Acer Aspire 5738Z (15.6-inch LED, Intel Pentium Dual Core, 2.0 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 160 GB, DVD-RW, Vista Home Premium, Dolby Sound, WiFi)

IN SPECIFICATION STATES THAT HAS 160MB HD, BUT THE ACCTUAL HD IS 140GB AND THEN THE O/S AND DIFFERENT PROGRAMMES USE ANOTHER 20GB SO THE ACTUALL WORKING HD IS 120 GB.

Nicely finished, and the keyboard and pointer are pleasant to use. I bought two of these on behalf of an organisation I volunteer for, and will probably get one for myself when my present laptop breaks.

We have had this excellent laptop for over a month and just love it. The bright and clear screen and soft touch keys are great although the touch pad can become over sensitive with use. At the price we payed, this is a fantastic value machine and would not hesitate to buy another.

As a delighted Asus and Compaq laptop owner running XP Pro O/Systems, I was hesitant about buying an Acer but the specification represented such good value I made the decision 6 weeks ago to buy ( from Amazon of course ). Part of the deal included free upgrade to Windows 7 (apart from postal costs) and trial M/Soft Office and McAfee AV. When the trial period ends I intend to install 7. Straight out of the box it was a breeze to load all the inbuilt software and register the product with Acer and Windows ( Vista ) and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised just how stable and fast the laptop is. I use Firefox and browsing the net is superb. Despite all the bad press that Vista has had, it has never failed or crashed unexpectedly. It also fires up very quickly and enables wifi browsing within a minute or two. Battery life is long so it's quite normal to get around 3 hours or more before recharging. Playing DVD's is particularly enjoyable and the inbuilt sound system makes it un necessary to add external speakers for most of the time. The large screen is very clear and bright. It doesn't have a web cam or Bluetooth but these have been added easily to complete the specification. The keyboard is OK but the letter R sometimes needs a second prod to work and one of the speaker buttons at the top of the keyboard needs more pressure than the other but these are minor quibbles. My only major concern relates to the service from Acer themselves. They seem to be incapable of understanding English and you have to keep hammering away at them to get a point home. For example, the laptop has the ability to create back up CD / DVD's of the unit which is desirable if for any reason you suffer a major breakdown and have to reinstall the laptop as from the factory. You get prompts from the screen to do this when firing up the system until it's done. Unfortunately, the process failed to complete in my case ( only burnt 1 out of the 2 DVD's ) so I had to contact Acer UK Customer Service using their on line service. Firstly, they kept claiming that they had no record of my machine or serial number (despite me sending them photos of the labels from beneath the laptop) and had no record of my Customer I/D that was created by THEM when I first commissioned the laptop on day 1. Over 5 weeks, I wrote to them 6 times. They kept replying with the same standard phrases that was so annoying - clearly, they were working from a tick sheet hoping that I would get tired of this game and give up. I wanted them to send me a set of Factory discs of my machine that I could keep for my use but they said I had to keep repeating the flawed process of burning the discs that wasn't working. Also, I was repeatedly asked to return the machine for repair which was a needless exercise as the laptop was working fine. Eventually, they agreed with me to have a set of discs posted to me ( I'm still waiting by the way ) but insisted on me providing my address and phone number details for a 3rd time ( despite this being provided to Acer twice before ). This service has somewhat clouded my favourable impressions of Acer but I am still very pleased with the laptop and would recommend it to anyone. But beware of the customer service. Peter

A great first laptop if you like the widescreen which does take a bit of getting used to. Screen viewing angles are the least impressive aspect; keyboard is spacious but flat keys could be better. Touchpad is very useable. Built in speakers are acceptable for having music on in background, as long as you are not listening intently. Performance is good; the data transfer speeds of the USB2.0, the DVD player and WiFi are impressive, and make a fantastic difference compared to my 3yo Mesh desktop. It does everything expected and more. Only niggle: bring back printed instruction books.

I second the complint about the dodgy keybord. Notice tht this doesn't make much sense? - It's the keyboard. part from that it's great.

We bought this as a middle of the road laptop for home use by a student. For the price it does the job well. The only (very minor) complaint is that it's a bit fiddly to open - the locking catch isn't where you expect it to be.

Good overall laptop. Though, the build quality is not that of Sony or Lenovo.

this was for my sons birthday as he is now at the age where he does alot of work on the computer. its even good for a moderate user, but if you are very advanced then maybe the next model up would be a better idea witht he added extras, but this is idela for those who just want a model that does what you need it to do.

Better than expected. Many reservations I had of my earlier ACER have been corrected. Especially impressed with the screen for watching video and the keyboard is much easier to type on now that the keys are flat, plus the added convenience of a number pad.