Acer Laptops from Hell

telecinesk

Hi,

My Travelmate 2000 thing has probably been the worst laptop Ive had. Can anyone else confirm the following problems and possibly a solution bar flinging this on ebay with a buy it now for 5quid...

1. Without warning it freezes totally. ie nothing works, you pull the power lead out and the screen dosent dim. The fan runs way faster and no keys respond. Only solution is to pull the battery out.

2. BAttery, I get 40 mins max out of it. And thats a good day, and even from new it did this.

3. Heat, wow this laptop is the hottest thing,literally. For a 2.6 Gig processor it generates some heat exchange.

4.Weight, must be 5 kilo with all the bits hanging out...


Im kinda ranting, but cant believe Im alone with these problems.
Think I will go back to my super 486 with its 3hr battery life....(New cells fitted)

ie HELP!!!

Rew

My Acer has been a dream as have others I know. Spec and price at the time blew all other out of the water. Mines 2 years old and other then cracks in the case (which are a big problem on any brand inc Dell that used that type of case) its perfect.

ARGINITE

How old is the laptop?

telecinesk

Hi,
I bought this thing in Aug 2004. 900 Euros approx. Granted it was cheap, but I regret not spending another grand on something physically lighter for a start and possibly more reliable.
The spec isnt half bad, 2.6Ghz is nice but the various observation regarding heat exchange and crashes without warning(non OS related) ie the freezes have provoked me to already start looking for a replacement. And not an ACER!

aidan_dunne

I bought an Acer Aspire 3503 a few weeks ago. Cost me €899. Apart from it having a pre-partitioned hard drive (in FAT32 format of all things! :rolleyes: ) and no proper Windows XP disc to make re-installing and configuring partitions to my own liking easy (details in this thread here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=290264), I'm pretty happy with it. It doesn't weigh all that much either, I find. It's light enough to carry around in a laptop bag or whatever without coming away feeling like your arms or shoulders are about to drop off!

Battery life isn't fantastic, I must admit, but I run it off the mains most of the time anyway. Depending on what I'm doing I get between an hour and two-and-a-half hours roughly running off the battery. To be honest, it's pretty much what I expected seeing as it's a Celeron M and not a Centrino or anything like that.

One thing I will say, though. While I'm happy enough with the laptop, the same couldn't be said about Acer's support line (see thread linked above for details of that). They really need to do something about that and it wouldn't hurt them to have an Irish number you could call as well instead of having to call the UK.

telecinesk

Hi,
nice to see Im not alone. Yes the battery is really horrific. I spend up to 7 hrs on the move and sometimes involves v long train journeys so the battery thing got noticed from day 1.
As for support, nah forget that.
The weight of it kills me, 5 kgs is a bit much. The freezing problem points to ram I suspect.
Oh, it came with No OS so I was at least spared XP preloaded rubbish and managed to shove what I wanted onto the drive.

Plus thing, the sound quality is v v good. Really nice to use as a recorder or for skype so it aint all bad!