Kunal and me Cyntax were looking for cheap laptops. He had killed his desktop with all the overclocking and CS kills. My Thinkpad finally died on me after 4 years of painful struggle. And since we dont have a lot of money, we were looking for cheap machines that would work for next year or so. After some bit of research, we settled on Acer 5738. It cost us about INR 32 000 each. Bought two machines from Nehru Place.
Very very happy with the purchase. Its got 4 gigs of RAM. More than enough to run CS and Q3. And obviously it can run *other* software. The keypad is awesome. As good as Macbook’s. Added feature is the Numpad. Helps while working with spreadsheets. Has 4 USB ports. I can now connect my pendrive, external hard drive and a mouse at the same time. Then the sound quality is super awesome. Has got 8 channel output. Coupled with my Sennheiser (love their logo) earplugs, its awesomeness. Right now I am listening to Sweet Home Alabama.
So, coming back to Acer, as life has it, my machine had some manufacturing defect. I was told to contact Acer support call center. The staff their was knowledgeable, courteous and was able to give a solution quickly. I was asked to visit the Acer service center to get the part replaced. Even at this franchised service center, staff understood the problem fast. They gave me a deadline and delivered by that date. In fact I picked the machine after business hours and they dint mind that at all. They dint create any fuss and bent to help me with the machine.
This is a typical case where I had not expected a brand to perform and it surprised me with its performance, customer service, willingness to understand a customer’s view point, deadlines and host of other things.
I would recommend Acer to anyone any given day. Thumbs Up guys. Other companies ought to learn from Acer.