Acer products and support

As a "Retired Cybergeek" who started programming on an IBM 1620 in 1961, I have watched the evolution of technical support systems, and a programmer, and as a social scientist. Separating access to fundamental engineering support documentation and the "end user" is a fundamental flaw in the way Acer is handling itself. I own several generations of Acer equipment. The engineers often find ways to "save money" in puting together pacages for market, but when something wears out or needs to be upgraded, they have been allowed to ignore public requirements and feedback. Mine includes the following:

1). Be aware that Acer puts middle or low end reliability hard drives in its' consumer grade equipment.

2). If you are "technical" and want to "hack" things, you will not get support from Acer.

Comments

ZundapMan

I thank Elizabeth for moving this post. I believe it was originally a reply to my Forum "hello" message.

JordanB

ZundapMan,

I have only owned two Acer computers in my life so that is all I can comment on. One is TC-605-UR13 and the other is TC-605-UR19. The UR13 came with a 1 TB WD blue....which is the most popular HDD on the planet and an excellent drive. I was pleasantly surprised to find that drive in there. The UR19 has a 500 GB Seagate, which is also a very popular reliable HDD.

It's generally recognized as unwritten code of honor in the hacking/modding community that you do so at your own risk and never ask for support or warranty service on a consumer product that you've hacked or modded. I used to tinker with WRT54G routers and DDWRT. I partially bricked a couple due to my own cockpit error, but would never even think of contacting Linksys for support or warranty. It just wouldn't be the right thing to do.

For the quality of hardware that Acer provides for the price, it's hard to beat. You can't build a computer of similiar specs without spending hundreds more. There's not a huge profit margin with computers. When consumers contact an OEM for support, their profit for that particular computer goes down the drain because customer support isn't free for computer manufacturers. They have to actually pay people to do those jobs. Smiley Wink And I'm guessing 90 percent of calls to customer support is probably pilot error.

It sounds like you just had some bad luck. If you ever want to give it a try.....checkout pc part picker dot com and try to price building a computer using the exact components you want. It's a real eye opener. I'm not even talking about a Z97....just a modest budget H81. And one of the reasons that building a computer yourself is so expensive is because of all of the warranty support needed for people that have no business building a computer. I mean, I've read several reviews where a guy will burnout 3 straight motherboards after he plugs in his power supply and keep blaming it on the motherboard manufacturer. It's painful and cringeworthy to read. They'll keep the RMAs going and all it does is keep prices high for everybody else. And the guy will never swallow his pride and admit that it was user error.....he'll just write a nasty review.

ZundapMan

"T" I'm completely "with you" and did not mean to disparriage Acer for engineering a reasonably well designed product line. I own 4 going back to a "clone motherboard" Portable with a really early graphics chipset that I've worn out and replaced batteries in, and used for 10 or more years. It came with Windows XP installed, and still has it. My observation was based on my own experience. Out of four Acer computers, the two failures I've experienced were both 4+ year service life issues on their hard drives. My oldest Acer desktop now hosts a 10,000 RPM "gamer" drive quite a bit bigger that the one that came with it, but everything else is original. It runs Vista. My next oldest is the Z3731 desktop that just puked its' drive when I tried a smple RAM upgrade from 4GB to 8GB, the maximum for the motherboard on that system. It came with a very buggy "first release" Windows 7(X64) Home Premium build. When I went to set it up, the process took three days because MSIE was so buggy it could not even get its act together to properly invoke the Windows Update functions. Within a few hours of connecting it successfully to my network, It downloded and applied almost 100 patches! In the early Win7(x64) world, Microsoft hid a lot of sins in the 32 bit mode rather than exploiting the Intel 64bit archetecture correctly. I'm still not sure, because of lack of feedback, whether or not to point my finger at software or hardware as the culprit when it comes to my memory upgrade issues. I believed that 2 2gb chips I bought from Crucial that were the first ones I tried, were the correct chips, but may have "trashed" the old WD drive inadvetently by "bouncing it around" a little bit during the process of opening the snap apart plastic case the first couple of times. The tabs on the case are now wearing out and two have chipped off, and I'm still not sure what is preventing my system from coming up with 8gb of useable ram. The "it just sits there" problem with any chips other than the originals, two different pairs of 4gb "supposed to be the right chips" purchased, and no joy. I'm not willing to go out and buy more RAM now without precise information. I have to take the system I'm using to write this apart to get it, and that has been a source of my irritation with Acer and changes in the culture since the days when I built a "Thompson Big Board" Z80 system I had to "hop up" by rewiting the timing loop for the RAM in Z80 assembler and blowing the changes into an EPROM before desoldering all 64K of the RAM and soldering in a new bank of faster RAM that cost me more that some of my much more recent computer purchases. That system "answered the phone" years ago running a CP/M based BBS I called "The Dog House" that was a hobby project of mine. It was one of the first in my state that connected at 300 baud (Big Grin)

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