As somebody who was laid off from Gateway after the Acer takeover, i'd highly suggest avoiding both Acer and Gateway/eMachines products; other than the desktop products (still engineered by Gateway), all other Gateway/eMachines products are now rebadged Acers... there isn't a single original Gateway engineer on their notebook/monitor product lines. Acer does not test or verify their products- they trust the vendor to have done it right. (never the case, btw).
I purchase all of the laptops for my company and do all of the configuration work on them. I've tried every major brand (except Sony) and found Acer/Gateway to be as reliable as any other brand....more-so than many! In fact the Acer Aspire's that I've recently purchased (within the last year) have been very well received by our employees. I've had two motherboard problems with two identical Gateway laptops (AMD Turion...my bad!) and that is it!
I've found the recent Acer Aspire Core-2 Duo's to be excellent business laptops.....fast enough for anything except gaming! As far as size and weight is concerned.....big deal! If you plan on doing a lot of traveling, get a netbook as a road machine (I carry an Eee PC 100H with me on business trips). I have no qualms about lugging a 6 or 7 lb bag to and from the office. Of course, I'm in a car and not walking or riding a bike as some users may be.
Finally, I look for the best bang for the buck. I never pay retail and always use my Amex card so I get a two year warranty. I'm getting well equipped laptops usually for less than $700.00 (before tax)
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As somebody who was laid off from Gateway after the Acer takeover, i'd highly suggest avoiding both Acer and Gateway/eMachines products; other than the desktop products (still engineered by Gateway), all other Gateway/eMachines products are now rebadged Acers... there isn't a single original Gateway engineer on their notebook/monitor product lines. Acer does not test or verify their products- they trust the vendor to have done it right. (never the case, btw).
I purchase all of the laptops for my company and do all of the configuration work on them. I've tried every major brand (except Sony) and found Acer/Gateway to be as reliable as any other brand....more-so than many! In fact the Acer Aspire's that I've recently purchased (within the last year) have been very well received by our employees. I've had two motherboard problems with two identical Gateway laptops (AMD Turion...my bad!) and that is it!
I've found the recent Acer Aspire Core-2 Duo's to be excellent business laptops.....fast enough for anything except gaming! As far as size and weight is concerned.....big deal! If you plan on doing a lot of traveling, get a netbook as a road machine (I carry an Eee PC 100H with me on business trips). I have no qualms about lugging a 6 or 7 lb bag to and from the office. Of course, I'm in a car and not walking or riding a bike as some users may be.
Finally, I look for the best bang for the buck. I never pay retail and always use my Amex card so I get a two year warranty. I'm getting well equipped laptops usually for less than $700.00 (before tax)