The Acer Aspire 5742Z laptop is my current work laptop, and I have to say it does everything I need it to without a problem. I have previously used Dells and Toshibas for work purposes and I have to say I am pleased with the Acer. It has an excellent 15.6 inch screen which is perfect for presentations and demonstrations as well as for DVDs or films. It is equiped with an Intel Pentium P6200 processor with 6GB of memory and a 640GB hard drive, which for the price is fantastic. I have to say I really like the keys (is that sad?), they are good to the touch and I find myself typing with ease.

However, there are a few things to consider. (1) Battery power is not great, and you will notice the laptop burn through the battery quite quickly (roughly 2 hours or so) if you don't have the computer plugged into a power source, so make sure to bring a power lead with you. (2) I have experienced problems with sound, even though my speakers are on and everything I see is set to full volume sometimes, for some reason I don't quite understand, no sound is produced. (3) The mouse scroll is extremely sensitive and when typing up a document you can be moving all over the document typing a few letters here and there before realising, so make sure to look at the screen when typing (I have tried to set the sensitivity lower which does help but I thought I should mention it as it happened straight from set up).

To sum up, this is an excellent laptop for the money, providing you with all of the features you need for work, fun, games, films, and for anything online. I would certainly recommend this to other users, but make sure to bring your power supply!