Acer computers = bad?

[ixfd64]

I've personally experienced a bunch of problems with Acer machines:

1. My mother's Acer laptop appears to have a defective battery that lasts a couple of minutes on a full charge. The laptop itself seems to crashes a lot.

2. One of my co-workers had two Acer Veriton X desktops that died on him. The second one worked after he did a factory restore, but it now has a hard drive problem. CrystalDiskInfo shows three reallocated sectors and rates the drive as "bad."

3. Another Acer Veriton X kept sending incorrect results to the GIMPS distributed computing project. Strangely enough, IntelBurnTest and Prime95's own torture test showed no errors.

4. Two other colleagues were having problems with yet another Acer Veriton X desktop, which would only show a blank green screen and refuse to boot.

Do Acer computers really suck that bad? Has anyone else ever had issues with them?

 

[Guyfromhe]

I have an Acer netbook... The stock battery was fine when i used it but I replaced it with a giant 9 cell that runs it for 10 hours... The only problem I had with mine is a corner of the plastic bezel around the screen cracked when I dropped it from like 5 feet, damn cheap Acer

I don't really love their product line but I think a lot of what you describe is probably user error or component failures which happen with any PC.

 

[ARG]

I've never had any problems with my Acer that I have had for almost 4 years now, it was the bottom of the line model, and has only needed a ram upgrade over four years. I still use it lots today.

 

[Tech_Junkie]

I've never liked Acer, but my GF bought me an Acer Laptop 2 xmases ago and the thing runs like a champ. I did prepare it like I do all my PCs. Like remove all unneeded software, tweak "services", and other settings, keep it clean, and defragged. Then back up the whole thing as an image on an external drive every month. Piles of garbage files, and too many things running at the same time are the leading cause to computer crashes, slowness, and errors.

 

[J Friendly]

Dont get me wrong...they cant hold a 12foot candle to my Alienware lappys but i have 2 Acer Lappys and they are great. my Extenza is 5 years old and with only a ram upgrade and new battery it still takes all the punishment i can dish at it.(including running Windows 7 Ultimate ) and my newer Gemstone Series Acer is just plain sweetness.and i beat the shit out of it. Very rarely is technology to fault. most computer problems are caused by the user (unless problem is HW based) like the old saying goes!!!! "Intel Inside.........Idiot Outside."

 

[Bionic-Badger]

The hard drive errors sound like the laptop was banged around a lot while using the hard drive and the computation errors are usually from heat affecting the CPU and/or RAM. Try running Speedfan and see if your computer is overheating or something.

In the end, many of those Veritons are cheapo < $300 computers. You get what you pay for.

 

[Tech_Junkie]

You get what you pay for.

Thats not entirely true in the computer world. All the manufactures get their parts from limited sources. Often the same parts are used for low end, and high end PCs. Monitors are the same way. I've seen off brand monitors that have used the same high end Samsung displays that the big guys use.

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

acers use crap caps, but never seen the caps pop.

we had about 15 low end acers, one died, and 4 needed PSU replacement. The rest just got old and needed something more powerful.

Acer 24" LCD 1920x1200 inverter board uses bad caps, recapped two of those.

They're not bad. Not great, not bad.

 

[Benm]

Well, they've been know to be quite unreliable here in the netherlands, but very cheap too. I guess most people would recommend you buy 2 of them, which may cost less than a proper brand laptop... you will need the spare sooner or later though

This is mostly anectdotal though, failure statistics put acer in the least reliable category, but HP gets even worse results. The problem with such statistics is that they accumulate the failure rate by brand, but not by model.

A brand like sony scores very well, but they sell mostly upper segment laptops. A company like HP carries both entry level laptops priced under 400 euros, as well as a business line with a price tag of 1000-1500 euros. The statistics i have don't tell which series bump the overall failure rate, but i have a good guess

 

[ped]

Speaking as someone who repairs Acers amost everyday , I have to say thier not bad. I repair so man because thier very opular here (UK) , its mainly hard drives and memory failiures I seem to come across...and i've replaced 100's of charger sockets on them too, but thats usually due to kids banging them around. The higher end Acers are really quite good.

 

[shintashi]

i used to be an HP fan about 6 years ago, and when I saw all the kids spending their college loan money on Acers, I had to wonder. Acer was the model that contracted tons of single moms and work/college kids who needed a laptop for school, but I noticed they tended to have problems. 6 years later, HP monitors fail like the sun goes down, and Acer computers don't seem so bad.

I guess the moral of the story is your loyalty should be to quality - not a brand.

 

[ARG]

In my opinion, it's not always about the quality of the laptop/computer. It's about the user. I take amazing care of my computers, open them up remove dust. Never drop them or abuse them, and they last forever, I still have my IBM thinkpad.

My sister bought a 1200$ Mac, and she took lousy care of it, dust and dirt under the keys, the top was all scratched up, and she blamed it on the quality of the computer. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was her fault.

The moral of the story is treat your computers well and they will treat you well.

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

I've always liked thinkpads, but after a recent experience with a t500 (btw, don't ever get a t400 or t500 series) and shitty service, I've moved on.

 

[AJ_Dual]

Acer's used to be the absolute worst of the worst back in the late 90's, but they've cleaned up their act quite a bit over the past decade, and they're now decently middle of the road.