I bought my first Acer product in Singapore in 2000. It didn’t last too long that time either.
It was a Travel Mate something or other. Quite advanced for its time. I web cam’ed on it (not built in), and edited & burned to CD my first digital video on it too.
About a year and a half later the N key stopped working. Soon more keys stopped working, and I took it to an Acer service centre to be replaced somewhere in an obscure suburb of KL.
It was cheap back then. The whole exercise cost me less than RM100 if I remember correctly. Of course, I lived in KL at the time.
After that I had the keyboard replaced once more in KL before I eventually moved to South Africa, where Acer parts were unjustifiably expensive. When the N key stopped working for 3rd time, I abandoned it.
Meanwhile, in 2011…
That hiccup aside, I’ve always loved Acer, and have since owned various Acer products; mostly LCD screens.
Most recently was an Acer Aspire 4535 notebook computer. I’ve treated it so well, handled it so carefully, it still has the plastic protection on the outside cover.
But it’s 15 months old. It has been unused for 2 months, because in November last year the Journo started it up, it lived for just a few minutes and then switched off again. I also have a desktop computer, hence no urgency to use/fix it.
At first I thought it was a problem with the power supply, but after I used a similar Acer’s power supply, and it still didn’t work, I thought it to be a dodgy power connection.
So I took it to a tech at the Karamunsing shopping centre. He fiddled with it for all of 2 minutes before declaring that the motherboard is bust. I then took it to Highpoint, the local Acer service centre, who charged me RM50 to tell me the exact same thing.
And they added that it would cost me RM700 to replace the motherboard.
Let’s see – the computer cost RM1,799 a little over a year ago and now another RM700 to fix it?
I don’t think so.
Why won’t I miss my Acer Laptop?
I recently ‘won’ a HTC Desire Z smartphone from Maxis. It’s Internet ready; as most smart phones are.
I can check my mail, Facebook, Tweet, etc. and it has a slide out keyboard, with which I can type rather long documents, fairly quickly. If I have to. All while I’m on the go.
Hang on – doesn’t that sound a lot like a notebook computer?
It does a little, doesn’t it?
Which is part of the reason why I think paying RM700 to have my Acer fixed when, history hints at me, it might well break again in the next year, is simply not that smart.
So R.I.P. my little Acer. You won’t be missed. Neither will the Acer brand.
And thus ends the Acer notebook adventure.
Footnote: I had the option of buying and extended warranty for around RM400 when I bought that Acer. In hindsight I should have, but at the same time I wonder – does Acer design their products to break after 13 months?
Footnote to the Footnote: If Acer’s “service centre” had said ‘look, we don’t make crap and we’re sorry your motherboard croaked after 15 months – here, buy the extended warranty now and we’ll call it even’ like Hewlett Packard did for the Journo’s HP Pavilion, which did the same thing after 13 months – I would have had it fixed and continued loving Acer.