Acer Aspire 5536 15.6-inch Laptop (AMD Athlon X2 QL-64 2.1 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, Vista Home Premium)

EXCELLENT COMPUTER FOR THE PRICE. I BOUGHT THIS FOR MY STUDENT SON WHO HAD PREVIOUSLY HAD A COMPUTER THAT COST TWICE AS MUCH AND THIS IS JUST AS GOOD, IF NOT BETTER. WOULD DEFINITELY RECOMMEND IT. *****

I bought the Acer 5536 laptop just before Christmas 2009. It's the first laptop that I have bought and I was just looking for something that had the basics in terms of word processing and spreadsheets and would allow me to surf the net. What I wasn't expecting was to pay as little as under £400 (I notice the price has gone back up now) for a top spec laptop. I'm not a techno geek, but this lap does everything I want it to do ... and more ... and it does it damned fast!! It was really easy to set up ... I was up and running within the hour. It also doesn't heat up too much and won't burn a hole in your lap. It comes with Vista (which I believe you can upgrade to Windows 7 if you want) and a trial Windows Office (student edition ... which you can buy after 60 days). If has a pretty good screen and you can watch DVDs pretty well ... but remember that it is only a 15.6 inch true widescreen display. It has a full size keyboard which make it easy to use (I say this because I've been taking this to work for the last 2 months, but now I have a works laptop with a conventional smaller laptop keyboard ... and my hands just can't fit on to the key board!!) On the down side, the Acer comes with a lot of Acer spec software ... which is a bit annoying. The Acer media software being the most annoying to use ... but this is easily removed. The battery life is only 2 hours. And finally, the mouse pad is EXTREMELY sensative (buy a USB mouse and disable the mouse pad). Oh, it's also not the lightest laptop ... but I can't complain considering what I paid for it!!!Acer Aspire 5536 15.6-inch Laptop (AMD Athlon X2 QL-64 2.1 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, Vista Home Premium)

My Acer Aspire 5536 was bought at just the right time as the price was very competitive. It arrived very quickly to my address in France (about 4 days) and was well packed. Simply a case of switching on. It does everything asked of it and is exactly as specified. Even at a higher price this laptop should be seriously considered. Its 500 GB HDD is just what I need to store and review my thousands of newly scanned images and the HD screen gives superb reproduction of both still images and films. I can watch films either from DVD or using a flash drive with one of the USB sockets - smooth and effortless and with headphones, the sound is quite dramatic. Although it looks quite big, it fits into my existing laptop bag perfectly. Wi-fi signal picked up easily from my PC and from the local fast food restaurant although to be honest I stayed in the car park outside to avoid buying a coffee! No hesitation in recommending.

East to order, delivered promptly and no problems with the item. It is being used by complete novices and they are getting to grips with it. Has the facilities they need and more so good value for money.

I bought my machine because it was compact and I actually liked the keyboard. Now I have had the machine for about 3 months I get really frustrated that the battery lasts about 1 hour as stated in previous reviews. I had a 386 laptop in the '90's that had better battery life. I hope the charge lasts long enough for me to write this 'review'. The price seems to have gone up quite a bit so take my advice and get a machine from a company that knows how to make PC's. I really wasted money here.

Laptop was bought as Christmas present for my son and he loved it. This high spec laptop was bargain. Was pleasantly surprised by how quickly product arrived had expected it to take longer with Christmas post but arrived within few days. Would definitely advise others to purchase this laptop, does everything you would want a laptop to do and quickly.

I a struggling to write a review for this awful machine because thhe keyboard is so very very bad. The battery life is just over 1 hour ! Yes, 1 hour ! And the machine wasn't configured correctly, Acer due to take it back shortly theen I will sell it as quickly as possiblee. If you've ever owned a good laptop then you will know what a pile this laptop is. Dolby 5.1 surround sound too - I ask you ! How ridiculous to think that such a thing would work on a tinny laptop speaker, it does nothing but make the sound unitelligible. Hopeless. I will never give so much weight in my decision making process to reviews from the likes of the popular PC magazines again.

very impressed with the laptop and the facilities it offers. Perfect for what I require it to do.

Looks, good, has fantastic reviews but the one I bought my daughter for her joint Xmas and Birthday developed a harddrive fault. This was especially hard for her as she has an illness that confines her to the house at the momment. I gave her the task of copying all our home videos to the new laptop and after 3 days of hard work she was rewarded with a PC that will not boot up, so it seems we have lost all videos. Acer are picking up the laptop tomorrow. I will ask them to try and recover the data, but I don't hold much hope. Will let you know outcome.

I bought this as a result of the "Best in Class" award in PC Pro Magazine: it won "Best Value Laptop". An old Toshiba had been knocked out of action and I needed a replacement. It's reasonably fast for the sort of mobile work I have to do, mostly WP and spreadsheets, occasionally presentations with PowerPoint. However, crammed though it is with games and "utilities" I will never use, a few corners have been cut. For instance, no rescue disc has been provided; a purchaser is told to make one on a DVD. I have yet to get this to work, after several tries. It got stuck part-way through and won't finish the job. I probably would have bought it with Windows 7 instead of Vista if the choice had been available, but as the bump-up in VAT comes in a few days, I thought it was better to get the machine now, rather than wait. Battery life is reasonable, though whether this would stretch to watching a long DVD is open to question. The sound is particularly good. The WiFi isn't as sensitive as the previous laptop's was. The keyboard is fine, with a good positive action. The trackpad can be annoying, with its division into two sections. All in all a good, inexpensive buy. See the PC Pro A-List review; I agree with most of what it says.