Acer M5-481PT-6644 Touchscreen Ultrabook 3rd Generation Intel i5-3337U (2.7GHz w/ Turbo Boost) 6GB

Bought it "refurbished" with 90 day warranty for us$55914" touchscreen, 6GB , 500gb HDD with 20gb flash.

PROS: price, Windows 8, touchscreen, CD DVD RW drive. Size.

Actually is very quick for i5U. I am running MS Office 2007 Pro plus IE 10 and 16,000 MP3s. Win 8 setup was fastest and lest painful of all Windowsespecially setting up on work network. Used Easy Transfer cable to transfer emails, etc, etc. plus transferred documents. music and others via external usb 3.0 HDD.

OKs: screen is a little washed out and needs to be a correct angle (90* to your eyesight) for best results.

Bloatwareeasy to remove for an average Windows user. Acer recovery will reinstall factory defaults.

CONs: IDIOT or brother-in-law of Acer President had to design these:

a) power on button is too easy to push when you pick up the laptop.

b) I/) ports are on the back-minor thing, but since the laptop is so thin, it is difficult to insert/remove a USB drive without picking the laptop up.

Windows 8 "recovery disk" none are included and it takes a 32gb usb flash drive (or external HDD) to create a separate recovery media in case you crash. I bought a Patriot brand 32gb USB 3.0 from Frys for $31.

EXTRA: I installed a Toshiba Dynadock 3.0 and it worked right out of the box (had to get drivers from Toshiba website). Running both HDMI and DVI monitors. A VGA monitor also worked using included DVI/VGA adaptor.

Am upgrading the RAM by adding an 8gb Kinston chip (for a total of 10GB). Will wait on anything else. So far is it is fast enough with the 500gb 5400rpm HDD, even with large MS Access database.

I have been using the newer model of M5-481PT-6644 for about 6 months. Ever since Acer released the latest BIOS updates in March 2013, its functionality has greatly improved and power management options work really well.

Pros:

Battery lifeeasily get 6 to 8 hours with moderate use;

Windows 8 takes a little bit of getting used to but now love the Start Screen and overall ease of use;

Hybrid SSD drive that boots up in under 6 seconds!

Good built-in sound quality;

DVD-RW Drive (which is very rare to find in a ultrathin light laptops these days);

Backlit keyboard, Responsive touchscreen;

Lets you resume working almost immediately after sleep and hibernation;

Very thin, light and portable for a 14-incher;

Included Windows7 Backup in Windows 8 works excellent to backup & restore entire hard-drive;

Great value for money.

Cons:

Touchpad is hard to use;

have to use two fingers to operate volume buttons;

NTI Media Maker DVD burning software is only temporary;

Only two USB3.0 ports;

missing VGA port (this makes it impossible to use older/legacy overhead projectors while traveling).

Bottomline: Definitely recommended. Make sure to install the latest BIOS update from Acer's website. Do not buy the older version of this laptop still on sale at Amazon (model M5-481PT-6488) as it often locks up when resuming from sleep/hibernation. The older model also has other stability issues involving WiFi.

Buy Acer M5-481PT-6644 Touchscreen Ultrabook 3rd Generation Intel i5-3337U (2.7GHz w/ Turbo Boost) 6GB Now

For the price, this refurbished laptop came with all the bells and whistles that I needed. Touchscreen works great so far and processor is fast and quiet. My only two qualms about this is that the screen could be a tad brighter and the laptop could be a little lighter and it would have been perfect. Other than these minor details, I'm still super happy and give this a max review.

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