I got a brand new Acer 5542G laptop a few days back. These are my impressions after a few days of intense usage.
Before we go any further
I previously owned two Acer laptops and they both suffered from the same symptoms.
First – the screen is crap. It’s way too glossy and the viewing angle is horrible. Second, the DVD burner dies after 12-13 months. I never used it much anyway, I burned 20 or 30 DVD’s in total. But the fact that you can’t even read a CD / DVD makes things even worse.
Third, after 18 months of use the HDD starts to show signs of failure. And the last thing is the keyboard that gets really messed up after a lot of typing (I use it for programming mostly, so I type a lot). And while it’s not a hardware error, both laptops were fat. I used to feel some serious pain after typing for a longer period of time.
Will things go better this time? Or am I doomed into buying a MacBook next time?
Introducing Acer Aspire 5542G – 504G50Mn
Call me crazy but buying a laptop from Acer again but I do feel like I’m getting a lot of value for a reasonable amount of money.
It’s got a nice Turion II processor running at 2.2 GHz, 4GB of RAM, half terrabyte of HDD space and an ATi Radeon HD 4570 graphics card with 512MB of RAM. Plus an included installation of Windows 7 Home Premium. And it’s “light”. All in all not a bad start.
First thing you’ll notice is a beautiful 15.6′ LED screen. Yes, a LED screen! The colors are amazing and the viewing angle is great. Movies look fantastic on this thing.
The keyboard is also good. The keys fit good and it doesn’t take long to adjust to the layout. Works well for long typing sessions. The laptop case feels solid but not all that solid. I’d give it an 8 out of 10 just because it feels plastic-like.
The computer boots up very fast, like in 10 seconds. This might be due to me removing Norton AntiVirus and every other crap that comes pre-installed. Windows 7 look fantastic, but anyone coming from XP or Vista will need some time to adjust.
The wireless card works perfect. The previous laptop always reported there were no wireless networks around me. This one reports over 10, and most of them unsecured (yay)! Update: Looks like my previous computer was missing some driver updates, showing the same networks now.
While movies do look great, the sound isn’t all that good. It has build in Dolby home theater (what ever that is) but the sound still lacks depth. Also, haven’t tested the HDMI port.
Games run fast. Call of Duty (Modern Warfare 1) and Oblivion run very fast at high resolutions.
All in all..
All in all, the laptop is a great buy. For this price (under $1000) you probably won’t find a better one. I’ll post a gallery soon.
Tags: acer aspire, laptop