Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bargain, 17 Jan 2008
Was not too sure what to expect with this pc as it has no reviews of yet. However, it arrived quite promptly (even with the carrier misorting it) and it runs perfectly. It is a bargain for the money and it is very quiet. Still getting used to vista but I have had no probs so far!
My only gripe is that all new pc's preinstalled with vista should come with a MINIMUM of 1gb of ram - the preinstalled 512mb is simply not enough to satisfy vista's hog on resources!! Hence, I bought another 2gb of ram from crucial (only 30 quid just now) and have a total of 2.5gb installed now....and it runs rather fast indeed. If you buy this pc you will probably have to do the same; just a friendly heads up. Very happy with the purchase now:)
I only gave four stars becuase of the necessity to spend extra money on ram to ensure the pc runs properly like a new pc should: and all becuase of windows vista, the ram muncher...
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A "temporary replacement" I ended up keeping, 24 May 2008
In terms of hardware this is a fantastic deal. It's the accompanying software that lets it down, in my opinion.
When my computer (that I've had for seven years and to be honest had an irrational attachment to) inexplicably blew up three months ago, it was a traumatic experience. Then I realised that work would become a lot more difficult (as in impossible) without a computer. I was a bit tight on money, so I scrambled to the internet and bought this as a temporary replacement.
I tried to use Vista. Honestly, I did. I thought "You know, I've been bashing this OS for a good while without really giving it a try". Then it just failed on me randomly. Vista will technically run with 512 gig of RAM. But it won't run very well. Even turning off all of the unnecessary eye candy (which, as far as I can see, is the only new feature anyone might like about Vista, unlike XP which actually merged the UNIX-like things from NT with the games friendly DOS-based Windows) doesn't speed it up. And you really can't blame Acer for including Windows Vista. Microsoft don't want people to still sell XP. They themselves have pretty much stopped selling it. They want everyone to migrate to Vista.
If you have a license for Windows XP or Windows 2000, then this is a great machine. If you're like me and prefer Linux, it's even better. With a lighter (and better) OS, this computer will enable you do just about any day to day computer task. It is not a computer designed for gamers (unless you're like me and still only play Doom and Fallout). For your average computer user however it will permit them to browse the internet, email, use office applications, use instant message applications (also known as the electronic chatterbox), and basically everything else you need.
If you don't have a license for Windows XP or Windows 2000, and open source software scares you so you'd rather stick with Vista, then you are not my friend, but more importantly you're going to need to put more RAM into this machine. RAM is cheap which makes one wonder why they didn't stick more into this - even another stick of 512 would work wonders. If you're going to run Vista, a minimum of 1 GB of ram is recommended. 2GB is better. Installing RAM isn't difficult to do and there are a million places on the web that will give you reliable information on how to do this. I think it's worth noting (and I don't think that other reviews have mentioned this) that there are warranty seals on the back of the tower, and removing them will void your warranty. To me, this isn't that bad a thing, but it's something to keep in mind if you're paranoid.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
You get what you pay for..., 24 Aug 2008
First of all, yes indeed this machine is quite cheap as anyone can see - but I don't give extra stars for that. I basically bought it for that simple reason, although I knew what to expect after reading the reviews here and already having had mixed experiences with Acer.
It has Vista preinstalled which won't run properly with only 512 MB RAM, and when I installed Ubuntu Linux instead it didn't recognise the on-board LAN (beware!). Also the on-board graphics and sound cards never worked properly with Linux. Whatever you do, it seems you have to upgrade the machine in some way or another before you can use it. This means the warranty is gone (as soon as you open the machine).
I was of course looking for a manual to tell me what I had to be careful about when opening the computer... but there is no manual! Just a booklet with ridiculous "Safety Notes" (alright, we're in the UK) that refers you to the "PDF manual". I hoped to find that on the website, where Acer has put up some manuals for their PCs, but no way! It seems that there exists no manual to this machine.
You do get a working new PC for very little money that can hardly be used when you buy it. Why they didn't put in a bit of RAM or a manual (and maybe charge £10 more) doesn't make a lot of sense to me. With a manual and more RAM I would have given 4 stars (in spite of Vista).
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