the beast runs hots all the time.

 

I've only been using ACER laptops and netbooks for 6 years, but I've yet to have a single one die on me or have hardware issues. Like clock work, I pick one up when they go on sale at the beginning of the year. The price/performance ratio is very good, but probably not up to gaming computer standards. Unless you plan on stuffing them with RAM, you might be better served going with something by HP, ASUS or Lenovo.

 

ASUS aren't bad laptops, certainly.

 

I own an Acer Aspire which is my emulation laptop. Works like a dream. I also have an Asus Eee PC note book for work as does my wife. They work great too! My Asus is from 2010 and still going strong. Its been upgraded mind you with more memory, bigger HDD and windows 7.

My old laptop was an Acer and that lasted years until I dropped it down the stairs by accident. Compared to my shitty Sony Viao, Acer and Asus are good makers. No complaints at all from me.

My coworker uses a Dell and I can tell you now that its one pile of steaming crap! Theres always something wrong with it.

 

I've never had a good experience with Acer computers.



I would recommend stuff like Lenovo, ASUS,Falcon Northwest,MSI,Toshiba,Origin PC,Razer

 

Asus > Acer. Just stay clear from Dell.

 

Some of the mini acer desktops had heat issues. But generally speaking they are good value for money and work pretty well.

I also second (fifth?) to stay away from dell, seen a lot of dead ones (direct from the factory!) or die in service. YMMV of course.

 

Dell laptops are horrendous, they have so many failures, the most common being the batteries refusing to charge. Somehow that genuine battery software they've made doesn't work as it should and more often than not something goes wrong with it rendering even genuine batteries useless.

 

Still crap.

 

I think its complete luck really. My mother before she passed had an acer aspire she kept on her desk and never moved so she could watch TV in bed and it crapped out after a year or 2, we bought her a (used) Dell, that stayed in the same environment and it lasted until she passed away.

Can you guys clarify what you're talking about? Enterprise grade laptops from Acer (Travelmate etc) will of course be better than Dell's consumer grade laptops, but might pale in comparison to Precision (what we bought her iirc)

 

I've stuck with the Aspire series, so it should be the average consumer grade. I can't say for sure if it is luck or not with your mother's Dell. The only thing I can say on the subject of that brand is that the failure rate is fairly high, and this is only going by the number of machines that I myself, friends and family have bought over the years. The only surviving Dell I have is an XPS from 2007. Since it has been upgraded a few times, I can't say if build quality plays a role or not.