Acer - Aspire Laptop with Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor T3200

A great deal at $399, this laptop is as cheap or cheaper then most netbooks. It has 160GB Hard drive which is partitioned into 2 evenly sized drives. Nice to have it partitioned like this in case you need to reinstall the OS or "downgrade" to XP - you can save your data on the other partition. The 2 GB of RAM should satisfy most users, but upgrade to 3GB (the max a 32-bit OS can use) would be nice for power users. Note that it only has 2 RAM slots - if you buy a 2GB stick you will need to remove one of the other sticks. The on-board video card is a bit weak - no room for an upgrade sadly. You won't be playing the latest and greatest games, but I doubt anyone bought this laptop for that reason. It will get you by for older games, movies and the internet however. The touchpad is a bit sensitive, I would recommend using a USB mouse. The numbpad is the best feature - hard for me to get by without one for me - it is one of the reasons I bought this over a slightly more expensive laptop. The rest of the keyboard is a bit squashed together though - a slight disappointment. The sound card is decent - nothing super special but not that bad - with a pair of cheap headphones mp3's sound great. The on-board speakers are decent - once again nothing special but I've heard worse. The wifi adapter connects to networks with ease and I haven't encountered any issues yet. It comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home Premium - it works well enough but some anti-Microsoft users will huff and puff about it. It runs well enough on this laptop, but if you want to squeeze some extra out of the laptop I would "downgrade" to Windows XP or some form of Linux. One warning - there is a ton of preloaded software which contains adware - uninstall everything you don't plan on using right away. Also don't forget to make a backup disc right away. Run Spybot, Ad-aware and CC Cleaner to insure all of the adware is removed. Get a good anti-virus scanner (Avast! or Avira) and a firewall program. Don't rely on what they give you. Overall this is a good laptop for the price. I plan on using it for 2 years while in college.

I have been looking for a good cheap laptop for when I am not at my desktop. I saw this acer and was shocked by the low price and great features. For $400 you get A fast dual core at 2.00 Ghz DVD rw and Cd rw Glossy wide screen Large 160 HD A number keypad ! I need one of those!! Vista Home premium, (you would think it would only be basic) 2GB or ram! I would think it would only be 1Gb for the low price. You get alot for your money, its a great deal. Its not a gaming PC, so dont buy it for that. I might play older games fine but I did not try its game playing yet. I put Photoshop on it and its just fine. One thing I did not like was that it came with alot of junk games on the system that i had to uninstall. Bottom line if you are on a budget and need a good laptop for everyday web surfing, music, doing essays and normal stuff this is the laptop for you.

Got the $399 deal. So far I love it! Plenty fast enough for everything I need it for. Having the numpad is nice even though it has a slightly different layout than a standard keyboard which I'm getting used to. The mousepad is also nice but can be slightly annoying at times. I ordered a wireless mouse and laptop cooler and also 4GB of memory for it. A total of $90 worth of upgrades, 2 of which I would get for any laptop. I don't even want to use my desktop anymore. Having a DL DVD/CD burner is nice. I've already used it, first to create restore discs(which is the first thing anyone should do), and also to copy a CD. Works flawlessly. Internet Explorer was locking up when I used "balanced mode" when the laptop was unplugged. I switched to "high performance" at all times now and it seems to be fine. Anyways, I highly recommend this laptop!

This system is quite nice for the price. Unfortuantely, it only comes with Vista Service Pack 1 installed. The system is responsive. It moves smoothly once configured properly. The computer comes with a lot useless software. It has trial versions of software. There are about 20 games, M$ Office, and some chat program. I recommend that you remove these and replace them with secure, free software, i.e. OpenOffice. It connected to my network rather easily using the wired and wireless nics. I am unsure about the battery life at this point. It gets a little warm on the bottom, but nothing uncomfortable. Linux related items: If you are looking to install Fedora, Ubuntu, RHEL or some other flavor of linux, then you will need to decide if a secure wireless connection is important to you. This system has an Atheros AR5B91 wireless nic installed. You could install Madwifi to get the wireless working, but that limits your ability to use WPA, WPA2, or WPA-Enterprise. Ubuntu booted fine, but needed to use safe display settings for the screen. Fedora 8 booted fine. Both were booted from live disks.

This is one of those times when I question why anyone is willing to spend over a thousand dollars for a laptop. This unit comes with a dual core processor, a gigantic 16:9 screen, a separate number pad to the side of the regular keyboard, built in WiFi, the works. The video subsystem is an Intel ho-hum system, but more than adequate for daily tasks. Only high-end gamers would need something better. It can share up to 732 MB of system memory with the video system. I wish all manufacturers would stop loading up their systems with software trials and garbage that just has to be uninstalled by the final user, and it is too bad that Vista pesters you for constant updates to the point of utter frustration. But that is to be expected by any major brand today, and actually Acer is a little better than some others out there. This unit made its debut under $400 and it is easily worth twice that amount. Is it as durable as a Thinkpad? Probably not. Is is super light and thin? No, not really. But for anyone who has the capacity to actually take care of their equipment, this is the best buy in the laptop market today. A great replacement for a desktop system.

This is a great little computer for the price. The layout, size, and weight are very compact, but still sturdy and feel well-built. I have compared this unit to a higher priced HP side by side and it performs as well or better in booting, loading programs, and download/upload speed. The clarity and brightness of the screen while watching a movie is amazing. The color was better than the HP compared side by side. Depending on what you are doing, battery life is between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 hours. The Wifi G/Draft N seemed to work well and have a good signal range. The Cons - -With 2 Gigs of Ram, it is a little on the light end for running Vista, but can be upgraded to either 3 or 4 Gigs economically. -It has Visa 32 bit installed instead of Vista 64 bit. -The speakers are a weak point, but with headphones, the sound was very good. -Another con is that there is no HDMI or S-Video out, only VGA, but for this price point, you can't have it all. Overall, for the price point when this unit is on sale, it is a steal. I would highly recommend this computer for the average user for internet use, music management, and word processing/spreedsheet use.

Good big laptop, great speed, good value for money, ideal for mid to high end gaming, capable of doing multiple task to a great extent, reliable, the dvd drive spins violently and makes a dull rumbling sound when I rip scratched audio cds, clean good cds and dvds work fine, display is awesome, easy on eyes, its more worth than the price you pay for it, vista far better than home basic, fast boot and shut down, will stay perfect and reliable for years if you don't abuse it. battery life is standard, I get 3hrs in balanced mode, its normal for a high performing laptop, portable if u have a hard shell laptop case because its easy to get knocked around or crack it because of the weight and size, movies look remarkably fine quality with acer arcade, it displays great like an apple book, realtek soundcard has an inbuilt mic, so voice chat possible , acer game zone and free softwares are a lot useful, nti burner looks traditional but is versatile, you can pinch zoom a picture with the touchpad resembles ipod touch, truley a best buy

I have been looking for a good value laptop for some time now. My sweet spot price was around $399.99 and I was even looking for used laptops. I went to Best Buy looking for the MSI Wind but ended up buying this instead. It's a full blown laptop for the price of a net book. Don't get me wrong, if you are looking for a netbook because of the form factor, then this won't be the laptop for you. But if you were looking at a netbook just because of the price tag, then this laptop far exceeds the value of a netbook. You just get way more for your money. The battery life seems to be good if you put it on balanced or energy savings mode. The speakers are " OK ". Nothing to be too excited about, and nothing a good pair of Plantronics headphones won't fix. It comes pre loaded with a bunch of junk I had to uninstall but it wasn't too big of a headache. Overall I would reccomend this laptop to anyone in that price range.