There are certainly comparable laptops near this price range, but I found this one to be a decent value. It's peppy. It has a lot of RAM. It's got Windows 7 pre-loaded and it's not bogged down with too much crapware. The screen is very nice and super bright (with brightness controls linked to Fn+Left/Right arrow keys). There are enough USB ports (3 or 4) and even an HDMI port for using the laptop as a media player on your TV. So for me, this meets my needs of having a laptop in the living room for casual internet browsing and also having something powerful enough to play hi-def video or run powerful software like Photoshop or Visual Studio.
My biggest issue with this laptop is the touchpad -- which is multitouch by the way. The touchpad itself is fine. It's large, supports multitouch, and the included software has a lot of configuration options available that I won't go into here. But it's the buttons and the placement of the pad that are awkward. And when I say "buttons" I mean it's actually a single button where the left side is left click and the right side is right click. The single button spans the width of the wide touchpad so it basically requires 2 hands to use because you can't bring your thumb over far enough to right-click. It's really a horrible design. Someone should be slapped. The touch pad is also over on the left side of the laptop so it's almost like it was designed for a lefty. I actually find that it's more usable with my left hand, but I'm a righty so it's awkward. Anyway, my wife says that had we had a chance to experience the awful touchpad in a store instead of buying the laptop blind on Amazon that we would definitely not have gotten it. Personally I don't think it's that bad because the laptop is fine and I can hook up an external mouse with one of the little nano receivers.
As far as the multitouch, it's super gimmicky. I'd prefer keyboard shortcuts to awkward pinching and swiping gestures any day. Not all software supports it anyway so it's not even like you start to rely on it. It's more like: "Oh wow, this program supports the swipe gesture. Yay... But, oh look how much easier it is just to use the arrow keys." Multitouch makes sense on small gadgets like smart phones, but when I have a full keyboard, why bother?
Speaking of keyboard... this one is a full keyboard as in having a number pad. So that's nice. The Home, End, PgUp and PgDown keys are in an unusual position, but you get used to it. The key presses are fine. Typical laptop keys I would say.
As I said with the brightness controls, the volume control is also linked to the Fn+Arrow Up/Down keys. I'm fine with that, but it should be noted that other laptops have a much more elegant means of controlling the volume. HP for example has a little touch-slider on all of their laptops that I like a lot.
Other things I like are no flip-up latch. You just open and close the laptop without having to unlock -- though this seems to be standard these days. The WiFi adapter supports all the latest security protocols. And there's a decent video card for some light gaming. All in all, I'm pleased. I just wish the touchpad was designed better.
(7 customers reviews)
Customers Rating=4.0 / 5.0
More Detail For Acer AS7540 1317 17.3 Inch Laptop Blue
- 2.0GHz AMD Athlon II Dual-Core M300 Processor
- 4GB DDR2 667MHz Memory
- 320GB SATA Hard Drive, 8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive
- 17.3" HD+ Widescreen CineCrystal LED-backlit Display; ATI Radeon HD 4200 Graphics
- Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi CERTIFIED
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