But I was also surpised that this Acer has an acceptable amount of performance. I do a lot of photo and video editing on my desktop PC with Photoshop and Premiere so I'm used to an i7-980 6-core processor with 24Gb ram. But when on the road on business trips I also take my camera and therefore I wanted SOME sort of photo editor on this laptop. I bought Adobe Lightroom and to my surprise, it runs quite well! Granted, I did upgrade to 6GB of ram (pulled the 1GB stick and put in a 4GB next to the existing 2GB stick) which helps, but as a measure of performance this inexpensive Acer pulls it off decently. So does Photoshop Elements, I downloaded the trial and it runs just fine. I realize that not everyone reading this may use Lightroom or PS Elements, but it's a way to portray what this laptop can handle, as opposed to just saying "yeah, it's speedy"... compared to what? lol! It's quite acceptable, seriously. I also run Microsoft Office 2010, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 on it! Those are software development tools, but it basically means that this Acer can do the job, just get enough ram, the 4gb stick is under 40 bucks.
CONS: Not many, this is a lot of laptop for under $500, but there has to be downsides, and to me there are just a couple: The trackpad is annoying to work with. I'm not a trackpad fan anyway, I just plug in a mouse and turn off the trackpad. But if you're stuck where you have to use the pad, the static from your hands will DEFINITELY cause the cursor to jump to another section if the page (or another field in a webpage) while you're typing. I use this Microsoft Wheel Optical Mouse and disable the trackpad. problem solved. Also, the laptop's exterior plastic shell on the screen side of the unit bends in easily, meaning, if the laptop is closed and on your desk, don't set anything heavy on the closed laptop (like a heavy hardcover book), the case will sink in! Other than that, this is a fine laptop with a nice big screen. The graohics are built-in, not a separate beefy card, so while you can watch DVDs on here with ease, huge video like the 1080p footage out of my Canon 5D Mark II will not run, it just grinds to a halt. This isn't a gamer laptop for one for video editing, but for everyday tasks and photo editing it's quite good. The only thing I wish it had was an Expresscard port or even PCMCIA, but it has neither. But for the price it's a superb entry-level or college student solution.
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Bought this laptop for watching movies, huge monitor and the picture is better than HD. Now I use it for everything and because i got a great deal on it i ordered another for the wife. This Blows away an iPad for sure!!!!
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