I researched all over for the best notebooks possessing AMD's new APU processors, and this is the fastest AMD made at the time. It's important that you understand the difference between an AMD APU and your standard run of the mill CPU. If you don't know much about APUs, please let me explain...APUs (for the time being) are just dual core x86 processors except there are two other cores built into the APU just for graphics. Now, if you couple those two graphic cores with another dedicated GPU (as this laptop has) you are basically running two graphics cards in CrossFire mode which means this thing rocks in 3D applications. However, since you only have two cores for standard processing tasks, you will note some applications take longer to run than if you simply had a quad x86 core processor. So there's a tradeoff between brute processing and graphics. Bit, if you play any type of games on your laptop (like I do), the speed of the graphics is more important than being able to crunch database numbers.
Plus, don't forget that when you have any computer with "integrated graphics" (like most laptops, and especially all of that "BumBumBum" company's) you lose a percentage of your RAM to run the integrated graphics. Whereas, the optimal setup is to have a dedicated graphics card (like this does) and leave all of your RAM to do what it was designed to do (which is not generate graphics).
Many people were disappointed with these APUs when they first arrived, but much of that is due to poor driver support from the laptop manufacturers. For instance: out of the box this Acer does not have AMD's latest VISION Catalyst driver which allows you to determine if you want applications to run in Crossfire mode (meaning you will use both GPUs: the ones on the APU and the dedicated GPU). All you have to do is go to AMD's website and download the app which will install the exact driver software you need. Then in Windows it will prompt you to decide if you want to run both GPUs on certain applications. (However, keep in mind this will use more power.)
The main reason I gave this a 4-star is because the pre-installed hard drive is so incredibly and pathetically slow that it took a good 3 minutes to log on to Windows (after typing in my password). This is completely unacceptable in my opinion. I own netbooks that are quicker. So, the first thing I did was install 8GB of RAM (which is the most you can install on this laptop). However, this made zero performance improvement.
So, I finally broke down and purchased an internal SATA2 SSD. It cost a little over $100, but WOW!!! Windows literally logs in under 5 seconds. With an SSD, there is zero hesitation and this thing runs like a top tier desktop. In fact, I hardly use my desktop now that this thing is so fast.
So, after I installed the SSD here are my Windows Experience Numbers (if you'd like to compare them to others you are considering). Remember 7.9 is the max in Windows 7:
Processor: 6.5
Memory: 7.2
Graphics (2D): 5.1
Gaming Graphics (3D): 6.4
Hard Drive (SSD): 7.7
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