Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 70
 Perfect laptop for a Perfect price November 20, 2009
J. Evans (Central New Jersey)
87 out of 89 found this review helpful
As a small internet business owner, I needed a laptop that is portable and reliable. I originally started looking at the 10" netbooks, but found them to be too small and I hated that they only ran the Windows 7 Starter version which has some major restrictions. This 11.6" laptop has a decent size screen and a nice size keyboard. I was deciding between this and the HP, but when you customize the HP to have all the same specs as this Acer, the cost was over $800 so this became a no-brainer.
I've had my Acer for about 1 month now and it is great. Windows 7 takes a little getting used to, but I've had no issues with it at all. I hooked it up to a wireless network printer without incident and it wasn't loaded with a ton of garbage-ware. My only issue was that it only comes with the student/home trial version of MS Office, and I am an Outlook user. The entire office suite is expensive, so instead I tried Mozilla Thunderbird which is free and it works just as well as Outlook. Once my trial period for the MS Office software is up, I will purchase it for only $149 and keep Thunderbird as my email client which will save me a pretty penny.
Amazon had this laptop out to me in 3 days with free shipping (HP charged $35 for shipping).
If you are looking for a "net-book" with all the capabilities of a regular sized laptop, I highly recommend this Acer.
Even Better Than I Expected November 29, 2009
E. Peck (Orlando, FL)
47 out of 47 found this review helpful
I have begun traveling more often for work, and though I like my Dell Laptop (Latitude D620) it is heavy, too large to use on an airplane and battery life leaves a lot to be desired. I initially looked at the Dell Inspiron 11z but reviews say the track pad is terrible and the 6 hour battery is huge and extends below the bottom of the back.
Then I found the Acer Aspire 1410. It has a screen that is the same size, a larger hard drive, and wireless n instead of just b & g. So basically I got more, all at a lower price. And the 6 hour battery doesn't ruin the nice slim profile of the machine.
My plan was to just use this when traveling, primarily for web based apps (google docs and gmail, which work on and off line) and light stuff. But I've found that it runs everything including much heavier applications very well. Videos look great and it makes for a great entertainment machine on the road. Office works well, I've used the Gimp to edit photos and I've played some games.
There wasn't much crud to uninstall and I've been very pleased with Windows 7. The machine boots quickly and I'm up and running in no time. Wireless is great, the sound is good and I love the display. I usually dim it down when on the road to maximize battery life, but it still looks pretty good. When hooked up to power, it can be very bright and looks very good.
I'm not crazy about the glossy screen, though I'm getting used to it. I don't like the glossy black of the case either and am looking for a skin. As of right now it's a fingerprint magnet and looks like I rubbed a stick of butter all over it.
But it runs all my apps great and has exceeded my expectations for such a compact and affordable machine. I find that I'm using it all the time, not just when I travel. It's awesome how light and compact it is but still doing everything I need.
Fantastic netbook October 28, 2009
John H. Earl (Milford, VA United States)
40 out of 40 found this review helpful
Considering the specs, that it comes with Win 7 Home Premium, and the price, this is a fantastic little machine. I wanted to use this for a perhaps slightly different purpose than most netbook users. I am a photographer and really wanted the ability to check photos in the field. Making sure things are in focus, for example, is often important because I do a lot of macro photography. It's impossible to really tell on a camera LCD how the image has turned out. I own an older laptop, but it's just too darn heavy to lug around all the time. I was a bit worried that the resolution of a 10-inch netbook would be too low to see good detail but with this netbook and its bright, higher-res screen, the details are all visible and the photos look great. Not that it would replace my desktop, but that's not its intended purpose. That said, it's useless in full sunlight but if you can find any sort of shady spot, it's pretty good. A lot of my work is done indoors anyway. I've found I have to crank up the screen brightness outdoors and that helps a lot. That probably would affect battery life, but I don't anticipate running out of power on a typical shoot anyway.
Of course, I've only had the thing for one day, so I can't comment yet on reliability. It does run pretty fast and boots up quickly, so no complaints on performance. I don't intend to put Photoshop on it since I just want it for review purposes and Windows Photo Viewer is perfectly adequate for that. Unfortunately, my camera uses Compact Flash cards and there's no built-in reader for them, so I have to use an external USB reader. One more thing to carry, but I can live with it. Not a huge amount of crapware on this machine and what there was was easily removed.
The only other con (common to all netbooks) is that there's no CD/DVD writer. I have yet to figure out how I'd restore the system without one if the hard drive ever had to be replaced. Apparently there's some way to use a USB thumb drive but haven't figured that out. I just decided to order a USB CD/DVD writer. Don't think I'll need it much but it will just make life easier - not only for disaster recovery but for any software installations I might do.
All in all, I'm pretty happy so far.
Great Ubuntu Linux platform December 6, 2009
S. Yelvington
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
I have a slightly different model, the 1410-2936, which has a more powerful dual-core Celeron SU2300 ultra-low-voltage CPU and a 160-gig hard drive. There are several variations of the 1410 around the $400 price point with varying combinations of CPU, hard drive, and RAM, but the rest of the computer is identical. Read the specs carefully before you make your choice.
I've installed Ubuntu on dozens of laptops and desktops in the last couple of years. Laptops can be problematic because of hardware oddities, but the Acer 1410 is an ideal, pain-free Ubuntu Linux platform.
I didn't even boot Windows 7 -- I inserted a 2-gig USB thumb drive containing the Ubuntu 9.10 installation image, and about 17-18 minutes later I was up and running with Karmic Koala installed on the hard drive.
It's blazingly fast, especially when compared with my daughter's Atom-powered Aspire One. With one exception, everything worked, slick and fast, right out of the gate -- webcam, multi-card reader, USB, touchpad, display, wireless and wired networking, etc.
The one exception was the internal microphone. A bit of Googling revealed a one-line command (sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic) that fixed the microphone for everything except Skype. Then, once I unchecked Skype's option to automatically set volume levels, the microphone started working, too.
The 11.6 size is a great compromise between the portability of a netbook and the usability of a notebook. The keys are full-size and the layout is sane. The screen is very, very sharp and the 1366-pixel display is wide enough for real work with multiple apps. Video performance is very good, handling Hulu's Flash video quite well.
The smaller Atom-powered netbooks win the cuteness contest and can have longer battery life, but I think the 1410 is a much more practical package, and the best value for the price I've found anywhere.
Very useable - not a Netbook December 5, 2009
Wil (Florida)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I will say upfront that I have a robust Acer Desktop Mini-tower as my primary PC so I don't need a laptop with every bell and whistle. That being said, I am floored by the performance of this little Acer 1410. Its primary use is for linking to the client database I have running on a small server at my office. But it does so well with the fun things like streaming YouTube, Hulu and the web in general. I am not a gamer so I can't comment there.
Windows 7 is clean and efficient feeling on this laptop, as if Vista and Ubuntu merged and only left the better parts. It works great so far grabbing wifi signals and even running Skype video calls.
The mouse pad pinching and scrolling feature is very helpful, iPhone-ish.
I guess I was expecting it to lag with only a 1.3 gHz Celeron but it does not let me down. The Atom equivalent seems much less capable in the Netbooks for some reason. If you are in the market for a Netbook and can stretch the extra $100, check this unit out.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 70
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