Acer Aspire Z5610 23inch Touch screen display Desktop, Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor , 4Gb RAM, 1TB HDD, DVD-RW, Windows 7 Home Premium

Having read the two rather negative reviews for the Acer Aspire Z5610 All-in-one PC I thought that I should redress the balance slightly by relating my own experiences.

The machine itself is an attractive all-in-one PC that actually looks more like a TV than a PC.

When it arrives there is actually very little in the box apart from the PC itself. The supplied keyboard and mouse are both of rather poor quality (constrasting somewhat with the solid build quality of the main unit), although both work well enough - I touch type and had no problems doing so on this keyboard.

I do have to agree with the comments on the lack of documentation - basically all you get is a simple leaflet with lots of pictures but very little text - not very helpful!

Fortunately I have set up a few PCs in my time and I have to say that Windows 7 made the whole process a breeze.

I was, however, a little surprised to find that there was no base re-installation DVD for the OS, drivers etc (unlike with my Dell laptop), instead Acer supply some blank disks and you are expected to find the facility on the PC yourself from which to create your own back-up using these disks.

But what about the PC itself?

The 23" full-HD display is excellent, save for being rather reflective, this almost certainly being due to the touchscreen. What is strange, however, is that there is no HDMI input / output, nor a Blu-ray drive to take full advantage of the display - that's a shame.

The touchscreen implementation in Windows 7 is good - you can control the vast majority of things that you would normally use the mouse for via the screen, although the fact that the large screen needs to be placed at arms length for ideal viewing sometimes makes it more convenient to use the mouse anyway. The accompaning touchscreen apps are basically gimmicks - fun for showing-off to your your mates, but not a lot of use in real life.

The TV function is well implemented and is simple to set-up / use via Windows Media Player.

Windows 7 is excellent - I have other PCs running on XP (Pro) and Vista (Ultimate), but I have to say that Windows 7 Home Premium is a very good upgrade from these, albeit that if you haven't used Vista before (the basic look and feel of Windows 7 is very similar to the latter, but it just works a whole lot better) you will need some time to get used to it.

The machine is fairly quick with most tasks (thanks to a reasonable processor and the separate graphics chip) and viewing webpages on the widescreen display is brilliant (although some are not entirely compatible with the highest resolution).

So have there been any problems? Well, there was a problem with connectivity a little while back - web pages were taking forever to load, audio streaming was nigh-on impossible and the PC was even struggling to connect to shared facilities on my own network.

The Z5610 comes with 'draft N' wireless functionality, so should have had a very fast connection to my wireless router in the next room.

This problem only occured when I upgraded to a new draft N router (from my old G router) and I have now strangely found that forcing the Z5610 wireless to work in 'G' mode made the problem go away (and the throughput is still plenty for video streaming etc.) - perhaps there is a compatibility issue between the Realtek wireless in the Z5610 and my Draytek Vigor 2710n router (which does, however, work perfectly well in draft N mode with my laptop).

So does this PC represent good value for money? If you are looking for a basic machine then obviously not, but if you are looking for an all-in-one PC with reasonable performance, an excellent display, touchscreen etc, then this is probably about the best model on the market at the moment (as reflected in the recent PC Pro magazine group test of this type of PC, where it was the 'Best Buy').

Just bear in mind that you aren't going to get much in the way of help in setting it up!

I loved the look of this product and despite reviews being not so flattering took the risk and purchased. I completely agree with the other reviewers about almost non-existent installation instructions, what I would say is that it was very simple to set up. Everything worked well for two weeks and then it decided to shutdown and lose it's operating system. Acer said they would repair it and I did find their help desk pretty good. Yes they charge 10p a minute which is annoying as it's not my fault it broke, but they did say they would take it for repair straight away, no question. Luckily we'd only had it 2 weeks so I returned to Amazon for a new one - have to say that process and service with Amazon was first class (gold star for Amazon !)

The second one arrived, set it up and it doesn't seem to want to connect to my wireless broadband. It takes around 5 resets of the router to get it to connect and it is only 1 floor away from the router. So after much frustration, this one has gone back to Amazon AGAIN today and they are shipping me my third one in 2 months !!

So, if this one works fine I'll probably say a painful experience but I have to say when it works it is a gorgeous piece of tech. The style could be a little more modern but the functionality is great and the quality of photos and TV coupled with the size of screen probably explains why I'm trying to stick with it. If this one doesn't work, I'm getting a refund and will buy something else but on the whole I hope it works as I love the PC itself.

Thank god I purchased it from Amazon because even though I have had to return twice now, it has been an easy process. I can't imagine the pain I may have had with any other internet retailers ( I don't work for Amazon by the way !)

For almost £1000 one should expect a reasonable set of instructions and a full set of components. Incredibly this machine - which differs considerably from conventional desktops - comes with nothing that is of help and, worse still, was lacking some components. Acer's Indian technical support centre were worse than useless (at 10p/minute!)and added insult to injury by telling us that start-up documentation was not supplied because it could be downloaded once the machine was up and running!
Attempts to speak direct to Acer were frustrated by the fact that Acer refuse as a matter of policy to communicate with the public, relying instead on telephone support offices (and how we love them.........).
Eventually someone from technical support decided that the machine was defective and offered to replace it. We decided that Acer had had their chance and had muffed it so we told them to collect it and arrange for a refund.
For the price of the machine, one expects better treatment and the answer is to give firms such as Acer a wide berth until they adopt a responsible attitude to their customers.