Questions before buying an Acer?!

Okay I have been researching laptops for about 3 weeks now. I am currently typing on a Sony Vaio FZ150ebc that i purchased for 1450 from Costco. I thought this was going to be my laptop for college but i thought to myself that there is no way I am spending that much money on a laptop. I am soon going to return it. I have heard very good things from acer. The reviews are above average for a budget brand.

I am going to be using this laptop for college. I already have a custom built desktop that handles all of my games so i will not be playing any games on it. However I do not want some slow piece of junk that will last me a year.

Here are the two Acers I have been looking to purchase.
Candidate 1:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Acer-Aspire-15-4-Widescreen-Notebook-PC-5630-6288/sem/rpsm/oid/185213/catOid/-12963/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

Candidate 2:
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11223705&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|56670|62881&N=4020108&Mo=4&pos=3&No=3&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=62881&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10590-Cat56670&topnav=

I really am mixed on my decision. The circuit city laptop is I think a by far a better laptop at about 80 dollars more. But the Costco one also looks good because of the 90 day satisfaction guaranteed return policy. Circuit City is 14 days and if it is not defective then you have to pay a 15% restocking fee which blows.

Furthermore, do Acer Laptops come with recovery discs? Because the first thing i want to do when i get it is reformat it to wipe all the crap software off of the machine. I know some brands have a partition set where you can burn your own recovery disc.

I have some more questions but I'll let you guys give me some much appreciated feedback before I ask anything else.

So which one is better and a better value? And do they come with some sort of recovery disc?

Thanks.

 

Definitely go for candidate 1. Core 2 is by far a better processor. The Turion is probably going make the laptop feel like "some slow piece of junk". Besides, you get 2GB of RAM and 160GB hard drive. All those things make the upgrade worth it.

No, Acer laptops do not come with recovery disks. However, they do have amazing software to burn recovery DVDs. On my 5920G, I do not have any crap software that badly needs me to do a clean reinstall.

Good luck!

 

I would recommend you to buy the one from Circuit City. It has 2G of ram which I would strongly recommend for Windows Vista. And I think it is also faster then the one from Costco. Though I think the one from Costco has a better graphics card. What is your budget range?

 

My budget range really is no more than 1100 including tax. This is just a computer to use internet, office, research, and occasional media. So given that I don't see myself taking complete advantage of something over 1000 dollars. I really wanted to kind of stay away from 15.4 inch screens and focus more on the 14 inch screens just for mobility. The Acer laptops look a little bulky too. But I agree that one from circuit city looks almost too good to pass up for my uses.

If i use the erecovery software to burn my own discs and then when i reformat will the preloaded software be on there like it was when i bought it?

 

Yes, but in my opinion Acer includes fantastic softwares. There is rarely any junk.

 

Agreed...the only things that I would even consider somewhat junk that was installed on my Acer would be Norton. XP

 

I for sure want to get rid of Norton. That is the absolute devil software! Honestly I would rather reformat to be safe rather trying to uninstall that given that i heard it is extremely hard to get all traces of that off of your machine!

 

In my personal experience in using Acer laptops, Norton Antivirus is NOT installed by default. There is an icon on your desktop that when you double-click on it it will ask you if you want to install Norton Antivirus or not.

 

Well I have heard that it is extremely hard to uninstall and if you dont get all of it, it will drastically affect your system performance.

 

Well, you can try it out yourself and decide. So far, I've no problems. I uninstall Norton successfully and my notebook flies.

 

Norton came installed on my 5920 as well but that was the only software I uninstalled apart from the Microsoft Office trial and Microsoftt works (I only did this because I installed a full copy of office).
If you do a search for norton uninstaller you will find a piece of software on the symantec site that will completely wipe all traces of their software off the machine.
Infact I did the search for you and here it is.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

 

I read the Acer sticky of build quality thread now im a little wary because of all of the Acer problems surfaced in that thread.......

 

Why thankyou!

 

Norton is a Virus