I'm writing this on an Acer Aspire AM5100 quad-core using Windows 7 Ultimate, and it's just fine, thanks. But after I started testing Windows 7 back at the beginning of the year, I got thinking about what to do in case something went terribly wrong, so after months of trying to decide, I bought another Acer this August for a back-up, running Vista Home Premium (ugh!) and therein lies a tale. A rather long, sad tale, as it is developing.
The new one, an Acer dual-core, 64-bit desktop, running Vista Home Premium was bought new on August 12th. Everything went along as nicely as anything ever does with a Vista operating system, until September 13th. When I tried to start it up that morning, it did not boot, and it did not try to show any recovery information. The Acer 19-inch LCD flatscreen monitor wouldn't do anything but barely flicker faintly and too briefly to make sense of it. The three Acer Recovery DVDs that they encourage us to make during first use were then tried, but nothing happened with any of that either - because it wasn't booting into anything which could use those. Thirty days out of its box, and dead.
I took it back to the shop where it came from, and the man who runs that, and who has done other excellent work for me on other computers had a look at it, and tested the monitor as well, and the results were not good. He says the monitor is shot, and so is the hard-drive of the computer. After almost a month there, I am now told that not only is the hard-drive of the computer shot, but so is the motherboard of it. Evidently, it was the motherboard's problem(s) which killed the hard-drive. Nobody knows what killed the monitor that was attached to all that at the time. It has a three-year warranty, with one year still to go. The computer itself has most of its own one-year warranty still valid.
The computer is now packed up again in its original box, and waiting for the courier to come for it tomorrow, and return it to Acer's ace repairmen. I'm not being asked to pay for its trip. So why am I not happy? Is that what you may be wondering? May I tell you?
I'm not happy because: This Acer Aspire X3200 cost me $695.00 plus $195.00 for pre-delivery servicing including initializing, updating security patches, etc., etc., etc., and then there's $106.80 for federal and provincial taxes, for a total of $996.80 for 31 days use. Needless to say, $32.15 per day is just a little too much to pay for a computer with a newly designed and seemingly unproven hard-drive, and a motherboard that evidently wasn't up to the task of connecting and operating all that other hardware. My point is that Acer seems to be woefully lacking in Quality Control - to the point where you'd have trouble convincing me that they can even spell those words.
But your other Acer, the one you are using now, works OK, doesn't it? Yes, it does, but that's no thanks to Acer. When this one was about five months old, its main CPU fan began making ugly growling noises. I shut it down, opened it up, and checked it myself during a short test run with the cover open. It was vibrating excessively, and acting as if it was running with dry bearings - which it was. I removed it, soaked it with the only clean oil I had here - number 10-40 motor oil meant for the car - then dried off the excess, and put it back together again. Its label said it had a new kind of magnetic suspension bearing that did not require lubrication. Hah! like hell it didn't need lubrication. Once thoroughly lubricated with good quality heavy-duty oil, it has been running properly ever since. But again I have to stress that this wasn't Acer's doing - I fixed their problem for them myself.
So out of two Acer computers, both new within the past year, two out of two of them have had problems. One relatively minor, the other about as major as it could ever get, requiring essentially a new computer. So keep all this in mind when you go shopping for a new computer. Sure, stuff happens. But it doesn't usually happen this often and to the same guy. This has to be more than just blind coincidence, or 'bad luck'. And you know what I'm thinking, don't you?
You already know my story. I bought a medion netbook, the battery failed after one day. It was replaced with one where XP didn't behave properly. Price tag btw was some 350 Euros. I got a tantrum, learned a few friendly (!!) Spanish words, and bought a MacBook for 1000 Euros, plus an iPod touch on which I'm typing all this (!!!), and I'm a happy man now. I never regretted going for quality and paying for it.
ReplyDeleteThis will sound like an excuse, but I bought that latest PC not because I really needed the damned thing but because the fellow who has been servicing my computers for the past few years was not enjoying this latest recession, and could use more business.
ReplyDeleteThis all began as a nice gesture towards a friend who has done me a few unexpected favours in the past.
Instead of it being a pleasant experience for both of us, it's turned out to be a huge pain in the ass for everyone concerned. My friend the computer expert is feeling badly about it, and so am I and the only people who really benefitted from it are those guys who built this mess in the first place - the very last guys on this planet that ought to be rewarded for that kind of result.
My next computer, assuming I buy one, will be the result of a lot more research, and it won't be any bargain model promising something it can't deliver. I already have a fairly good idea what brand it will be. I'm thinking HP. I've tried out their Touchscreen model at a nearby store, and I think it's just wonderful.
As for quality, I should have remembered what my first father-in-law once told me: "Buy the best you can afford, because the best is none too good." He wasn't always able to do that himself, but his advice makes a lot of sense. We get what we pay for. And sometimes, we pay more in the end for the cheap stuff than we would have for the better quality item.
I wasn't thinking about that at the time, but I should have been.
I've resisted the urge to deliver this defective PC to its repair depot, because I promised Dwight that I wouldn't start World War Three while he is still depending on that brand for part of his living. It's not his fault, after all. But like you, I've been known to take the occasional tantrum, during which, usually, the fallout comes down all over the place within a radius of about 30 feet.
This being our Thanksgiving weekend here, I didn't want to spend it in the slammer for trashing some asshole's computer repair facility across town. But I'm sure it would have been immensely satisfying.
What an interesting fall-out link, haha!
ReplyDelete