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Acer Aspire E1-531-B9604G50Mnks
by AdamFreeman
In my time I have owned a number of laptops and computers, from the Windows 95 days to the present day Windows 8 era, and after my last laptop broke I'd been searching for a new laptop at a moderate price that would suit my everyday computer needs and after weighing out a few options, I decided to by the ACER E1-531 for a moderate sum of ... £350, which for a 8GB laptop seemed like a pretty good deal.
When the laptop arrived my first impressions were pretty good when I took it out of the packaging, the design of the whole thing looked good and modern as expected and with a HD screen whatever things you are viewing on the screen , it will look fantastic.
What disappointed me a little were the specs, which is partly my fault for not researching the specification properly, since I'd paid extra for the 8gb laptop it was fast when viewing pages on the internet and when your offline, but for high spec viewing the 2.2 GHz processor seems a little lacklustre and doesn't back up the 8GB you have paid for, so if your thinking about getting this laptop I'd go for the cheaper 4GB option, and if your a gamer stay clear, the graphics engine is rating at 5.7 out of 10 so for modern PC games the laptop just won't be able to handle the graphics, this to me was really disappointed as ACER say it has Intel HD graphics capabilities which are poor.
The laptop comes with the new windows 8 which can be a very annoying program to have, it doesn't come with a basic Microsoft office either for all you people who need office, you'll have to shell out big bucks for the programs. There is a inbuilt Super Multi DL Drive for all your burring and DVD viewing needs. You will find yourself having to download a lot of the basics programs you expect with a laptop like media player, paint etc..
The keypad to me with my job is important, it has to be good quality and last, but when you first start typing on this laptop they keys do feel pretty cheap, especially compared to Samsung and other leading laptop makers and with the windows 8 program installed you'll find that random apps keep appearing when your moving the mouse which after awhile will really get on your nerves, clearly not much time has been spend on a good quality keyboard which makes your experience with this laptop suffer.
Yes there's a lot of little issues with the laptop that bring it down, but if your just looking for a basic laptop to do everyday normal things then I will recommend this laptop to you, it does the basics well but is far from spectacular compared with rival machinery. And for the £350 I bought it for I feel I should have gone with another, unless you can get it cheap I'd for a Samsung for a similar price.
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Apple MacBook Pro (MD313B/A)
by Sazzi3
***I'm not some computer savvy geek expert; I don't know the technicality of all the weird and wonderful's of my Macbook Pro but I feel correct in assuming most people do not understand every detail of such a powerful and modern machine! All I know is that I can review it on how it suits me, how I can work with it and I've done a little ... research on what to talk about so I feel fairly confident that I won't be rambling on about anything that's useful - just keep in mind, I'm not one of those Mac genius'! ***
I've had my fair share of laptop's, desktops and notebooks and it's come to my attention I am a disaster when it comes to technology; I download things knowing nothing about anti-virus protection or data limits on my broadband, I let my cats walk across it, I go in public with it and maybe spill some coffee on it and yeah, I've broken quite a few laptops in my past!
The first time I ever touched a Mac was when I bought an old cheap iMac from eBay hoping I could so some bits and bobs on it to help me with designing, but of course me being completely clueless I didn't know that the operating system I installed was too advanced for the iMac and as the iMac's Apple Care was expired all Apple told me to do is try to Google how to find out how to solve it, or pay £35 for advice from a Genius - who of course wouldn't do anything except talk to me on the phone, the problem wouldn't be fixed unless I paid £££!
Fast forward to now, after my I had a quick love affair with my boyfriend's old Macbook air or whatever (haha see I'm clueless) which my cat ruined with diet coke (my bad, to be honest) - I've had my best friend for 5-6 months now A.K.A my Macbook Pro!
---APPEARANCE---
I'm quite a snob when it comes to the appearance of technology - you could give me a Macbook Pro with a normal appearance of your usual laptop and I'd sigh and be reluctant to be out with it! Stupid, as this machine is so great for me, but hey I did say I'm a snob!
The Macbook Pro is silver all over, except for the black keyboard and frame around the screen. The keyboard has a feature where you can have a light appear under the keys, which is very useful if you're typing at night and it looks very jazzy. The laptop is thin and light compared to other laptop's, Apple is known for it's slim products, including their Ipod's and Iphones. On the front of the lid there is the Apple logo which lights up when the Macbook is in use, and shuts off when the laptop is shut down.
You have to be quite careful with general wear and tear as scratches and marks are extremely visible on the silver, however Mac provide a Keyboard Cleaner which has a little bristle brush where you swipe away dust, then spray their cleaner and wipe away with the foam/sponge like side of the block it provides. Mac also provide a Macbook cleaner, you simply spray the liquid on and wipe in one direction motions and smudges or fingerprints are gone - although it does not work too well on scratches, it dulls them down but you can still see them.
In my experience, mainly the bottom of the Macbook and the lid gets some scratches but not too noticeable. It all depends on how well you take care of it.
There are some funky little accessories for your Macbook, not provided by Apple or distributed by them but you can easily find them online on a site like Amazon.
Firstly, there's really clever stickers designed which you can put on your lid where the apple is. One I really like is the Disney Princess, Snow White holding the apple! There's also Stitch from 'Lilo and Stitch' eating the apple!
There are also multiple covers for your keyboard in a range of colours from neon pink to rainbow keys - however I don't know how well these work for typing and using the background keyboard lights, with.
---FEATURES---
***I am merely writing about apps or features I am aware of and/or own myself***
The Macbook runs on the MAC OS X operating system. My Macbook has duel core Intel Core i5 and the processor speed is 2.5GHz and although I don't know the technical side of this; I find that it's extremely fast and can handle me doing tasks from multiple demanding programs such as Photoshop or for editing videos and etc. On rare occasions I have innocent slowness or occasionally the mouse will freeze but in less than 2 minutes it will be fine again - there was a time that Chrome would freeze, Facetime would mess up and etc but I took it to the genius bar and they sorted it and now it works perfect again. The fact that it easily copes with many programmes working at one is brilliant for me, as a designer my mind bounces from one side to the other and I tend to do everything at once instead of doing one job at a time and my Macbook makes it very easy for me to do so.
My 13inch Macbook Pro has the Intel HD Graphics 4000 Processor and as stated on the Apple website; everything is more fluid and smooth, especially videos I watch and it doesn't drain the battery as I'd expect it to.
At first, 13inch sounded quite small to me and I would have much preferred the 15inch, but after using it and realising that it's really efficient and I personally wouldn't find much use for the 15inch. It's more compact and portable in my opinion and it's just a really smart, modern looking machine!
One of my favourite features on my Macbook - and my Iphone 5 - is Facetime. I can call anyone around the world who owns an Apple product such as an Iphone, Macbook, iMac, iPad and etc. I normally use it on my Macbook and it is fun, it's basically like Skype but with a better quality video and picture and much faster and doesn't crash - my only wish is that it would have a typing feature, so I use imessage to talk in private if there's someone in the room or whatever.
Talking about iMessage, I like the fact that if my phone has died or if someone isn't near theirs, I can send a message to another person with a iPhone and/or macbook, imac, ipad and etc and it'll appear to them. If someone texts me, I can see it on my phone and on my Macbook! It sends pictures and GIFs easily too, also documents and files!
The trackpad on the Macbook is extremely multi-use and I much prefer it to a mouse you plug in - or of course, use wireless. With the trackpad you can pinch and zoom on pictures or webpages, you can flick through pictures just with your fingers, you can click anywhere on it so no need for those left click right click buttons and it's just a super clever little feature; you think it won't be that much use to you but it really does make things easier and more convenient!
Apple states that the battery life lasts 7 hours; I don't particularly notice it lasts THAT long but it does last quite a while, it helps if you don't use the features like the keyboard lights and etc if you want to make the battery last longer, and maybe it's just me, but when I plug in and charge it, it charges very quickly compared to other devices I've used in the past. On the left hand side of your macbook, where you'd find your disc drive on the right hand side, is a small botton on the far end, you can click on it and there will be tiny dots illustrating how much battery you have left! It's very helpful if you're about to use your laptop on the go shortly and don't know if you need to bring your charger or not!
I use the Webcam frequently and I use the feature 'Photobooth' a lot, I love how you can change the scenery, add jazzy little things and when recording a video the sound is excellent too so the microphone is good. You can add your photo or video to iPhoto and iPhoto also pops up when I connect my iPhone.
I could talk and ramble all day about many of the amazing features the Macbook has, but instead I'm going to list my favourites that I believe would be useful if you bought a Macbook, and what you wouldn't get from another laptop or just not as good!
-iMessage.
-Notes (the ones you can use on the iphone, too and you can sync them).
-Photobooth.
-Garageband.
-imovie and iphoto.
-Numbers.
---CONCLUSION---
The Macbook Pro 13inch is currently £999 from Apple (http://www.apple.com/uk/) and if you would find use of these features and would use it frequently and find that your current laptop or desktop doesn't perform like this Macbook, I highly suggest that you purchase one.
You get Apple Care with it, which lasts for 1 year from the time you buy it and I also suggest you buy the extra 2 year Apple Care after that, because even though it's unlikely that a major error will go wrong with your Macbook, but it happens sometimes and you don't want to be paying another load of £££ when you just paid £999 for it!
I don't think that a Macbook will be that useful to people who just use it to go online and save documents and just the usual 'normal' things, most laptops would be efficient enough for that. But if you're going to start a creative product or would find it helpful for your career then it's definitely worth investing in.
Mine is fairly new as I've had it 5 months, but it definitely works like it did when I first had it and like I explained at the start, if you buy the cleaning products from Apple you can keep it looking new and wonderful for a long time!
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