Acer is crap

I must apologize for not updating in many days. The only excuse I can think of is that my laptop is a complete joke and never works properly. Here is a picture of my Acer on a typical day.

Ignoring the childish warning screen for a moment, take one look at that keyboard. In their lunacy, Acer decided to include two separate euro keys, one of which is somehow crammed into the 5 key. How the hell do you even access that? I tried every possible combination of alt/shift/Fn/ctrl keys, and then I tried slamming my fist onto the 5 key as hard as I could, but nothing happened. I now believe its not a 5/euro key at all, but a 5 euro keyuseful for when you need to express that something costs 5 euros. Thats probably the average hourly wage of the morons working at Acer.

Whats interesting about the euro key over by the arrows is that its literally not mapped to anything, and neither is the nearby dollar key. Basically I have two euro keys and neither of them work. I guess I have to map them myself? I probably should have built the entire laptop myself.

The first thing that went was the Acers ability to sleep and hibernate. It has to be awake at all times or else it freezes, like some sort of reverse bear. You can close the lid without powering down, but its not a smart idea because youll just crash the system. My laptop was not designed for such taxing activities as closing the lid. These early warning signs began to occur prior to the warrantys expiration, so I guess I could have shipped it off to Acer to be fixed. But I didnt really want to be without my laptop for 2 months while they wiped out my hard drive, and furthermore I didnt exactly trust the same geniuses who designed my laptop to fix it. Also, I naively assumed that some of my issues might have been software related.

After my warranty expired this past February, that was my laptops cue to really begin falling apart in earnest. Increasingly it stopped booting successfully. What it usually does after you power it on is it emits three piercing beeps and then youre treated to the douche chill screen shown in the above photo. One of my favorite hobbies is to browse the internet for a solution to this problem, but the consensus seems to be that its due to a faulty mainboard. A good temporary solution Ive found is that when the laptop starts beeping at me, I beat the shit out of it and try to restart. After much experience in hitting my laptop, experimentally varying the intensity and placement of my wallops, Ive determined that if I apply steady pressure to the area just to the left of the touchpad, it will actually boot up with no problems. The only problem is that I usually have to continue to exert this pressure throughout my laptop use, or else the system will lock up or Ill lose my wireless signal. Sometimes I actually have to operate my laptop with a dictionary balanced on the left side, which is not exactly the portable solution I envisioned when I purchased my laptop.

Of course, my Acer isnt really a laptop anymore. The mere idea of placing this device on my lap is cause for laugher. Im well aware that any subtle movement of my legs would create far too much commotion for my machines brittle constitution. In general, physically moving my laptop in any way once it has successfully powered on is asking for trouble. At best the wireless functionally will be disrupted, and youll have to manually reconnect to the network, but most often youre just going to lock up the machineand it serves you right for attempting to adjust the position of your laptop. Laptops were not designed to be carelessly placed on top of your lap.

Ive opened my machine up numerous times to make sure everything was cleaned and properly in place, but to be honest I dont know the purpose of most of that circuitry anymore than the retards over at Acer. Eventually Im going to have to just replace the machine entirelyI havent even mentioned the inch-wide band of scrambled lines that occasionally appears on the rightmost side of my monitor. Needless to say, I would never again purchase a computer product made by Asser. They should switch to an industry in which the excel: making hilarious practical jokes.

86 thoughts on “Acer is crap

  1. Not to offend you, but how the hell cheap was the sale that influenced you to even BUY an Acer in the first place? You can buy those POS in a bulk pack of 25 for the price of 1 Dell computer… and those aren’t much better!

  2. Allegedly, you use the /right/ Alt key in conjunction with the 5 to type a euro. I can’t test this myself, as the left Alt key on my Acer fell off long ago and the right one stopped working when I had to roll back my keyboard driver. So yes, Acer is quite definitely crap.

  3. awkwardly, i’ve had the same acer laptop for 6 years and its still beautiful. gross eh. never had one problem with it. And I quite like the two Euro keys. Because I frequently like to just type to the Euro symbol, but I hate touching the same key over and over again. PROBLEM SOLVED BY ACER DESPITE BEST EFFORTS TO LOOK LIKE DOUCHES

  4. Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Hold on a second here. You’re stating that you have a shitty laptop, correct? Well you better hold on to your freaking hat, because I’m about to blow away your acer laptop with the fury of a thousand flames.
    1. After about 20-30 minutes my computer over heats and the thing shuts down. This is good if you want to cook a meal while you surf the net, I suppose, but that’s usually not one of my priorities when I’m trying to do my homework. I have to carry what my friends call “frozen-pea life support” with me, which is a part of my infamous laptop care kit. I’ve gotten odd looks from the people who run the local internet cafe when I ask them if they could please put my sack of expired meat in the freezer for an hour or two so I can finish my homework.
    2. Should I forget my laptop care kit, battery life lasts about 40 minutes. That doesn’t really matter, though, because if I forgot my laptop care kit than I forgot the frozen ham package that I hold so near and dear, and my laptop will over heat at least 10 minutes before it dies or battery failure.
    3. Stains and cracks. Ever since about three years ago, my desktop computer died, my laptop has become the family computer (just as well, I suppose, with the old one having a gig of memory and half a gig of RAM). There are food stains all over my laptop, which wouldn’t be so bad if it was just aesthetic difficulties. With the laptop over heating the food burns and decomposes, causing the spread of biological and chemical warfare in the house. The stains from where wrists rest are dark, and when you turn it upside-down it looks like an happy robot with missing teeth.
    4. I’m missing the “L” key and the “Shift” key from my keyboard, crumbs from my mother’s food have gotten lodged under the keys and managed to pry those ones loose.
    5. When my dad and mother did up the family budget, apparently an internet connection wasn’t a one of those important things. So I walk around town, trying desperately to grab a signal while freezing my hand off from holding up the ham packet.
    People often wonder why I wear UFO parachute pants. It’s because it’s the most viable transportation option for my laptop care kit. It contains:
    -Two power cords that occasionally work (my rabbit thought the cords would taste like carrots, I suppose)
    -A package of frozen ham or vegetables, or some other form of meat.
    -A teddy bear that I clutch in the corner when my laptop fails the second before I save the final draft of my essay with that kick ass conclusion sentence that I can’t remember now.

    So, good sir, when the gods of the internet are reading your kick ass website, I will be the one to get a kick ass computer for Christmas. But then again, if they’re internet gods, then I doubt they would read comments, because no one with half a brain reads these things.

  5. Stoney: It wasn’t even that much cheaper. I bought my laptop after about four minutes of research on Newegg.com. I guess I’m the asshole now.

    Ueli: Nope, I already tried that 30 times. Maybe that’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t.

  6. MacBook.

    Throw that fuckah down the stairs, and it’ll still generate six-dimensional hypermodels of new molecules, while letting you jack your brain into the pan-neural network of your choice.

    “No one with half a brain reads these things.”

    I have at least two.

  7. Seriously. MacBook. (or MacBook Pro if you’ve got the €€€). Who has ever regretted getting a Mac? No one.
    (And yeah, I know we aren’t european here, but I wanted to show off my euro sign, that while not standard on the keyboard, takes about 2 seconds to insert, even less if I took the time to make a shortcut for it, which is also insanely easy because Macs are made so that even 2-year-olds and people with botched lobotomies have no problems utilizing all of their functions.)

  8. ROFL – The area just left of the mouse pad is the hard drive! I know what you mean, my Acer is an absolute piece of shit which has crashed after only a few years. They’re basically disposable. You wrote this 3 years ago so I highly doubt (and hope for you) that you still have this pile of junk, but to get that 5 Euro sign to work you press the blue key “Fe” or whatever to the right of control and then the 5. So “Fe”+5. I was very pissed with mine all the time and gave it a good smack on a regular basis. I supposedly got a deal after paying nearly $1200 for it – It lasted less than 3 years!

  9. Oops, never mind – I thought it said this was written in 2005. Still hilarious though. Yes I suggest an IBM/Lenovo laptop. They’re expensive yes, but it is worth it. Look on eBay for a good deal!

  10. wow…..so I am not the only luddite on the planet…..bought this laptop because my MAC was worn out and busted and the Acer cost about as much as it was going to cost to fix the old MAC….new battery, new power cord adapter, removing a stuck cd etc. Well I should have known better…..

    First off they ripped me off at the Source…closest place to get a laptop and I was desperate….didn’t receive all the goodies as promised, so BAD service from the store. Only part of the rebates came…false advertising! After only having the laptop for about a month I couldn’t get it to power up. It needed about a month vacation before it would work again. Then the trial versions expired which threw the computer into more hissy fits and made it unuseable till it settled down again. Then on May 11th the CD/DVD driver somehow erased itself while I was playing a CD…..not to be found anywhere by a technician…..Like the author of this article, I can’t be with out a computer while they fix it….so I continue to moan and suffer…then there is the problem of the dancing curser…..it randomly jumps all over the screen….or the NO ACTION stuck mode ball…on MAC, the disco ball…..Wordperfect with Vista…hasn’t WP been obsolette since about ’98? POS to say the least….My new MAC will be coming home soon.

    Thanks for the rant and it is good to know that I am not alone with these computer problems.

    LJ

  11. well…I made a mistake and wiped the HD of my daughters Acer Aspire 5630 after months of growing problems…turning itself off with no warning..loosing her schoolwork. Not even a blue screen of DEATH….nothing. Machine would just DIE. So decided to start from scratch. Has anyone tried downloading drivers from the Acer web sit. jeez… You have to select the driver you want twice befor it’ll download. Then, normally the file is corrupt!. Tried this on three different computers. So its not just their hardware that sucks…they’ve turned it into a way of LIFE!!!

  12. My sister just got one, I tried to warn them not to…then I just got this-

    E rin x3x2 (7:58:01 PM): look at this weird key on this computer
    E rin x3x2 (7:58:02 PM): €
    E rin x3x2 (7:58:11 PM): its an actual key

    ha.

  13. You are correct.. I paid up for my Acer 9300 just for the built in 10 key numeric.. It takes 15 minutes to boot. biggest piece of shit I have ever owned. NEVER again.. What makes it worse is VISTA . GGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

  14. I had grown quite convinced that my Acer was possessed of some form of superior intelligence which allowed it to plot against my every intention, with incomparable sluggishness, a tendency to shut itself down for no apparent reason and general refusal to save anything. Now I see that it cannot even be credited with this, and that the whole Acer race is one imbued with a hatred of humanity so deep that nothing will stop them in their machinations so pernicious as to be Shakespearean.
    In addition, the stupid thing refuses to die! However much I hit it, however much tea/gin I spill all over it, it just continues on its own happy little course with an enviable oblivion. Motiveless malignity, said Coleridge of Iago, so say I of Acer.

  15. On my Acer Aspire there is a key called Alt Gr (which I think means Alt Ground) and you press this with the 4 key to type the euro symbol.
    My plain € key used to work but has stopped now, no idea why.

  16. I have the same model 5102. It’s been refusing to boot for a while now on and off. Now all of a sudden it wont find the cdrom or the hard drive. So I seen me arse wiv it and it’s in about 10 peices now. LOL!!! Never buying another acer product again.

  17. Acer are crap, Crap Support, Crap Parts, Monkeys put together the laptops in a factory.

    If you try the Tech Support you get re-directed in a continual loop for hours until the 1 actual person they have on the call centre will help you.

    Turns out too be an indian with a HNC in Convinience store till systems.

    The Driver page is no help since Acer don’t even know how to setup a FTP properly too host there drivers.

    Not only do they release the same model of laptop 3 times, they tend too be re-badged and butchered other cheap ass laptops.

    So if you’re lucky enough to loose your driver disc or Recovery disc, good luck to you. I can think of only one other machine which has single handedly had more problems than this Acer 3690 peice of crap.

    And thats my Xbox 360, And least i can repair that by removing stupid design flaws.

  18. Hi,

    Just called acer customer service about the euro sign. they said you have to have an app called “launch manager” installed to be able to use that function. (wack huh?)

    Problem is even after re-installing this app (i uninstalled it without giving extra look when i first got the machine, thought its just another corporate bloatware) the euro sign still DOESN’T WORK AT ALL!!!

    totally agree with a previous post, “you got 2 euro signs, but no pound sign?” LOL absolutely, i so regret to get acer crap, well too late to regret, never had an issue like that with dell, acer is truly crap, avoid it like hell!!!

  19. Hi there!

    I somehow managed to find this site by typing “Acer aspire laptops crap” on Google:) Well, I can tell you 100% that this brand is a complete and utter bullsh*t. I bought Acer Aspire 5670 like 2 years ago. It was the very first one to feature the new Centrino Duo platform. It was my first laptop, so I didn’t know anything about the brands. I just thought that the more powerful and the cheaper, the better it is. Hell NO! After a good research I found out that Acer was offering the best! system spec/price ratio out there. It even featured a dedicated Ati video card compared to the plethora of integrated Intel chips out there.
    Well, I bought it. It was my biggest mistake ever. I forked out like 1400$ for a machine that cost half this value after just 4 months.
    And the problems started:
    1.It overheats A LOT. It’s impossible to keep it over your your lap or you are risking to fry your nuts. And it hangs due to the bloody overheating.
    2.The integrated speakers are utter crap.
    3.The chinese shitty laptop fan is a complete joke. After like 1 year of use it started to make a disgusting grinding noise that can make your ears bleed. And it is supposed to have 3+ years of use. Recently the fan completely stopped. I thought it was just stuffed with dust and tried to clean it. It worked for a while.
    One day after coming back home, I sat to watch some movie on my laptop. To my surpise the fan didn’t start at all and my system was shutting down after 15 mins of running.i was so mad that time that i just removed the pack plate, ripped off the faulty fan and threw it away in the trash. I was absolutely shocked when i found out that thius particular fan for my particular laptop model acer aspire 5670-5672 was terminated from production. The damn chinese messed it up from the baginig and now I am completely screwed up. I searched all the online retailers and everywhere this damn part was sold out. I had to dig out this shitty fan out of the trash!!! (OMG!) cuz I needed its plastic enclosure. So finally I managed to glue another smaller laptop fan from another model to the enclosure and actually fit the damn thing back in place.

    Another horror story: I had freezing and shuttig down as well. The system just locked up after starting or just durig the boot time. It tured out that it was the wifi Intel driver that caused the problem. I had to remove the program and istalled just the drivers and allowed Windows to handle the wifi. The issue was fixed.
    The hilarious thing is that your problems were very similar to mine:) When rebooted, the acer just gave me 2 beeps, the dvd activated itself every time and then just a black screen. This whole garbage was so meaningless to me any more that i decide to smack it till it actually worked or just break it down and throw it out once and for all. I think after the good beating the lappy will make some more months LOL:)

    MY ADVICE: Stay away from Acer and its cheap laptops cause sooner or later the hell will break loose and the crap will poor on you from everywhere.
    I am just waitig for Intel to release Calpella this year and I am getting a new laptop. The goddamned Acer is going right to the city garbage can forever. Now, after all the horror when I see a Ferrari or some Acer product somewhere I am gettig a headache.

  20. I agree. Acer laptops have the worst build quality I have ever seen. The keyboard on my machine was faulty from birth. I contacted them and, at two weeks old, they offered to repair it for me for a fee. I tried to take it back to the retailer but they didn’t want to know. I am now taking legal action in order to get rid of this load of crap. Do not buy an Acer computer.

  21. I have an Acer too, in fact, an Aspire 5100 series, the same as in the picture (but probably a different model, mine’s the 5840). It’s 1.5 years old now, and so far the only problem I’ve had is that the webcam stopped working. At first I thought it was a software problem, but after reinstalling Vista twice, I discovered that it was a hardware problem. It’s one of those webcams that spins around so you can face it towards you or out away from you, but the spinning part was built cheaply and one side is now loose, which probably caused the problem. It still works, but there’s many lines going across the picture. But, I rarely use the webcam so its not a big deal. I decided not to send it in for warranty repair because of the cost of shipping and the fear that they would mess up something else at the center or in shipping. Other than that, I haven’t had any problems so far (knock on wood!). It would be nice if it would last another 2.5 years to get me through college, but I’m doubting it after reading these posts. I believe my hard drive might be starting to fail, since it randomly shut down on me twice over the last two months. Thankfully, I have most of my stuff backed up on an external HD, and I guess a hard drive problem can’t be blamed on Acer. Maybe I can convince WD to replace it when/if it goes, since it’s an OEM drive and should have a 3 year warranty? We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. At least I know enough about computers that I can replace the motherboard if it goes (since it seems like a common problem for these), and they’re pretty cheap on ebay. I’ve done it once before for another laptop (a Gateway with a snapped-off power connector), and it’s not the most fun thing to do, there’s so many tiny screws. When this finally goes, I’ll have to seriously consider a Mac. They’re pretty expensive, but it’s worth it thanks to the quality and reliablity. Maybe I can get a good used MacBook Pro for a fairly low price.

  22. Hi man, just like to say that I recently spent £1500 on an acer aspire 4GRAM laptop. This machine is apparantly capable of running the most powerful software but crashed when I tried loading basic cubase software. Ever since the laptop crashes, swithes on and off and I smell burning now when it is on for over an hour. I spoke to Acer tech support and the guy (who couldn’t speak english!) suggested that I turn it off and wait ten minutes before switching it on.!!!! LOL I no use it for cricket.

  23. Holy Crap Margaret Britowski you are my new current heroine! I cried from laughing about your frozen care kit. The ham is what really did it to me. You’re totally right by the way; I wouldn’t be on this forum (not knocking the forum only myself) if I knew how the hell to fix the fan. So far the monitor doesn’t work and we have a dinosaur monitor hooked up to it and the fan dies so we have a cooling pad underneath. It runs so slow. I admire your bravery to walk around with frozen meat. Anyway, good luck to you all.

  24. Hey guys. I’ve read about a solution that will work for the infamous disk error message that seems to occur on the Acer Aspire 5100, and possibly other models. According to what I’ve read, it’s the same problem that causes an Xbox 360 to get the “Red Ring of Death.” There’s a cold solder joint on the motherboard in the area of the HD that eventually gets loose from many hot-cool cycles, leading to the disk error message. The author of this blog mentioned that pushing down on the left palmrest (left of the touchpad) will fix this problem. That’s because you’re putting pressure on the joint in the motherboard, reconnecting whatever’s become loose. A permanent way to fix this problem is to take a heavy-duty piece of rubber, that can withstand high heat, and cut it so that it’s just thick enough to fit between the HD and the ATI chip on the motherboard (where the cold solder joint is under) and put pressure on this chip when everything’s closed. This pressure is enough for a long-term solution to the problem.

    Oh, and for Margaret and other people having cooling problems, unless the fan is actually broken, the laptop is usually overheating because there’s dust, hair, and/or other things caught in the heatsink and fan, preventing the cooling system from functioning very efficiently. Open it up (usually through the compartment on the underneath), get some compressed air, and blow all of that stuff out, and it should be like new. If you can’t open your laptop for some reason, you can still blow air in through the vents on the outside to clean out dust, but it might not work as well.

  25. i got an acer which has been repaired 3 times in its first 10 months of its life, there are totally crap laptops there customer service people are idiots as im a female ive been treated like im thick. i must be buying an acer,

  26. I bought Acer 9920G laptop 3.5 months ago and was generally quite pleased with it so far.

    However, last week and switched it on and got this message upon load up:
    PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable.
    PXE-M0F: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM.
    Operating System not found.

    Well, I got a bit worries, googled this on my other computer, some other forums mentioned that it could be due to the Hard Disk failure.

    Anyway, I took it back to the shop where I brought it from, the techy guy powered the laptop and it worked fine (???). He said it might be due to some loose wire inside that got back into place whilst I was carrying it to the shop.

    I was quite relieved, took the laptop back home, powered it and got the same error message as before!!! I unplugged the whole thing again, carried it around the house and it was working again (just).

    I then called Acer support line and spoke to the rudest man on Earth. I explained what happened and he said it was due to the loose hard drive. I asked if I could send the laptop back to them so someone could have a look at it and fix the loose hard drive. He said I would have to pay for this because the laptop was working at this current moment. I told him that the laptop was only 3.5 months old and still under warranty and I should not pay for fixing any manufacturing defects. He then said that it was not Acer’s fault because I did not buy the laptop from them but from the shop. When I said how it was shop’s fault that they receive faulty products from the manufacturer, he told me that he could not help me because “operating system going missing” is a software issue and nothing to do with Acer.

    This is the most appalling customer service I have ever witnessed – it’s absolutely shocking!

  27. I recently made the mistake of buying an Acer laptop. It failed to boot up after I’d had it for 3 weeks. I then returned it to the shop and they refused to replace it because Acer don’t let them. So it was sent to Acer to be repaired. They couldn’t repair it after a month, so it was replaced (why couldn’t they just do that to start with?). The replacement broke after just over a month, so this time I demanded a refund. It took Acer over 2 months to authorise the refund because, again, the shop wasn’t allowed to. During these problems I lost a lot of A Level coursework which takes me a long time to do. I now have an LG laptop, which works better than the Acer ones ever did. NEVER buy any Acer products.

  28. I shut down my acer 9300 and 4 hours later I press the power button and it only makes 3 loud beeps, the monitor doesn’t light up, usb ports, dvd drive and some outer buttons have power, but the keyboard doesn’t respond

  29. YOU ARE CORRECT.. I googled “Acer is the biggest piece of shit in the industry” and your site came up #1… I just got it booted up.. exactly 14 minutes to make me THINK it was ready…. BUT HELL NO… another 4 minutes to be able to get a response when I clicked on the control panel Icon.!!! and OF COURSE Frigging VISTA Makes it 10 times worse… Gates needs to pay a little more attention to his business and less time to his philanthropic endeavors. ACER and VISTA what a helluva combination ! ! My 8 year old Gateway with XP performs much much better

  30. Wow!! Glad I’m not the only one. I have had my shitty laptop for about 4 months. Last night while writing my final paper for one of my classes the lcd went out. At first I figured ok it just the lcd. I’ll save my paper and email it to my black berry. UM HOW? I COULDN’T SEE SHIT! So now I have to send it from ca to texas for repair. I work full time and all my classes are online so I can’t afford to be without a laptop as shitty as this one may be. I’m buying a mac this week and selling the acer as soon as I get it back! I ended up doing my ENTIRE paper on my blackberry.

  31. Bad mistake, bought three brand new ACER laptops 20 months ago – one for myself and two for my teenage children as they were on offer at Tesco, power supplies failed on all three after 8 months – ACER would not replace as they claim they are “Consumable” items. So had to purchase replacements – all of which have failed again since. Customer service dreadful. Two of the laptops are now failing to boot totally. Power up but close down and try to reboot again etc etc. The third fails to boot unless it is very very cold. Fans have always been on full speed ever since these laptops were purchased. STAY AWAY -DO NOT TOUCH ACER WITH A BARGE POLE.

  32. Well… I bought an Acer laptop earlier yesterday and thought the speakers sounded muffled and the mouse was a little glitchy, but I was gonna let it slide. Then I found this place and read a few of these stories and I think I might just return it and buy an HP or Sony…

  33. So… i’m one of those consumers who touched acer with my hands, nevermind the afore mentioned barge pole, it sucks, overheating at any time, im using the aspire 5630, a computer so bad, acer no longer provides support for it, a third ky just fell off today and the left clicker is broken, yours is in mint condition good sir, wait a month, the problems ae only jut beginning….

  34. Acer’s rock. You bunch of luddites shouldn’t be allowed near a computer. I’ve had Acer’s for the past 8 years, Netbooks, Towers, and Desktop Replacements, and they all do the job, and without the song, dance and price premium of the HP’s and Sony’s of the world. It’s not a coincidence that Acer are now the third biggest PC manufacturer in the world. As for MAC’s, what a load of shite people talk about them. They’re just as likely to break as PC’s and are now just as capabale as getting infected with spyware etc. I think you’d all be better of spending your time learning how to use computers than coming onto some blog to have a mutual moan fest. Acer and Toshiba are the best built and best value laptops around.

  35. Good god! i actually give up! i should of listened to the girl who sold me the netbook in tesco she had hers for two weeks and told me she had probs and that it was slow my daughters has been with acer repair for three months and every week they tell me it will be with me by the end of that week well its meant to be here today but guess what! she had saved for so long for it too. i will never buy from them again they are full of shit. i wish i had read up on them first we know now and is the centre we phone actually in england?

  36. im using acer 3620. i had problem with € key on my keyboard. when i accidentally press the € key, my keyboard will not working and i need to restart my laptop again.

  37. Me and my brother both had our own acer laptops for Christmas a number of years ago.

    I feel bad for my dad paying £500 each for a shitty laptop. Told acer the problems with it and asked if we could get it repaired and they never replied.

    Fuck Acer.
    100% happy with my Hp Desktop which i now own. Acer put me off laptops and i will NEVER buy another acer in my life.

  38. in school…..using acer aspire 6930. cursor is jumping all over the place when im typing….and NO,NOTHING IS TOUCHING THE MOUSEPAD,GRRRR. Is this only an acer problem?–from what I’m seeing–IT LOOKS SO!!!! THIS KINDA SUX FOR SCHOOL PAPERS..

  39. First new laptop. What a piece of crap. Acer 5670. Fortunately bought a 3 year extended warranty. Power cord shorts out and electrocutes you if you touch the mousepad. New case,power cord, motherboard and screen under warranty. 3 addiotional repairs during the warranty period. Warranty expired and video chip shorting out. In 3 years Acer repair has had more use of this than my daughter has. Nevermore.

  40. I type “acer crap laptop” in to google and here I am.
    2 acer laptops. Both have crashed in the last week. Absolute shit.
    I’m off to get a couple of mac’s.
    I’ve had enough of PC’s and MicroShaft.

  41. I’ve had it with electronics, period, end of sentence. Sometimes I think I’d rather live in the stone age at times. My damn acer is a piece of shit like everyone elses’. I think these things have an internal clock of death because right after the warranty cashes out, the damn thing bricks. It’s a giant paperweight that makes a wooooo woooo noise and stares at me with a green “power” light. Meanwhile, the acer assholes are greedily rubbing their hands together in their dark, creepy offices somewhere in the south side of hell, laughing manically like some cheesy B-rated villain.
    I was just about to remove the hard drive so I can at the very least grab my school work off of it, but somehow, acer managed to have the incredible hulk jam two of the screws in there after smothering them with crazy glue.
    But my acer isn’t even half the problem. I have a three-year old dell laptop, which is boob-sagging years in technology, but none-the-less has been a decent computer. However, it has completely missed the purpose of being a “laptop.” The powercord slot has somehow managed to slip or have a wire short or something because now I have to use a rubberband connected to the screen in order to hit it’s sweet spot so it’ll charge. I’ve recently replaced the battery, but to no avail, the damn thing can’t hold a charge for more than a half hour, making its portability nonexistent. By the shear grace of God, I have managed to make it a desktop, and I am afraid to move it less I loose the ability to power it completely.
    In the same week, my xbox decides to join in on the party and puts out an error 74. The only good thing is that microsoft extended the error to the three year warranty so back it will go.
    Not to mention, mediacom’s internet can totally blow big ones because when I get a working computer, service is likely to quite working at any time it friggin feels like it…

    I feel better now. Ranting is great.

  42. This is by far the greatest thing I have read… About 4 years ago my grandfather bought me a brand new acer… must have been the 2 series… maybe the 3… I was so happy to have a laptop again (I had gone six months without a PC and MAC was preventing me from enjoying the games I play/ supporting any programs I enjoy using.) I remember it ran fine for a few months… I could play old Half Life games with a few lag spikes.. nothing major… But, about 4 months later I was in for a RUDE awakening… The AC adapter wire actually began to melt… causing sparks and the occasional smell of burning rubber. After replacing the charger my computer, while playing anything that required the graphics card…. would lock up and stretch whatever current colors were on the computer screen into a Gradient type piece of shit… this would happen after about 10 minutes of playing games.. even ones that were 2d and used minimal graphical intensity… I came to the realization after giving my leg third degree burns… that it was an overheating issue… and for another 3 months I played, laying down with a mini-fan between my legs because the built-in fan could not handle cooling down the molten fury… After an attempt at reformatting the files on the disk were actually corrupt and didnt tell me until I had wiped the system… So I promptly smashed the shit out of the laptop…

    I refused to get an Acer after that… and got a perfect Gateway desktop… still running on XP just before Vista-fail came out… That thing ran like a charm… I used that everyday and never experience a problem… Ever.

    But, Acer would come back to haunt me… My brother needed help buying a new laptop so he went with my grandfather (why god why.) To buy one.. I told my brother to steer clear of Acer… he was well-aware… but, that didn’t seem to help… he came home with the laptop I am currently on… The Acer 5520…

    Not only did this laptop have problems right off the bat… problems like… the keyboard not being able to keep up with what I’m typing… Example:

    “Hi, I own this big piece of shit called Acer.”

    heres what came out

    “Hi, own thibig piece of shi called Ace.”

    I recently moved to New York.. which means ditching my lovely Gateway for this… so that I could have something to use… the minute i moved her I noticed it wasn’t charging unless I jiggled the charger for hours… and the slightest movement would cause it to stop… I came to realize

    THE GODDAMN CHARGER BURNT THROUGH AGAIN.

    100 bucks and a universal charger later… My laptop was back up… It was slowly dying… turning into the same hunk of shit the last one was… until one day my girlfriend accidentally kicked it off my bed… knocking something loose I had the blue screen of death…

    I needed a laptop… And I could not find my recovery disks… I used a temporary laptop until finally I found the disks to reboot… I rebooted… everything went fine… And here’s the real kick in the fucking face…

    THE DAMN THING RAN BETTER AFTER GETTING SMASHED INTO THE GROUND.

    I was playing games at 75 fps… I was running multiple browsers all downloading porn at the same time… with no freezing or lagging!!!

    I was in awe… I was happy for once… but, it was all a ruse to forever castrate me…

    Just recently the fan started going to shit.. just like the last one… now holding a fan between my legs once again I tried to reformat.. but, what happens… it can’t even read the disk to start the recovery process!!! I raged… And got Windows 7. Upgraded… Reformatted… Had some minor issues that windows update fixed… and now it seems ok… But, my problem now is that it takes 30 seconds for anything to start up…. That could just because its new and needs to adjust… but, acer has been nothing but problems for me… and I cannot wait to replace this big hunk of shit…

  43. ACER Aspire 8935 is complete crap. After purchase it had no guts no speed … RAM module not installed properly. Hard drive failed. Bezel cracked. NUM lock key wouldn’t release. They determined that it was all “CUSTOMER ABUSE”, strong armed me and made me pay an additional $100.00 plus or they wouldn’t fix anything. I paid so now I have the right to be heard and tell my story. ACER is CRAP. Ask me more ….. Cam

  44. I have an Acer and I tried all combinations (using the Ctrl, Alt, Shift, FN, and Alr Gr keys) and nothing worked to get the Euro sign on the “5” key to work – including the combinations suggested here. There are a couple of options I found out about from other websites. The first is Ctrl+Alt+E and the other is Alt+0128 (on the number pad but the Num Lock has to be set). It just depends on where you are at the time. Like in this box the Ctrl+Alt+E doesn’t work (but it does in Word and other apps). Alt+0128 on the number pad works in this box. € Also, I too noticed speaker quality problems on this notebook (but, only when trying to record…otherwise it’s ok). So, I would definitely consider other notebooks next time…that’s for sure.

  45. acer is crap i have one, it is slow no mater how fast the broadband, it crashes evry 3 seconds it began deleting my work, its just a load of bullshit

  46. I have an Acer 6930g and it is just over a year old. I bought it with a blueray player and all the bells and whistles. Now the screen is failing. There are huge (the size of a coffee cup) pale spots on the screen where you can barely read the text. The mouse pad buttons stick and it gets really really warm. The speakers are also dying. I wanted to buy a MAC but they are soo expensive. The funniest thing is the salesman was trying to talk me out of it and I thought I knew better. He warned me about problems with ACER.

    ACER REALLY IS CRAAAAAPPPPPP….NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER buy one!

  47. I feel a kinship here. Bonding over a crap computer. I bought a 9920G (yes, the behemoth 20″ model). It was wonderful until about 3 months after the warranty expired. *Note to self: ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS buy the additional warranty*

    It up and stopped one day. Just wouldn’t boot up. No splash screen, no nuthin’. Just a light to show me that the power was, in fact, on.

    So …
    Take it to a few shops around town. Most won’t touch an out-of-warranty laptop but did offer that it was very likely my mainboard. Eventually, after a lot of CS emails and time on the phone, I found out that Acer will do flat-fee non-warranty repairs. So I shipped the monster off to the repair depot, where it sat for the next two months. Only to have a phone call one day with someone telling me that my laptop was not repaired because the part (mainboard) was no longer available and would I like it shipped back to me?

    One returned, but dead, laptop later and a little more internet research and I found I could get a replacement mainboard. Ok, did that. Still didn’t work. Next item – an eBay processor. Ok, now it would boot but still no display. So back to eBay for a graphic chip and eventually an inverter board. Still the same problem. Laptop works beautifully (for now) but only if I use an external display. The native one won’t go.

    I love/hate the idea of tossing the thing of a tall building and watching it smash to pieces – as it works, but only sort of.

    All I can say is thank God for the extended insurance my credit card provided me because now I have a Dell.

  48. I’m not going to go into a long winded sphiel about how bad Acer is because most of what I have to say has already been covered. I just want to issue a warning to anyone who’s thinking of buying any Acer product, to stop and think again. Don’t put yourself through the bother because their junk really isn’t worth it. I wouldn’t give their crap away to my worst enemy!
    How these jokers have gotten away with flogging their sub, sub, sub, substandard product and service to the general public without being prosecuted under the trades description act is a mystery to me.

    Stay away!!!

  49. Totally agree, ACER = do not buy !! I have an aspire 8930 wich i paid almost 1800 euro 11 months ago, and guess whot, it s BROKE already! Overheating GPU, can cook eggs on the keyboard! To make things worse, the SUPPORT of acer holland is just 1 big fuck-up squad, run by 10 year olds. They picked it up (UPS) same day, fast huh! With some BIG PDF’s print-outs on the box saying it needs to go to NLD hertogenbosh, it ends up in GERMANY (according to acer) so they actyally received it at the repair center 2 weeks later! WHAT A JOKE, and guess whot, IT S ALREADY 4 days “under repair” overthere? How long does it take a blond to change a light-bulb (gpu) ? …exactly .. Faxing Acer WHQ taiwan en EHQ germany, well that’s a waste of time. 3 weeks later, still no aspire in sight …. honestly, STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM ACER AS YOU CAN !!!

    I had a similar story with HP , broken fan after few months, they also took more then 3 weeks, but HP offered me a LAPTOP OF MY CHOICE in return, i could select ANY laptop from their website (and off course i took the biggest one:) , it was delivered next day by DHL with 100 empty cd’s with it as a gift as well. Now THAT’S SUPPORT ! FUCK ACER ! (and ACER GROUP!)

    Those asians forgot what PRIDE IN WORK stands for, now it s all MONEY AND GAIN, you re just a NUMBER, not a customer !

    Never ACER AGAIN !

    Regards
    Ed

  50. I have 2 Acer’s One Travelmate and a An Acer Aspire one which I bought for my Daughter. Both are Fucked and I will never ” EVER ” buy anything Acer again ” BE Warned” the worst computer company in the World!! Cost me a £1000. Fuckers

  51. I have an acer aspire 3680 have had it for almost three years never have had a problem other then those two keys I never need, in fact only found this site trying to figure out those euro symbols. Not sure what you people do to your laptops but mine travels all the time and again never had an issue.

  52. Well thanks! I have an Acer Aspire 5600 – euro key never has worked. After reading the above I now find that if I ctrl/leftAlt/4 (not 5) I can type a euro symbol!
    Bit late really as this heap of problems is being consigned to the bin at Xmas when I buy a new laptop.
    My biggest issues with it have been the intense HEAT generated from the left side (just where I hold the mouse) DVD drive never worked for more than an hour from new. Built in webcam died shortly after purchase. I’ve bored myself to death listing the probs now.
    Any recommendations for a new lappy?

  53. Ooops should have said the RIGHT side that gets insanely hot. If you ever tried to use this on your lap you’d burn a hole in your leg.

  54. Yes, Acer E-machine are rubbish. If you are thinking of buying one it can only be because they are cheap. Why are they cheap? Because they are rubbish. Poor build quality, lousy performance, and totally non existent after sales care. I bought one (yes, idiot me) for my daughters homework, it ran badly for 3 months then packed up completely. Acer – E-machines repair department told me that the warranty does not cover certain parts of hardware and would not repair it under the guarantee. BE WARNED – AVOID ACER E-MACHINES AT ALL COSTS. Just look at the huge amount of bad reviews!!!!

  55. I need to vent…much like my friggin’ Acer MS2254 Aspire 5535 which has been nothing but trouble since I bought it some 3 years ago or roundabouts. Firstly, I never even wanted to buy this piece of shit. I knew it was a budget brand, my instincts told me not to be cheap and buy it, but no, my parents had to force me to buy this hell-sink. I had a Vaio that lasted 5 years, why oh why did I not spend £1000+ on one again?!!! This pile of crap could warm my house for the whole of bleeding winter! The problems started early, it’s given me so much trouble that I can’t even remember everything that’s happened in it’s god forsaken lifetime. All that I’m left with is a fierce hatred of everything Acer related and a disposition to warn anyone against buying an Acer product before it’s too late. I’m sure that all the problems that I’ve experienced relate to the overheating problems of cheap laptops and I knew this before it. Well, that and the absolutely dismal build quality of it. There must be loads of stuff wrong with it by now. The fan has been changed twice, the screen has failed once for no fucking reason, the computer has steadily become the reincarnation of a slug [I have anti-virus protection and I regularly update it], the battery life has gone from crap to downright ridiculous, the keyboard is too bloody cramped…it’s just so shit it’s unbelievable. I hate it with venom. It turns off by itself for no reason, even when it’s not warm. Probably permanent damage, but I don’t understand how such a company can be legal. Their products are shite! NEVER EVER EVER EVER BUY AN ACER PRODUCT AGAIN!!! LESSON WELL AND FUCKING TRULY LEARNT! SPEND £1000+ FOR PEACE OF MIND…GENERALLY SPEAKING. Oh yeah, lost all my files after computer failed completely, all my friggin’ music, pictures, videos…everything!!!

  56. I used to love Acer, but I have realized how shitty my aspire one really is. First off, when I start it up, it boots and goes to the log in screen but then shuts off. It then goes to a screen that says it didn’t shut down correctly and then it “disk checks” which takes only about 4000 hours. If I don’t press a key or move the mouse around every minute or so, it will freeze and I will have to shut it down and do this again!!!!
    I am writing this from my iPod made by the great company apple because my acer is currently scanning for viruses. I ran a program to scan and it found over 200 problems, and macafee is taking for ever!(scanning for two hours and only about 4% done)!!!!
    So yes, I do agree when you say that aver is SHIT!!!!
    So yes, I agree

  57. I have an acer aspire sound dosen’t work but comes through hdmi, sometimes overheats, never buying acer again!

  58. I have an Acer Aspire 5670 With CD/DVD Burner… Where to begin…

    I, unlike most have given Acer the benefit of the doubt 3 times. Yes, I believed in them (or was really stoned. Who knows.) and sent my laptop back to be repaired. I was however, smart enough to remove the hdd, because I know what techs are like, being one myself. We wipe the hdd just for fun, not for any other reason.

    Same issues with mine, over and over. I started out with one machine that didn’t have a burner, (because it was a feature I didn’t need), as well as it being minus a few other features. But, their answer was to add other things that didn’t work, that I also didn’t need, to ease my angst. I guess there’s something about a screaming voice, that makes them add shit to shit, of the machine being fixed and returned it ASAP.

    Needless to say, 3rd machine, and I still have a useless pile of shit, or a really fancy door stop. Left arrow key hasn’t worked since it’s 2nd week with me, and it has this noise from time to time that when I first heard it, I actually ran from the house, because I thought they put a bomb in it, and sent it back. Has a rotary whir sound on the right side of the touch pad, and it has a habit of shutting down, whenever it feels like it. Sleep mode? I think this thing is freaking narcoleptic. This is what I get for being cheap, and not buying that damn MAC.

    I could go on, but for what? I just found a great place with other idiots that bought the same garbage I did. I’d even bet, someone here has one of my other laptops. That’s funny.

  59. Yes, keep the thread alive! Acer is crap. My friend Paul’s Acer blew up and needed a Mobo, my friend Julian’s Acer Blew up and died, my ex had one which also blew up! my old Acer blew up and they cheated me out of cash back! and now again, a new one of mine “failed”, all dead in last few years, actually almost all exactly when warranty ended? maybe Acer sends a virus when warranty expires to kill all Acer computers?. Acer! good when they last, they just don’t last and their tech’s do not have a clue, customer service does not exist! I contacted Acer and asked how to restore d2d, from partition. I was directed to a number of different addresses and eventually got a tech to answer, he said we are in the USA and dont handle service questions from other Acer countries! I said my enquiry started in Australia, and ended with you? I kept the emails! I told him I had the answer and would sell it to him so he might be able to help his USA customers. I had been duck shovelled like this when I applied for cash back and Acer put me through similar channels, never ever did get the cash back, but kept all the ducking and dodging emails, by clever Acer cheats. I have said it before and went stupid and did buy another Acer, I will never touch anything Acer for the rest of my life. I will never repair an Acer again in my entire life! I will refer broken Acer computers to the very broken Acer Company! Acer = Shit! Whirlpool forums here I come!

  60. its incredible how evryone has a problem with acer products but yet no one seems to do anything about it .. i got royaly coockdrped by acer when i tried to get in contact with the company it was impossible ..well all i can say is i never buy one again and yes i am a man of my word and yes i will make fun of anyone who owns one.

  61. Well….I firstly bought an Extensa 2304WLCi that lasted 6 years with no problems but….I’ve just bought a Aspire 5820TG with all the bells & whistles and I’m not impressed. The speed of boot up and say, putting an item into trash is THE SAME SPEED as the Extensa which had a 1.3GHz processor. This thing has a 2.66/2.93 “Turbo-boost” (cough, bullshit) processor and it is s.l.o.w. In addition I had to return it after a week or so as there was a flickering black screen (micro-second) during different applications. Was told it was when the main graphics card went to a smaller one on the motherboard due to battery use. (err, no it happened when powered in the wall socket). 12 days later, and no sense of urgency I assure you, got it back….and yeah you know, it’s doing it again. CD/DVD button works when it feels like it, cursor does its own thing, jams at times…what a gip ! But, yes I too bought on price. The moral of the story….DON’T BE A TIGHT ARSE (aussie english) and t.h.i.n.k. before you buy.

  62. All my Acers have been fine. Currently have a 5820TG TimelineX and it rocks. As fast as expected, excellent battery life and 500GB of storage. If they were as bad as you lot suggest, no one would buy them. Sales figures tell a different story.

  63. Acer is total crap! Firstly mine had a “faulty harddrive” after one year – Then teh power cord went and now a guy at my local computer shop tells me that someone has maliciously put a Bios password on my system that won’t let me access anything! But no-one in my house would do that! I don’t know wtf is going on! It has a year of warranty left but I am considering just letting it go and getting a mac book! Can anyone give me any ideas on how I can fix it? I just want to get my photos off….

  64. You might be able to hook up the hard drive to another computer using an external usb drive tray -for example a freecom mobile drive 2.5″ USB 2.0 or similar -i use one of these for all none software files, photos and documents as I’ve had problems with HD failures before (3 months manually searching for files 60,000 recovered about 20,000 or so lost -but included college work -fortunately after it had been marked.

    If connected to another computer the redunant Acer HD may show “access denied” -then use some propriety retrieval software such as File Scavenger to overcome this BIOS password should have no effect on a bare HD. hope that helps.

    I’ve got similar but happily rather smaller recovery to do (as I keep files on separate HDs and USB sticks) my Acer Laptop-36months old today went AFU probably a motherboard failure -perhaps from a screen driver failure -may even be a dry joint on M/board -but is it worth even trying to repair by board switching even trying to access the m/board is seriously difficult. i really hope ACER goes belly up in the present financial meltdown and hopefully takes some of the unhelpful dealerships with them -they deserve it -they are so worth it.

  65. Well, I’m relatively happy with my Acer 5552-3691 EXCEPT the keyboard truly is built to fall apart, as are all the completely flat keyed keyboards Acer has on laptops right now.

    The little plastic holders that keep the keys in place break off EASILY. Once again, this is the flat keyed keyboard.

    If you can and do type/write articles or even do homework I suggest a laptop with a better keyboard. I’m glancing over this moment at my sons Dell Vostro 1014 and am having fits of jealousy.

    Also, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 really isn’t suited to graphics/gaming.

  66. i brought a acer laptop 2x years ago and it worked great for about 6 months then one day one off the keys fell off then another and another well by this time there was like 5 keys had fell off then i brought a aspire netbook that froze alot now i have a spire netbook happy i was untill the chargers would burn out like what just happened 30 minutes ago grrr

  67. here’s the thing, check online complaints against Acer. I add to the growls; my aspire was nothing but trouble from day 1 and when it went kaput – a few months into the new replacement from the box store, the acer folks give absolutely the worst service.
    contact and problem solving is nil. My notebook overheated recharging, stopped and they have accused me of opening the computer up and also spilling liquid on it. Both absolutely false ,so they void any responsibility for their product… service reps are an endless series of firewalls preventing assistance and will not further your request for aid at all. Terrible product and product representation

  68. Acer is fine. The main problem is bloatware. You MUST remove all games and other “freebies”. And repartition the hard drive with EaseUS partition master Also you can make it last forever by painting the heat sink with chrome oxide BBQ heat paint(20% efficiency increase in heat dissipation), and making sure it is turned off before moving it, don’t carry it around while it is turned on, because if it is dropped or even bumped while the hard disk is turning,and it turns almost constantly while the computer is turned on, this could damage the hard disk and the hard drive heads, which would lead to intermittent operation,effectively destroying the usefulness of the hard drive. Also I have a piece of fine nylon screen fabric taped over the fan intake as a filter and set the computer on an earth grounded cookie pan(turned over).

  69. I agree so much. I closed the lid on for too long and now it’s saying I have missing files and I don’t even know what the hell is UEFI firmware settings and the autofix is not even working and it’s windows 8.1–I can’t take it. I heard that acer was bad but I didn’t know it was this much. I didn’t even ask for this laptop–I should tell my dad not to do surprise birthday gifts anymore. And definitely not buy anymore acer products.

  70. WHAT A POS TRY TO READ THIS out it skipping back a ways and typing in the wrong place there it goes again i’m not going to watch the screen the whole time i type this should have made sense but i’m working with an ACER mine is crap too. I cant type a single sentence its seems with

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