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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
The pros are in the comments of this review, here are the major cons
By M. Goldshteyn
This review applies to both the 721 and the 1551 (I own the 1551, but the cons mentioned are common to both)Vertical Viewing Angle----------------------One MAJOR shortcoming of these Acers (AO721/AO1551) is the vertical viewing angle. In fact if you look at a black, but still backlit screen, at the optimal viewing height/angle, you will see that the only part that is actually black is a horizontal stripe which is about 1/3rd of the vertical height of the screen. Above and below this stripe (i.e., the upper and lower thirds of the screen) are basically a dark gray. As you move your head up and down and/or tilt the screen, the image changes brightness dramatically in the vertical direction. Fortunatelly, the horizontal viewing angle is pretty good, but you almost have to tilt the thing perfectly to maximize vertical viewing and brightness falloff. I can see this happening with a 24-27" LCD screen at small viewing distances, but with a tiny laptop screen that measures approx. 5 5/8" vertically, this is plain embarassing for a 2010 run of LCD panels. In my opinion, one star should be taken off for Acer taking the cheap route with something as important as the screen. Fortunatelly, at 200 nits the screen is relatively bright at its maximum brightness, giving one some consolation to the non-uniforum vertical brightness issue.Cheap Plastic Hinge Arms that Hold the LCD Panel------------------------------------------------Not much to say here. The arms are hollow molded plastic and do not seem sturdy at all. As you open and close the panel, there is some give, and one constantly fears that these things will break in a year. A friend of mine has an older model Acer netbook whose swivel arms and mechanism feels much more sturdy. I'm going to take off a half-star here, for Acer saving a whopping $2 on something this important, and not using aluminum hinge arms, opting for hollow molded plastic instead.Bloatware---------Seriously Acer, how much bloatware needs to be installed on an Ultra-Portable? Couldn't you just supply all the crap on a cheap 4GB MiniSD memory card or something (since these things do not contain optical disc readers) and let the user choose whether or not they were interested in all the apps most users won't even use. I won't go into too many details here about each installed app, but let me just say that it took at least a good 45 mins to an hour to uninstall all the junk (involving at least a good handful of required restarts for good measure). Some of the device drivers were as much as nine months old, as well. I realize that nearly all laptops and netbooks come with some bloatware, but I think that the amount included on these is way over the top. Half a star off for the trouble of uninstalling the junk and replacing very outdated drivers.Inability to Adjust Brightness after Putting Laptop to Sleep------------------------------------------------------------The title says it all. Put the laptop to sleep, wake it up and you will no longer be able to adjust screen brightness until the next reboot. I won't subtract any more stars here, because this may be fixed with a future BIOS, but it is a royal pain in the neck for now.Update: Thanks to some workaround tips from on the MS forums along with some of my own experimentation with this particular model, I now have a workaround. The workaround is to set your "Choose what closing the lid does" action in the Control Panel / Power Options to "Do nothing." Unfortunately, that means that you will now have to manually put the display to sleep prior to closing the lid. This is a pain, but in my opinion it's a good idea in any case, because you will cause less vibration while the hard drive is still active (i.e., still spinning), putting the laptop to sleep prior to closing the lid. What this whole two step (Step 1. Press Fn-F4 to enter Sleep Mode and wait for completion / Step 2. Close the lid) process buys you is this:- Putting the laptop to sleep will still cause the "inability to adjust brightness" issue- However, you can get your brightness controls back, without a reboot, by following this procedure:"WITHOUT putting the laptop to sleep, close the lid and reopen it several seconds later."Since closing the lid is set to "Do Nothing" this seems to be a no-op (i.e., a pointless non-operation). However, this seems to re-enable the keyboard brightness control, although the cool pop-up that tells you the current brightness level will no longer pop-up until the next reboot. The keyboard brightness adjustment controls will once again be functional, though.I realize that this whole process is a royal pain in the rectum, so you may not want to go through the trouble unless you actually have a need to adjust screen brightness frequently after putting the laptop to sleep.Laptop Cannot be Used Comfortably on Lap Without a Lap Mat----------------------------------------------------------If you try to use it on your lap (e.g., on a plane, train, bus, toilet seat, whereveer you would normally use a laptop on your lap) it will rock back and forth when you use the lower portion of the laptop (i.e., the Acer Pad and the mouse buttons). I am talking about a significant amount of rock (picture a rocking chair) which basically makes it unusable, or perhaps usable if you want to be uncomfortable and destroy the hard drive in short order. I won't subtract stars, because I am uncertain if other similarly sized laptops share this problem. I would recommend a lap mat if you need to use your laptop on your lap. Targus make a good one (Lap Chill Mat).Laptop Takes a Long Time to Charge----------------------------------I am talking hours while in a sleep state here. No stars off, but it is a pain.UPDATE: Many more technical details are available in the comments section below this review.UPDATE 2: In retrospect, after upgrading the HD on the unit and looking at the crap other manufactures have put out in recent weeks, I have decided that I may have been a little harsh in giving this product three stars, so I've bumped my rating up to four stars.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Long term review with updates
By PJ
6 MONTH UPDATE: Batteries are available at acer site.3 MONTH UPDATE: Before you purchase this, please be aware that I have unsuccessfully located a manufacturer that sells replacement batteries for the Acer 1551.2 MONTH UPDATE: A couple complaints to add to my original review: 1) I would like the battery to recharge a bit quicker than it currently does. Also, while the overall noise from the laptop is low, fan noise is not an issue, I am a bit bothered by the high frequency noise coming from the motherboard. It's a common problem for laptops, especially ones without good sound insulating material (plastic vs aluminium). Unlike say Apple Macbooks which use aluminium bodies, and do well to dampen motherboard noises. It's highly likely that older laptop users wont hear the high frequency noise as our ears tend to lose the ability to hear higher frequencies as we age. But as soon as I focus on the noise, I cant help but notice it. This is only an issue in very quiet rooms.I'm a student who travels with his laptop daily. These are my impressions after a few weeks of heavy use:Strengths:- Bright screen, I generally have brightness set below 50%- Fast: the dual core AMD processor with ATI graphics is light years ahead of netbooks and comparable to full-sized laptops.- Good amount of ram 4GB, and a nice large hard drive - 320 GB- The screen is big enough to have 2 windows open side by side but small enough to be highly portable- 3 USB ports- good key resistance, relatively quiet keyboard- excellent design: love the matte, soft plastic lid (not a fingerprint magnet) screen bezel isn't too glossy, slim and relatively lightweight - as portable as my dell mini 9- i particularly love this feature: the screen can be adjusted to be nearly parallel with the keyboard. Why is this important? Well you can place the laptop on your lap and not have to contort your body to see the screen.- HDMI out: As everyone has stated, this laptop has no trouble playing 720p HD videos. I routinely use HDMI to play HD videos to my 32in LCD. Absolutely no difference between this and my custom PC which had a 2.8Ghz i5 and ATI Radeon HD 5870 (a $400 Graphics card)"Weaknesses". I use the term loosely because most of these weaknesses are simply tradeoffs for a strength or the weakness is very minor (almost nitpicky) compared to the strengths I've listed:- Battery. Yeah, its not going to get 6 hours of use. I averaged 3.5-4 hours with occasional WIFI on and brightness ~ %40. But keep in mind that this is a very fast laptop with good specs. You're making a tradeoff to be able to play HD videos or have quick multitasking.- Vertical viewing angle. The relatively small vertical viewing angle is outweighed by the ability to adjust the vertical angle so much by adjusting the screen (almost flat/parallel with the keyboard)- the default settings for gamma and contrast are not quite optimal. It's a bit too high and gives a slightly washed out view. Easily adjustable using ATI's control center.- Software: First thing you'll want to do is uninstall unnecessary software and trial-based software.- No restoration CDs: Again this isn't really a complaint, I dont use CDs/DVDs anymore when installing operating systems. One good solution that I have already tried is using Windows 7's built in backup software. Plug in a usb hard drive and create a restore IMAGE of your computer. You'll still need to create a recovery disc if you dont already have a Windows 7 install DVD on a USB stick. But dont bother paying $20 for Acer to mail you a restoration CD. Creating a backup image is quicker (i restored my hard drive within 15 minutes and already removed the bloatware before creating the image)- The multitouch feature on the trackpad is worthless. No excuses here. it simply sucks. I hope its merely a software issue that updated drivers can address. I have disabled multitouch on mine. I don't miss it, especially since I have a really nice mouse that I keep in my backpack. Scroll wheels on mice are far better than multitouch in my opinion.Final conclusion: I am a happy customer. I prefer the extra processing power over battery life since power outlets are so readily available. The 11.6 size seems to be a sweet spot for ultraportability, coupled with 4 GB ram, 320 HD, and dual core AMD, it feels like a fully powered laptop in a small body.Price wise you'll want to compare this $550 laptop with others of similar price (there are many many options). You'll notice that you can get a larger laptop with a bigger screen for the same price. It does seem expensive at first glance. But you do get more RAM than you ever need and a big hard drive for a laptop. Coupled with discrete graphics and a dual core processor. Most other laptops use the new i3 or i5 which have integrated graphics and do not play HD videos as well. The price premium is also related to this laptop's slim form factor. The irony is smaller gadgets sometimes cost more than comparable, but larger ones.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Better and better with each use
By Logan5
I did a lot of research and comparisons to other devices out there.Cost wise this out performs others of the same price range with some of it's unique features.It is a netbook but it has a dual core processor. Not as powerful as most dual core desktops but each is 1.5 ghz which is pretty nice. It also has a built in video card for extra performance.I never had a laptop before and was reluctant to buy, not having a great need for one. This has really surprised me. At first, I thought it was okay, but the more I use it the more I like it. Also, talking to people with netbooks and laptops, this out performs any netbook I've seen and can do everything a laptop can and even outperforms a good number of laptops out there.The reason for it, is the dual core processors, a real video card instead of an 'onboard' card, and 4 gigs of ram, and a 5 1/2 hour battery. I can actually play call of duty modern warfare 2 with good frame rates (720x480 works best) and starcraft 2 (1366x768). Some other really interesting features are the HDMI cable. I hooked this up to our big screen TVs and was amazed at the quality and some of the neat things you can do with that. You can use Office programs, surf the net, or play a game on there, very nice!Overall, for something that fits into backpacks, and duffle bags easily, this is quite zippy. It can do any of the business work I need with ease, and it can play any of the cutting edge games that are out there as well. It's a good balance with features to make it all work.
See all 11 customer reviews...
Very disappointing laptop.
