Acer Aspire AS14108414 11.6Inch Sapphire Blue Laptop 6

AS1410 a Cooler, Bigger, Faster Netbook
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
My oldest wanted a netbook. The AS1410 is not technically a netbook. Because of it’s 11.6″ screen, celeron processor, and 2g of RAM it is considered a notebook and comes loaded with Windows 7 Premium instead of Windows 7 Starter. Still in stature and price, for most of us, this is a netbook.

We were concerned with video playback based on reviews and decided to wait for the N450 netbooks to arrive. When the N450s hit the stores, we had a chance to compare an AO532h side by side with the AS1410. We had been looking at the N450 based netbooks and had decided that size and performance were fine for our use. We demo’d Netflix and found video playback was very good — contrary to some reviews. In our side by side test, we played a HD video that was on each computer. Both machines ran HD just fine with the AS1410 finishing the clip a few seconds before the AO532h. Big difference was in the amount of heat generated. After ten minutes of playing the video, the AO532h was very hot whereas the AS1410 was still quite cool. That alone settled things for me (with electronics, heat kills), but there are a lot of areas where the AS1410 bests the new netbooks…

Product: AS1410 / AO532h

Price: $400 / $300

WEI: 3.2 / 2.1

Disk: 250g / 160g

Ram: 2g / 1g

OS: W7 Premium x64 / W7 Starter x32

Video: Better / Good

Keyboard: Good / Good

Touchpad: Better (two buttons, smooth) / Good (one button, textured)

Screen: 11.6 LED / 10.1 LED

Runtime (claimed): 6hr / 8hr

Camera/Mic: Yes / Yes

HDMI: Yes / No

Warranty: 2yr / 1yr

If you can live with the slightly higher price and slightly shorter battery life, the AS1410 is a terrific all day long computer. We have averaged 7 hours per charge in normal use (letting it sleep when we were not not in use). If you carry a planner all day at work or take notes at school, this may be the best mobile solution for you.

Great little notebook
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This “little”notebook is what I expected it be. Small and convenient it’s great for my lighter work. My oldest son seems to enjoy it even more, He takes it everywhere he can. The battery feels like it last forever. I just plug it up before going to bed. It has plenty of storage space,ram and processor for everyday computing and playing.

Good laptop but . . .
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
The laptop is exactly what my wife wanted. The screen is crisp and bright, and the slightly smaller keyboard is not an issue for her since she also has smaller hands. I find it comfortable to use for casual browsing, but haven’t done any significant typing to judge.

We did have one problem with the laptop. About 9 days after receiving the laptop, it died. No POST screen. The power LED would turn on then nothing. Sent it in for warranty and about 10 days later got it back. Acer said it had faulty memory and replaced it. After twenty minutes of use, it started to have odd errors, so out of suspicion I ran memtest on the laptop. The warranty center replaced the bad memory with more bad memory. Acer asked that I send it right back for another round of warranty repair. Out of the first month of ownership, Acer wanted the laptop for another 10 days for a total of 20 days, so I asked them to just ship me the replacement memory and I would happily send them back the faulty memory they had just sent me since I didn’t want my wife’s Christmas gift to be in the shop on Christmas day. I would go out and buy her some memory to hold her over until it arrived. Nope. Not in their procedure and there is no one at their customer service department who even cares about Acer’s reputation enough to take care of a customer.

I went out and bought her some quality memory modules and have had no issues since. The laptop ended up costing me a little bit more in total, but at least the extra cost is in better components.

Good Laptop-Netbook hybrid
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is a very good buy for $300. Light weight with extended battery power and a centrino processor, this beats all atom based netbooks. Solid design and picture quality. I like the Keyboard design a lot better than Dell’s.

My adapter died within 2 months and Acer replaced it with a 65W adapter within a week. just taking away a star for that hassle. 5 Stars for the product, price and customer service.

great little computer
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I got this computer in December 2009 and I love it! It’s definitely no speed demon but its fast enough for the things I want to do. The screen is big enough too, without being too big. Its very thin and light so it fits easily in my bag and weighs so little I forget its in there (which is dangerous when I put my bag down too hard!) The silly trackpad gestures are annoying when they get in the way, which is often, and useless anyway, but they are easy to disable so its not a drawback. I wish the trackpad supported two finger scrolling like my old Asus and like my girlfriend’s Mack Book, but it doesn’t. Oh well.

The keyboard takes some getting used to – the old Acer keyboards were better. The flat tops make it easy to accidentally push two keys at the same time, and they are very close together. I think Acer was trying to emulate the look of the Macintosh keyboard, but didn’t get it quite right. It is close enough though after you spend some time getting used to it it works fine. They keyboard layout is unchanged from prior versions, and it is a good layout. They keys are labeled for both typical US-English usage and for International, so if you need to enable Alt-Gr key and the the Euro symbol that appears on the 5 key you just need to add the “United States-International” keyboard layout in the Regions and Languages section of the Control Panel. I had to search around for a while before I found out just how easy it was.

There are some mysterious function key labels, like the circle with a check mark in it and the pizza pie, I still haven’t figured out what they do yet. The rest are standard.

There is an HDMI port on this computer and I plugged it in to my friend’s HD television and I was pretty happy with the results! The TV picked up the signal immediately and within short order I was able to use Skype with my friend on the television set in HUGE form. It was a bit geeky but still cool. It can also be used to watch netflix movies in streaming format or youtube videos too. When I first plugged in the tv, something called the Intel TV Wizard appeared and tried to help configure the display. It only kind of worked and froze a couple of times, so I would be careful using it. I restarted my computer and set the TV up as an external display and this worked much better. Maybe there is an update for the Intel wizard, I haven’t looked for it yet because I was planning to upgrade to Windows 7.

The built-in SD card slot can be used for Windows Vista or Windows 7 ReadyBoost feature. It will tell you that the card is not suitable for ReadyBoost the first time you stick it in there, so make sure you test it again. If its a fast enough SD card (I tried Class 4 or above) it will work properly on the second test. I didn’t really notice much of a speed increase though, but it probably does make my programs launch a little bit faster.

Acer did a good job by not including too much bloat ware in their default installation. I removed all of the games and some of the trial versions of office programs, but I kept McAfee and I will remove it when the trial period is up. McAfee checks for updates way too often, though, probably at least 4 times per day, and when it is installing the update the whole computer bogs down dramatically. I changed the settings so it has to ask me before it installs the update, so it doesn’t interrupt me if I’m doing something time-sensitive. Kind of annoying and I will not be sad to see it go when the trial period is up. I plan to replace it with Avast Home.

I wasn’t too impressed with the speed under Windows Vista, though it wasn’t too slow it just didn’t feel snappy, I am much happier now that I installed the free Windows 7 upgrade from Acer. It took a good two or three weeks to arrive after I ordered it, but that was not unreasonable. Its a bit tricky to install the upgrade though since this notebook computer does not come with a dvd drive – you will definitely need to borrow an external dvd drive for the upgrade unless you are brave, patient, and have good technology skillz. (I have the skills and patience but I’m not brave enough to risk messing up my new laptop just yet.)

The upgrade process was nearly flawless – my two comments are:

1) The upgrade wizard is too general – I was upgrading from Vista but the wizard assumed that I needed to use the Windows Easy Transfer Wizard to upgrade, which is not correct. I did not object to it using the Easy Transfer Wizard to back up my documents and settings, but it should not have asked me to restore them since Windows 7 upgrades from Vista in-place so my documents settings were preserved automatically. If you are upgrading from XP, however, you will definitely need to restore this information.

2) After the upgrade my built-in microphone does not work any more. It still appears in the device manager and all the reports suggest that it is correctly installed and configured, but the sound level is too quiet to use it with Skype any more. It had been working perfectly with Vista just before the upgrade, so I am disappointed by this. If you shout really loud you can be heard, so I know its kind of sort of working, but its just not usable.

I will post a follow up comment if I figure out the microphone issue.

Cheers!

Excellent product!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The little computer is really powerfull netbook. The product has a good size and excellent cpu… And de features like mouse movements and cooler sistem bring to you a confortable work time. Also, if you purchase the computer before January 31st, you can get a free upgrade to windows 7 from ACER. Another nice feature is, of course, the small price!

Good Product – but Terrible Technical Support
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is a handy little computer. Bigger than a netbook, but smaller than a typical laptop.

Pros:

- Lightweight, very portable

- Superb Battery Life

- Great screen for watching movies (a bit of reflection but not too bad)

- Very comfortable keyboard, full size

- Cheap ($449), but you get what you pay for…good and bad

Cons:

- Hard to find a Sleeve / Protector that fits properly. The standard sizes for sleeves are 9-10 inches, 13-15 inches, etc. This computer is 11.6 inches — falls right in the middle.

- Pre-loaded with TOO MUCH BLOATWARE. I spent a lot of time the first few weeks uninstalling all this junk. But still, it leaves some files and icons and shortcuts installed which have to be manually removed.

- Performance is good but could be better. It seems to degrade over time. It’s fine for watching movies, Hulu, net surfing, playing basic games. I suspect that the lower performance is a residual effect of the pre-installed bloatware and services that startup in default.

- Terrible customer service. Almost non-existent. Really bad. Impossible to escalate or get a direct answer.

Boring Details of my Windows 7 Upgrade and Customer Service:

I purchased this in Aug 2009, before Windows 7 was released, so it included a “free” upgrade to Windows 7 to be mailed at a later date. I called and inquired if this would be available in USB format because the laptop does not come with an optical (CD/DVD) drive. They said no problem.

Months later, the Windows 7 install arrived in the mail — in CD format. I called the 3rd party distributor (Mentor Media) who did not return my calls. So I called Acer Tech support based in India. They were no help at all — told me I was required to buy an optical drive in order to install it. They missed the point completely – which was that Acer said it would be available in USB format — else I might not have bought this computer.

I registered my computer after I bought it – a prompt on startup walks you through this process. When I called customer support, they claimed they could not help me because I had not registered my computer. So I let them re-register me (takes 30 minutes over the phone). Then they told me they could not help me further, even though I spent that time registering. 30 minutes later…very frustrating.

Their tech support has no escalation procedures – they claim there is no supervisor or manager to speak with. I asked if I could have the number to the Corporate Customer Relations or similar corporate department. They claim that the “only department is technical at Acer”. Huh???

An hour later – and I’m still in the same position. Just a waste of my time and their time. I just hope that something serious (hard drive crash, OS hung, etc) doesn’t happen to this computer because I could only imagine how painful it will be to go through their customer service.

Next time, I’ll splurge and get a MacBook — they are pricey, but they are honest, have good customer support, sound products, and don’t come with all that bloatware.