My record with laptops is not that great as I tend to mess them up with silly problems and at Christmas I got a new laptop from the sales on Amazon.

I had not really had a great connection with Acer products in the past but I took the change on this laptop and was left very satisfied with the overall performance and the look it provided.
Most if not all laptops now are going to provide you with some sort of Windows 7 software and this has the home edition already installed onto the system which is going to install when you first turn on the laptop.

The laptop itself has a great look because it is done in a black finish but there is a feel to the entire laptop. It is like a texture which you can feel when you rub your fingers over the sides so it makes it feel and appear very stylish and modern.
The 15.6 inch screen is excellent and works very well and you have plenty of USB connections on the sides. They have tried to space out the USB connections to make things fit better around the laptop so you have 2 on the right hand side and one of the left.

You also have a dual layer DVD drive which is a problem for this machine. When first loading software onto the device I found the system struggled to register I had a disc inside the drive so occasionally you have to open and close the drive a few times before it realises something is actually in there.
Every major light is done in blue colour and when you have the wireless connection enabled the orange light on the main display is lit up so it is very good.

The weight of the laptop is 2.6kg and it is really light and so much thinner than some of my previous laptops. I noticed how easy it was to carry around places so it has a good selling point there. I do not like the lid because when you close it down there is nothing to hold it into place.

I am not sure if this is a new feature in all laptops but I do like to open a laptop by pressing various levers and then it unlocking but this laptop does not have that capability which is a problem for me and I never knew this until after the purchase.

The keyboard is very high up all the buttons appear very high and when you press them down you assume you are going to press them in quite far but they are well balanced and it is just how they appear. You have a decent mouse which is fairly quick and you have the scroll with the mouse. Some laptops never have the scroll part of the mouse enabled so this is another good thing to have.

In terms of what features the laptop also has well there is a webcam on the monitor and I am still trying to work out how this comes on because if I use MSN I can send a link but without MSN I cannot find a way to turn it on. It is not that great to be honest and 1.3mp obviously suggests it might not be the best either.

The computer is 2.0 GHz but it has got 3 MB L2 Cache and I am not technical geek here but I was always told the more Cache the better so I am hoping this is pretty good. The RAM is 4GB and I have noticed the speed is very quick especially when restarting the computer.

In terms of the battery life you have a 6 cell Li-Ion battery which takes about an hour to fully charge and it lasts for about 3 hours but this depends if you have the wireless on because this can reduce this figure to under 2 hours.

In terms of what you have installed on the computer when you receive the product you do have an issue with security. You have a 2 month free trial of McAfee Internet Security 2009 which is out of date and rubbish in all fairness so you need better software for security immediately.

However, I also found scans taking place from Norton Systemworks as well so unsure why they would install 2 additionally security suites so you have to figure out which is going and which is going to stay.
There is good points to this laptop and that is the weight as the first thing and the 500GB hard drive as well can prove to be an excellent bit of memory to have but again if you find this is not enough external hard drives are cheap enough to find as well to have as an extra.

The graphics I was never told much about on the description when I received the laptop of afterwards but in my view it offers fantastic graphics. I have played some very good games on there so far and had no issues at all. I have no idea what sort of graphics this laptop does have but they seem alright to me.

When it comes to the other potential security there is none. You have no figure print scanners or face recognition software like some companies do now so that might put some people off who are very security conscious.
There is no warranty given besides the standard 12 month warranty but you can purchase 3 additional years for around £110 on top of the price. In terms of what the laptop offers for speed and accessories and how it is designed it is a good laptop.

I worry about the lid not securing itself down completely and a lack of security software which is decent but otherwise it is very good.
I got this for £374.99 reduced by over £100 and it was a great bargain and I think it must be worth a look for many people.