A few months ago my old laptop was definitely beginning to show the tell tale signs that it was on it's way out. With this in mind I set about looking around for a new laptop with a decent enough spec for what I needed, and in my price limits. I guess I would class myself as a general home user, thus I shall review this laptop from that perspective and not claim to understand all the technical jargon. To set the scene, I wanted a laptop that would run multiple programmes with ease. I use Microsoft Office a lot, often using multiple pages on the Internet and some sort of music player (windows media player or Spotify) and am normally logged in to MSN ...  Read the complete review

Introduction My old laptop had been showing signs of wear and tear for a while now and I had been searching for a new laptop for a little while before I decided on this model from Acer. I looked around to try and find something for a budget of around £400-500. I wasn't going to use it for heavy gaming so something quite basic and functional was going to be suitable. I decided to go for the Acer Aspire 5742 which was £450 from John Lewis. I decided to go for John Lewis even though it was available slightly cheaper elsewhere as the company tends to have good after sales service and they also offered a warranty for two years instead of the usual one. There was ...  Read the complete review

I needed a laptop after moving to a small house with no room for an office. I hit the Christmas sales and I had a small budget but needed it to go a very long way. The laptop needs to be my photo album, family travel DVD player, radio, home computer for me (I have an ebay business), a game console for the kids, and a spare TV to boot. I asked my tame computer expert for advice. He recommended this one straight off as it really does manage to do everything I need it for. I chose to buy it from John Lewis just because its a trusted retailer and provides a 2 yr extended warranty. It was a bit cheaper in some online stores but when parting with £430 I get nervous ...  Read the complete review

I have had this laptop for a week now after I bought it in the post Christmas sales. I needed a basic, fairly cheap laptop but also wanted one which was relatively fast, up to date and could be connected to my TV through using an HDMI cable. For these reasons I feel that the Acer Aspire 5742 i3 does the job for me. On first inspection it is not the most aesthetically pleasing laptop for example it does not have a shiny exterior and when I bought it they didn't have it in any other colours, however it is very light and easy to transport. Another thing which is a little annoying is the sound which is tinny and not loud enough, however I have been using earphones or ...  Read the complete review

I recently purchased the acer aspire i3 and absolutely love it. It is so much of an improvement on my old laptop I can't believe I waited so long to upgrade. Also, windows 7 is far FAR superior to windows Vista. I had heard people complain about Vista but until I used windows 7 for myself I didn't understand their problems. The build quality of the laptop is nice (if a little plasticy) and the non-gloss finish is a welcome change from the finger print traps which most laptops are. It has all the features you would expect from a mid-range laptop including webcam, HDMI output, 3x USB slots but the inbuilt speaker is a little disappointing. The keyboard is a ...  Read the complete review