[Melbourne-pm] Acer Aspire

Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net
Thu Sep 11 18:00:40 PDT 2008


"Sisyphus" <sisyphus1 at optusnet.com.au> writes:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jacinta Richardson" <jarich at perltraining.com.au>
> .
>> At the pub last night some of us discussed the Acer Aspire.  I
>> couldn't remember all the details then, but here's what the Good Guys
>> are selling (
> .
> .
>> Hard Drive Size
>> 8GB SSD
>
> 8 gigs ? ... wow ..... ;-)
>
> Seriously (assuming that one does, in fact, get at least a little more
> than 8 gigs of storage) that looks to be quite inviting. What was the
> general feeling about this from you (knowledgeable) people ?

No, it really is 8GB of slow, slow flash storage.  Don't expect anything
close to hard disk speeds, and put as much RAM into these machines as
you can to make up for it.

As Jacinta noted, two SDHC slots mean that you can add extra storage,
though, to provide a more comfortable environment.  LVM might well be
your friend here, or a separate /usr partition.

> My usual supplier doesn't have a very high opinion of Acer. About 12
> months ago I purchased a 2nd hand Acer laptop through her, and she was
> at great pains to point out that the particular machine I was
> purchasing dated from *before* Acer started making rubbish.

Acer, like Asus, is reasonably indifferent in my experience: they
manufacture equipment that targets the consumer market, so you get
reasonably solid quality, but not exceptional.

Their support is not as dire as some of the more traditional vendors,[1]
but nothing like good vendors.[2]

Also, you should kind of expect that when it goes wrong you are better
buying another, not repairing it -- the vendor kind of does.

Regards,
        Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  Toshiba, I am looking at you.

[2]  IBM/Lenovo or Dell, say, though both have wildly varying
     experiences for some people.



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