DO NOT PURCHASE Aspire V7-482PG-6662 Ultrabook

DemonDelight

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I just made the switch from my beloved Samsung SF410 to the Aspire V7-482PG-6662. I needed an upgrade to my then mid range laptop that I had been using for the last 2 and a half years so I searched around online for a compact/versatile/affordable laptop to play games on and found the Aspire V7. I bought it from the Acer online store and it was delivered from Ontario to my residence in Alberta within the next couple days. (Free ground shipping was oddly unavailable to my address.) It came packed solid in a large box with more than enough packing foam.

 

Once I started playing with it I started to have more and more difficulties with it. To start, the Synaptics touchpad did, and still does not work properly. I've tried updating, uninstalling, rolling back, and installing generic drivers in an attempt to make the intermittent scroll feature to work properly. no matter which settings I use, my V7 seems to let me use the scroll settings whenever it sees fit. 

 

I soon started to realize a random lag that seemed to occur mainly when opening programs, but also sometimes during program use. It's as though my computer has full CPU load for 5-15 seconds, even from the start when I only had the computer on for two hours and a few crucial programs installed. These temporary lockups still persist.

 

My third problem is that the computer heats up way too much for comfort when using CPU/GPU intensive applications and games. It's obvious from the computers slim form factor that it may not have been the best choice as far as cooling goes, but it becomes too hot to keep on my lap comfortably within minutes of launching one of the aforementioned CPU/GPU intensive programs. The laptops specs run these applications with flying colors, but I'm afraid that in doing so the hardware will degrade rapidly.

 

 

I am appalled with the poor design of this laptop, being that my previous laptop and my gaming desktop have never had any major problems that I wasn't able to easily remedy. It is my hope that a fresh installation of Windows 8 will help fix some of these issues and remove the Acer bloatware that was included. I will never spend my money on another Acer product.

 

The 10 point touchscreen works beautifully. Woo.

 

Edit: Sorry about posting in the wrong section.

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Because we have been very happy with our V7-482PG-6662, and because I have seen various postings from the States asking about how to source one of these machines, I looked for a good site to post that the answer is: NCIX.com. But I found this do NOT buy posting instead. Our experiences have been opposite.

 

I bought two 15.6-inch Acer M5's with i5 4th Gen chips for my children from BestBuy in August. But we wanted the smaller but higher resolution 14-inch 1080 screen for us, which was only available in Canada and the UK. Checking Canadian suppliers, I found that NCIX had a US distribution site. And we got what we wanted. Ironically, I was in Guelph Ontario the day before I ordered. And the NCIX.ca site said that they had stock in their warehouse there. But I had to wait for free delivery to the US east coast from the west coast.

 

We have not had any of the problems experienced by DemonDelight. For us, the V7-482PG scores "very good" in all categories, and thus achieves "great" overall. OK, an S7-392 is slimmer. But it is pricier and, as I recall, lacks the graphics processor. I would have liked an S3-392. But it seems not to be found. We have the V7 linked to an Anker 3.0 hub, which drives two 22-inch HD screens, plus links in a 4TB Seagate drive and an LG BR-player for media ripping and storage. So we now have three screens running when docked at home. The battery life is great when out. And, though we do not game at all, the S7 works great as an HTPC putting XBMC over the Sony flat-screen in the same room via HDMI. Oh, yeah, and it is touchscreen and runs all my business software.