Acer Aspire 5738 (15.6-inch LED, Intel Core 2 Duo T6400, 2.0 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB, DVD-RW, Vista Home Premium, Webcam, WiFi)

I bought this for use as light home desktop replacement and mobile laptop for presentations to clients. The speed is absolutely superb which I think is mainly due to the 4gb RAM as my desktop has similar processor speed (Core2 Duo 2Ghz & 2gb RAM) but is nowhere as quick as this. I'm a bit of a tekkie so I know that it uses the latest DDR3 RAM which will help the speed as well.

What the spec fails to tell you is that it also has a HDMI port, so great for connecting to your large screen tv if you want watch Internet TV like the recent online only footy or BBC iPlayer etc on a large screen tv and the quality is good. If you went for the Blu Ray option then even better.

I thought it was mainly aimed at the student but I find using it with MS Office professional, CRM Software, Web searching, Website Editing and connected via wifi all at the same time it handles everything perfectly.

I was also made to think it was for student / home use when it proudly states 'Webcam optimized for low light video chatting', I'll leave that for others to review.....

For the price I think a great buy and I would definitaley recommend. It wouldn't be suitable if you were connecting to an office network and MS Exchange as it come with Vista Home Premium. It also comes with a free upgrade to Windows 7 so you won't be missing out although I would wait until it has been out for a bit before you upgrade to get rid of the bugs.

The only slight downside (but not enough to put off buying this) is the trackpad. The left and right buttons aren't very sensitive but I always use a usb mouse with a laptop anyway unless its just for clicking through (death by) powerpoints.

Lee Woodford

This laptop is simply awesome! I am a fan of acer laptops as my old one survived 4.5 years of rough treatment (including a pint of beer spilled directly into the keyboard). This one seems just as robust as that one, with several improvements; dead silent, does not heat up at all, and is simply amazingly fast, not to mention light. The screen is amazing and it has speakers as good as on any sony vaio or other expensive laptop i have seen. My only critique would be that the inbuilt mouse pad is not amazing, but since I use a usb optical mouse that doesnt bother me at all... overall an amazing laptop for half the money! I was a bit sceptical about ordering online, but amazon did an amazing job sending it all the way to belgium in 3 days, and it was very safely rapped inside several boxes with shock absorbing paper, so don't hesitate using amazon to safely save a couple of 100 pounds..

No regrets here!

I'm pleased with this laptop, it looks good and functions well. I'm not sure I can see the benefit of the core 2 processor personally - I'm no expert and perhaps for just internet/storing photos/music purposes the core 2 wouldn't be noticed. In addition, it's not as fast as I expected. In particular, firing up takes longer than I was expecting.

The touch pad is VERY sensitive and has taken some getting used to - very easy to accidentally zoom in and out or even click on something while you're typing which can be annoying.

Also a word of warning - I had read that I could get a free Windows 7 upgrade after its release - this is true but I had to pay around £12-13 shipping for the upgrade CD, so not completely free!

Overall a good purchase.