Aspire A315-21-4098 Dissappointment...

AspirePOS

I've had this laptop for about a week, and I am totally underwhelmed.  I mistakenly thought that a laptop with a dual-core CPU and a dual-core GPU with a 1TB hard drive and 8 gigs of ram would pre pretty peppy, but boy was I mistaken.  Compared to the Toshiba P755 that this laptop is supposed to replace, this Aspire is a real dog.  The only things the Aspire has over the Toshiba is built in Bluetooth, and 5G WiFi.  Because I have a USB DVD, I wasn't worried about the Aspire not having a DVD.  The from factor is nice and this thing runs quite, but I wish they would leave the bloatware out, especially Norton Molasses. 
I used the original Norton Utilities and I loved it.  Then Symantec stepped in..  BIG mistake.   When Win95 was still in beta I was working in Desktop System Support at Microsoft.  When '95 launched one of the biggest call generators we had was Norton Desktop, and it hasn't gotten any better.

About the only thing this box is good for is Facebook (barf...), email, and e-shopping so I'm seriously considering sending it back... 

tobimaru

At under $400 USD, the price to performance ratio of the Aspire is right where it should be. Quite honestly when you compare the Acer specs to the Toshiba specs, you did not purchase a "faster" laptop. You went from a 4 core 8 thread CPU to a 2 core 2 thread. You're also comparing a 45W processor to a 15W one, huge difference.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/429/AMD_A9-Series_for_Notebooks_A9-9420_vs_Intel_Core_i7_Mobile_i7-2670QM.html

Aside from that, your #1 offended here is the 5400RPM 1TB HDD. This is the speed of harddrive I had maybe 10 years ago. They are still made today because of cost, very inexpensive. a 7200RPM will be better, or an SSD would be even faster than that. Aside from uninstalling all the bloatware and software you do not need, a faster harddrive will help boot times a lot.

tobimaru

At under $400 USD, the price to performance ratio of the Aspire is right where it should be. Quite honestly when you compare the Acer specs to the Toshiba specs, you did not purchase a "faster" laptop. You went from a 4 core 8 thread CPU to a 2 core 2 thread. You're also comparing a 45W processor to a 15W one, huge difference.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/429/AMD_A9-Series_for_Notebooks_A9-9420_vs_Intel_Core_i7_Mobile_i7-2670QM.html

Aside from that, your #1 offended here is the 5400RPM 1TB HDD. This is the speed of harddrive I had maybe 10 years ago. They are still made today because of cost, very inexpensive. a 7200RPM will be better, or an SSD would be even faster than that. Aside from uninstalling all the bloatware and software you do not need, a faster harddrive will help boot times a lot.

AspirePOS

OK, that makes sense.  I kinda got sucked into  getting this Acer, so I guess I'll live with it and keep the Toshiba.  Can't have too many computers.