15.6IN 3GB/160/WIN 7 64BIT

Three weeks after I received this laptop, it suddenly displayed the "blue screen of death" one night while I was surfing the internet. It never would re-start, even in Safe Mode; nor would it boot from the restore disc that I had burned. The only option Acer offered was for me to ship the computer to their repair facility in Texas, at my expense ($30). I did ship it, two and a half weeks ago, and still haven't gotten it back. If this is indicative of the kind of service and reliability a person can expect from Acer, I would recommend not buying one. There's a reason the price is low-you get what you pay for. At least with a company like HP, you can take your computer to a local authorized repair facility if something happens to it, and have it back in a short time. I wish I would have spent a little more money and gotten a better-quality machine.

As for the performance of the computer itself, the speakers are of poor quality (very quiet), so watching DVD's without headphones or external speakers is not enjoyable at all. Also, the DVD player lags/skips at least a few times with every DVD I've viewed; sometimes more often than that.

I'm not even sure why they call this a laptop because with less than a 1 hour battery life it certainly isn't portable by any means. Also if you have it on standby and not plugged in it will be completely dead by the time you go back to it, even if it was fully charged when you closed the top. The ac adapter pretty much just falls out with any little motion. It also doesn't have enough video card to play small flip videos either and it really struggles with streaming video as well. By the time you get a spare battery, new video card, louder speakers, etc.. you might as well have spent the money up front.

Buy 15.6IN 3GB/160/WIN 7 64BIT Now

I bought one of these new in 2009, and am typing on it right now. I love this machine and am currently looking for another one for when this one does start to have problems. The thing with this model is that it was released with 2 major variants. the single core TF-20 1.6ghz and the dual core TK-42 1.6ghz. the single core one is crap stock, but you can buy the best processor for the socket for about $35 bucks now. these things were $450 or so new in 2009. be careful when looking for one. if your battery dies fast it is because it's worn out or it's used and someone screwed up the memory in it.

You can get new batteries and CPUs etc no problem. The motherboards and some of the other parts are starting to run out, and it's getting harder to find an actual new one of these now. If it doesn't come in it's box with clear plastic film covering the whole thing it is not new. If you can get a new one, upgrade the cpu, max out the ram, and throw an ssd in it, you will have a very decent laptop. The biggest bottleneck in this machine is the integrated graphics. the Radeon hd 3200 is not going to let you play new games, but the system is definately powerful enough for anything that is not too graphics intensive.

I like the asthetic appeal and overall design of the laptop. I have a sick gaming desktop and this does everything else. The bottom line though, even if you did get one new in box and spent another $150 bucks to max it out... that's like $600-$700. My newest phone is almost as powerful as this laptop, and $700 will buy something decent even if it's from the low end of a newer upgradable line with a decent parts pool. I'm only here because I have grown attachemd to mine lol. It's going to be sad when it dies, probably miss it more than my first dog. (knocked a star off because it is getting hard to find parts)

Read Best Reviews of 15.6IN 3GB/160/WIN 7 64BIT Here

Hardware is great, really small but deilevers a punch. However the mouse pad is exceedingly annoying. I carry my laptop everywhere and don't use a mouse, so this is aggravating. The mouse pad is maybe 1.5 inches by 4 inches and insensitive to touch. Don't expect much noise out of the speakers either.

Want 15.6IN 3GB/160/WIN 7 64BIT Discount?

I actually won this laptop in raffle, but for what the price is on Amazon, it's well worth it. You can't expect a power house of a computer under $500 even from Acer.

The graphics card is the ATI Radeon HD 3200, and it's an onboard shared memory card. Usually those cards are "pieces of crap" but I was surprised with what I could do with it. But don't think you will be maxing out many games.

The processor is AMD Athlon 64 Processor TF-20 which is a lowly single core 1.66 ghz processor. Yes, that's very little but again I was surprised with what it can do.

Games I've played and have ran smoothly have been

-Guild Wars (Maxed out)

-League of Legends (Minimum Settings)

-Forsaken World (Medium)

-Starcraft 2 (Minimum settings) Note here: Single Player ran like a breeze, no lag at all. Multiplayer was differnt, it lagged some. I had to overclock the processor in order for it to play smoothly (and this isn't a processor that is meant to be overclocked so I don't recommend doing it).

-Dragon Age (Minimum Settings) This surprisingly ran pretty smoothly, some lag when in battles.

-Fallout 3 (Semi Minimum Settings) I only had terrain on medium here and it ran somewhat smoothly, it probably would have ran better if it was on low.

I also ran other programs such as Auto-CAD and Pro/E perfectly fine on this machine.

As for streaming videos this computer is finicky about it. Sometimes I can watch Starcraft 2 games in 720p on Youtube smoothly and sometimes I can't. The wireless works perfectly fine, no complaints here, except at my college where the wireless is horrendous.

TL;DR: This is a good computer for anyone if they don't expect to do anything too strenuous on it, just simple everyday task such as going on facebook or playing simple flash games. Like I said before I was surprised with what I could do with this computer. The website says 160gb HDD but it's really about 140 (but that's pretty much the same with all HDD's). If I'm browsing the web not watching videos with the brightness down I get about 1 hour 30 minutes of battery time. But that's also because I just keep my computer plugged in (about 40-50 minutes of life if playing a simple game such as Dungeon Fighter Online). It can multi task to an extent but this Laptop is severely limited by it's processor.

I don't know why the price is $450 now, I remember looking at this before and it was $400.

Also, I kinda wish this laptop was able to output HDMI, as it doesn't have the HDMI port.