We bought the R7 for my son to take to college 600 miles away from home. All he wanted was a laptop to perform the basic functions of word processing and excel, plus to be able to watch Netflix - everything else was ancillary to these main functions. He loved the look of the device, the display was great and had all the right features for his use pattern.
Our experience:
While still at home he experienced the almost ubiquitous WiFi problem - but we just wrote it off as weak signal in his bedroom as it seemed to work better in other areas of the house (even though every other wifi device he has - iPhone, XBox and old Toshiba laptop - accessed the WiFi without issue in his room).
Once at school (600 miles away from home and my support - limited as that is...) the WiFi issue persisted even in a small dorm room, right next to the in room access point,and it did not work anywhere else on campus. So after looking at the Acer forums and the large thread of problems with the WiFi we just purchased an USB WiFi adapter and moved on - not happy that we had to resort to spending more money, but it wasn't much and it worked great!
Three days later the hard drive in the unit crashed - trip to Best Buy, two days of service and $100 later he had his laptop back - time to reload everything again...
1 week after that, the R7 will not power on without being plugged in to AC power. If the AC power cord is removed the unit just turns off (not shutdown, turn off). Again, he is 600 miles from home, has no car at school - so getting to Best Buy is troublesome, but will happen at some point. I have not seen much on this issue with the R7, I found a similar thread with this issue with the S7 - and the recommended (and only soultion that seemed to bear results) was to tighten a freaking screw on the back of the unit.
So after spending $1250 (R7, USB Wifi, Best Buy Geek Squad - and not included is the external DVD rom device we purchased to use on the unit) - I have a laptop that functions only when plugged into the wall limiting it's use as a resourse and a son who just wants to be able to get his course work completed. He now wants to give in to the dark side and switch to a Macbook ($1500 more dollars, becuase he needs the retina display - another topic on needs vs. wants!!!) because in his words 'THEY JUST WORK.'
I don't know how many of these units Acer has sold, probably 100's of thousands, and maybe the number of support issues on the forums is a small percentage, but I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this unit to anyone who just wants to have a laptop that just works. Additionally, I cannot believe that Acer has not made good to those of us who have a unit below 'SNID 328' - whatever that means - this is the first I have seen this. If there is truely an issue with units prior to SNID 328 Acer should fix ALL units at their expense (no shipping charges, no service fee) as THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Okay, I feel better....just wish the laptop worked better now as well!
United States