Acer sucks

[Nick_Jinn]

I will never again buy another product from Acer. I dont care if you get great specs for the money. Its not worth dealing with the fragile hardware and the poor technical support.

So I wanted to ask a really simple question.....does my AST180 motherboard support a dual core Athlon 2 chip, and do I need a bios update to run it.


So my computer was out of warranty and they wanted to charge me $130 for technical support to ask this question. 90 minutes of technical support, good for 1 year.

You are ****ing serious? The motherboard isnt worth that much. I can upgrade to a better motherboard AND a better used case with power supply for less than that, one that will definitely support my chip, for less than they are asking to answer a ****ing question.


Never again.

[Rey117]

Finally someone agrees with me finally...

[madjr]

i've been using an cheap $399 acer laptop for 2 years

i cant complain, has been pretty good and totally ubuntu compatible


i know acers tech support is not good, but most other brands are not that good in support either, specially if your warranty has ended

[Shazzam6999]

I've had some random problems with my acer, on top of it overheating constantly. So yup, I'd have to agree with you there.

[dragos240]

Good thing I use asus.

[The Real Dave]

I love my acer, though it is a desktop, a T650. It's been nothing but solid for me, and I love the case, which has those nice sliding locks for harddrives and disk drives. It was a fairly cheap desktop at the time, so it's a nice feature.

The Acer laptops I've used have all been good, again solid, though I've never had them for too long.

And I've never used their customer support, other than to download drivers from the site.

[kerry_s]

acer is a brand i will not buy anymore. :lolflag:

[Lucradia]

By the way, Acer, eMachines and Gateway are the same company.

They just all still have their websites.

[NightwishFan]

Good thing I use asus.

+1 I have never found a machine better than the Asus k50ij. It runs with all open source drivers out of the box and gets 4 hour battery life. It is not perfect, but it has it where it counts. My next stop is System76 though I bet this machine will last me for a long while.

[kerry_s]

By the way, Acer, eMachines and Gateway are the same company.

They just all still have their websites.

no wonder, those are some of the others on my list of bad brands.

[madjr]

I've had some random problems with my acer, on top of it overheating constantly. So yup, I'd have to agree with you there.

yea i may switch to asus since the new models dont overheat, my brother got one and it's incredible

it's probably the only downside i had so far

i may test the new acer models and see if they still overheat tho

[Timmer1240]

Gateway got me for 120 bucks one time
before I knew what I was doing never again!

[sidzen]

I prefer my AcerPower F2 with 2.4GHz P4, 512MB PC2700 RAM, and 80GB Seagate 7200 RPM HDD to any HP or Compaq made! You couldn't pay me to own one of the two.

I got a truckload of Acers from a university that was upgrading and have put together four this past week. AntiX -M8.5-i686 runs like a top on them! Let me know if you have some hardware to trade!

Seriously, I'm sorry to hear that Acer has joined the ranks of HP and Compaq!

[iceman30ad]

well then what brands do you suggest??:confused:

all the companies have crap for tech and are as greedy as ms ( i know Ive worked for most of them ) but your not helping any thing when you boycott comp a for a reason and don't give us a comp b to go to that don't do the same thing

[sidzen]

Shuttle, for one. I put my own together, but Shuttle impresses me. I own a KPC bought before the model was discontinued in all but Asia.

Was once a gamer with no thought of power consumption. No more. Living off the grid does that to a person.

[Nick_Jinn]

Acer isnt the worst for desktops, since desktops are fairly hardy and easy to replace stuff. You do get more for your money with acer. On the downside you are lucky to have ANY room for expansion, especially with the E-machines line. I notice that the sound consistently sucks on acer laptops and the hardware tends to be fragile....I spilled a very small amount of liquid on the keyboard and every single component in the thing was toast instantly.....I did the same thing to a Toshiba and even to a Compaq and it didnt do that.


Yeah, you get good specs for the money, and for the most part they generally work, but god forbid you need some technical assistance or to take something in for warranty....they "fixed" my laptop and sent it back without working sound, and also without replacing the hard drive that had 100gb missing to bad sectors or something.....horrible horrible customer service, always try to get out of covering your service, and charge you $130 to tell you whether your motherboard supports a CPU.



Asus is great. Asus and Toshiba are my first choices.

[RichardLinx]

My Acer Aspire One has served me well, and I hope it will continue to do so. :)

[Nick_Jinn]

Its not that they dont work. They do function as advertised. Its just that the hardware is fragile....not necessarily prone to malfunction, just not 'durable' the way a Toshiba is durable as far as being resistant to water or drop damage.


Im not saying that if you have an Acer it will blow up tomorrow or that they somehow dont provide comparable usefulness.....besides that the sound sucks and a lack of upgrade space, but when you do actually need some help when something goes wrong dealing with the company is a nightmare.


My Acer desktop has been fairly reliable and at a better cost than some others, but I think its worth an extra $40 to have a better company behind the product if something goes wrong....Even HP which isnt the best would tell me if a motherboard supported a chipset without getting my full name and address and finding out if I am still under warranty, then charging me over 1 bill just to answer an extremely incidental question.

[Khakilang]

I visited their tech support workshop and I can see stack of PCs and notebook under repair and they don't keep spare part for more than 3 years. They just ask me to buy new computer. What I say new computer every 3 years? I might else well built one myself.

[Tristam Green]

I visited their tech support workshop and I can see stack of PCs and notebook under repair and they don't keep spare part for more than 3 years. They just ask me to buy new computer. What I say new computer every 3 years? I might else well built one myself.

That's the general model these days; yes...

:-k I have an AspireOne AOD150 that I bought refurbed and it has easily been the best laptop I've ever owned.

[RiceMonster]

Good thing I use asus.

I have to agree, Asus is top quality stuff.

[BrokenKingpin]

I love my two Acer netbooks.

All hardware vendors have blemishes in their record, which is why I do research before I purchase anything.

[Warpnow]

I like Acer, and personally, I think you needing customer support for product specs that can be obtained easily enough on the internet is a bit stupid, and you should expect to be charged if you want such. Most of their entry level support reps wouldn't know the answer. You'd have to talk to someone that likely gets paid alot more money. It makes sense them to charge you.

[KdotJ]

I've had an Acer desktop and this is my second Acer laptop. Not because I've had problems, but because I've had no problems what so ever hence I keep buying them. This laptop runs Ubuntu (and Fedora for that matter) with absolutely no issues. Maybe I'm just lucky...

[Hyper Tails]

I've had some random problems with my acer, on top of it overheating constantly. So yup, I'd have to agree with you there.

I had that happen to me to

on my aspire 5715Z

[Nick_Jinn]

I like Acer, and personally, I think you needing customer support for product specs that can be obtained easily enough on the internet is a bit stupid, and you should expect to be charged if you want such. Most of their entry level support reps wouldn't know the answer. You'd have to talk to someone that likely gets paid alot more money. It makes sense them to charge you.


Its not that I couldnt find this info elsewhere, its that they wanted to charge me $130 to tell me.

And you are ignoring that they messed up twice trying to repair the same Laptop, that the hardware fried because of a drop of liquid when my Toshiba was unphased by an entire cup of coffee with cream and sugar, and the poor quality speakers they tend to ship with.

My experience with the repair center has been a nightmare.

Also with another computer, even though the computer shipped out with defective parts, including the hard drive, there was evidence of some liquid on the SURFACE of the keyboard that couldn't possibly have caused any of the damage to the defective model......they still claimed it voided my warranty and charged me $200 for the repair in the first month after purchase.


On the other hand, I have a Toshiba Satalite from 1999 (pentium 3) that still runs like a top, and its been dropped, rained on, spilled coffee on, ect ect, and its still functional. I gave it to my brother.

[donnagarnet]

My laptop is an Acer, & I'm happy with it.

Since it's the only laptop I've had so far, I have nothing to compare it to as far as fragility.

Bubba the WonderCat kicked it off the sofa once, & I accidentally let it slide off & I had to have the motherboards replaced both times. It took a much harder fall, tumbling down some stairs, & nothing was damaged. That confuses me, that a couple of minor drops would damage it, but a somersault down stairs wouldn't.

[Nick_Jinn]

I was for the most part happy with my Acer Laptop (other than the sound quality) until I needed to deal with their customer service and repairs.

[RJARRRPCGP]

You are ****ing serious? The motherboard isnt worth that much.

I agree somewhat. I can get an Asus motherboard for less than that!

My P5QL Pro was less than $100.

[RJARRRPCGP]

i've been using an cheap $399 acer laptop for 2 years

i cant complain, has been pretty good and totally ubuntu compatible


i know acers tech support is not good, but most other brands are not that good in support either, specially if your warranty has ended

Same here, with my Aspire M5630. Actually gives me less issues than my Asus P5QL Pro.

Sad, but true, XP SP3 works better than GNU/Linux on my P5QL Pro. :(

The internet has lower ping with XP SP3 than all Linux distros so far with my P5QL Pro.

And many Linux distros give up with the Marvell PATA IDE controller, which my CD drive is hooked to.

Many Linux distros don't like the Marvell PATA IDE controller!

Puppy will claim a file on CD wasn't found.

And the SliTaz 3.0 installer will claim a file can't be found and halt! Even when the CDs aren't bad at all.

[NightwishFan]

Ah a challenge? I wish I had a stubborn machine like this.

[Nick_Jinn]

My primary gripe is the customer service. Saying that your computer made by them hasnt failed and seems to function is not really a logical rebuttal against claims of poor customer service.

[endotherm]

By the way, Acer, eMachines and Gateway are the same company.

They just all still have their websites.
can we roll Belkin and Kensington in as well?

never trust a company that will sell you one of everything. is there anything that belkin doesn't make (badly)?
i don't put cheap parts in my car or my computer.

[donnagarnet]

Fortunately, I bought Moses Laptopowitz at Best Buy & ponied up for an extended service policy. Besides needing two motherboards, Moses' CD/DVD drive has been replaced, & I never shelled out a penny. Moses was fixed "in house" & he always came home within a few days.