Not Quite Acer (Acer Aspire 5536-744G32Mn)

Member Name: Zak87

Product:	Acer Aspire 5536-744G32Mn
Date:	30/10/09 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Widescreen, relatively good memorey and hard drive

Disadvantages: Speed at peak times

I must admit that my knowledge of computers is severely limited. I don't even know the difference between memory and RAM. However, I'm going to attempt to review this Acer Aspire laptop in the hope that people as technologically challenged as myself can find some use from it.

So I used to own a Toshiba. Brilliant. Sadly, after 4 years of university, the vast quantities of work done on it (or those few times I dropped it perhaps) meant that it started to give up the ghost. It was unbelievably slow, and froze on a daily basis. The battery was all used up after the effort of turning on. The CD drive didn't work, and the"Q" and "A" keys had fallen off, which made my regular online discussions of quantum physics near impossible.

The time had come to get a new computer. This Acer Aspire was on special offer at PC world (it's now back to it's normal price of 449.99 if you buy online). I opened it up and was impressed by the shiney outer shell and ample 15.6" widescreen. The size also makes it able to incorporate a number pad, a new experience for me.

The Aspire comes with a 500GB hard drive capacity, which I'm told by those in the know determines how much stuff you can store. I'm also told that this is quite good, which would suit those, like me, with a large but not excessive music collection. It also has 4GB of memory, which I understand is good, but not the best on the market (that crown, I would imagine, would go to the Acer Elephant). This means that you can do lots of stuff at the same time.

After installing all the additional programs I'd been conned into buying, as well as the aforementioned iTunes library, I was all set. However, eventually I discovered that the AMD Athlon Processor wasn't up to scratch (I think. I'm actually way out of my depth now, and so just have to blame something). Even in the first few weeks of use the laptop froze when I try and open several internet windows at once. The laptop is for the most part fast, especially when loading up, but stutters at the most inconvienient moments. A further bane of my life is the touchpad mouse. It's got a zoom function on it, which means that I accidently zoom in all the time, but can't zoom out using the same simple process (I'm currently writing this review in what looks like size 36, since I can't be bothered to go to "view"). It also seems to have a mind of its own while typing, meaning that it clicks at a random place in my text when I'm halfway through a word.

On the other hand, it is generally fast, has a slick design, and a useful battery life - currently at well over 2 and a half hours on mine. By personal experience of friends laptops, there are more reliable alternatives out there for not much more, with better features than the Acer comes with, but overall I would describe it as satisfactory.

Summary: There are better products out there, but not by much.

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