Overall reliability of Acer?

Can't find any reports on reliability of Acer laptops. They seem to be left out of many reviews and surveys for customer satisfaction. The price is very competitive, but I'm not willing to sacrifice quality to save a few dollars. This is going to be a gift and I don't want something thats going back to the factory every few months. Thanks in advance for any info.

 

It has improved alot over the years. But even if I own an Aspire ONE(with 0 problems), I can't say that ACER will be on the top of my reliabilty list when it comes to PC manufacturers. Among the netbooks.....

Just for reliability and quality control I'd say, and this is just me (features & price is another story)

#1 LENOVO S10
#2 MSI Wind
#3 Acer Aspire One / Asus EEE PC
#4 Del Mini 9

 

Never heard of MSI, who makes them or are they new?

 

It's an asian company... same as ACER, ASUS... they are relatively new to the US market. Hence not that popular(yet). But they do make quality products at very competitive prices. My examples are based only on the current netbooks that are out. I have handled and installed OS on these models (except for the DELL) and these are just my opinion. Cheers.

Checkout the MSI wind at http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... at2_no=582

 

I have another Acer, the 4720z. It's not a great laptop, it was only $500 on sale at Staples last year. However, it hasn't had any mechanical defects. Like my One, I wiped Windows off without booting and installed various Linux distributions as well as FreeBSD on it. While sometimes things haven't worked, it's simply been incompatible software. Hardware wise, it's been fine.
As for my Ones--I believe that both times I got the black screen of death was just after I tried to install Mandriva from a USB, knowing that it was going to give me an error. The first time, I took it back without trying to fix it--I'd already decided that I should have gotten the hard drive version. The second one, I followed the instructions for flashing the BIOS which fixed it. However, if the person to which you give it isn't doing too much odd stuff with it, it should be OK.

I have, however, on this one, noticed that sometimes I'll have a sticky key--then, in three minutes, it goes away. Cat hair? Poltergeist? Poor quality? I really don't know.

I have the same issue, from time to time, but more rarely, on the larger 4720z keyboard too. The only other laptop I've used for any great length of time was a Mac, which is far more expensive. However, even that one would have sticky keys at times, so it's quite possibly cat hair.

Part of it will depend upon the recepient as well. Are you in an area where you can look at different netbooks in a store? They all have different keyboards, touchpads, etc., and being able to physically look at them first is a big advantage.

The Aspire touch pad is going to annoy many people. Some feel the 10 inchers, like the Asus 1000 series are a better compromise between size and usability. The upcoming Samsung is supposed to have a really nice keyboard. The Toshiba one is supposed to come out in the UK at the end of the month.

When I went to get mine, several of us browsing the netbooks got in a long discussion--we all had different likes and wound up choosing different models. (This was at J&R, which has various netbooks on display.)

Is the gift supposed to be a netbook, per se, or a laptop?
My impressions, if reliability is the main criterion, is that Tamrac's summary is pretty accurate. The MSI Wind is becoming quite popular too.
Cnet UK has a review of various netbooks, though by now, of course, it's dated.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029 ... 248,00.htm

 

Acer, Asus, and MSI are all Taiwanese companies.

MSI is a big manufacturer of motherboards and VGA cards. They have a relatively small product line of notebooks but it seems that they did quite well in netbooks. MSI was actually the first one who chose to go 10" in the very beginning and many other brands are just followers.

 

This is one of the reason's i am grabbing a Samsung NC10 instead of an AAO 3 hours suggested more battery life then the 6 cell AAO and a non gloss screen the ability to have 2gb's of ram is also another plus

 

I've had an Acer fail once. Had it underneath the recliner, laid back and *CRUNCH!* Cracked the screen. Now I use it as a server.

 

well, its your own fault though.

 

Thats gotta make your spine tingle as you lean back.....