Acer S7 Repair Experience.

Folks,

Well, like at least a few other folks who have found this forum, my shiny new S7-191-6447 absolutely, completely died within two months of INCREDIBLY gentle usage.  I only took it out of the house a few times, and it was always in a protective sleeve or case, even when it was safely sitting in my notebook drawer.  I swear, I probably didn't even start it up more than, say, 20 times -- about the only way I could have been more gentle with it would have been to have NEVER EVEN TAKEN IT OUT OF ITS SHIPPING BOX after I bought it.  Would you like to know how I REALLY feel about "Acer quality and reliability?"  Well, I'll spare you from the details of my desire of grabbing the President of this company and cramming the crummy little notebook where the sun don't shine.

Anyway, so after less than two months of gentle usage, I had to pack the really quite EXPENSIVE thing up and send it at my own expense away to the repair facility.  And that was after reading a bunch of horror stories from this forum -- with no parts to fix anything, people were waiting endless months with utterly no hope of ever seeing their computers again, others got theirs back, but apparenly the technicians were some inbred cousins of Wolverine, and their pristine, perfect-condition computers were thoroughly trashed, and so on.  "Wonderful."  I truly sent it away, expecting to never even see the thing again.

Well, that's not quite how things worked out.  Here's a timeline of what happened:

July 26, 2013:  I received an e-mail stating that my computer had been received at the repair facility.

July 30, 2013:  I received an e-mail stating that my computer had been repaired, and that it would be prepared for shipment.

July 31, 2013:  I received an e-mail stating that my computer had been shipped, with a FedEx tracking number.  Checking that, I saw that it had actually been picked up and was on its way on July 30.

And so, I just got it back today.  So, what did they do to it?  Was it just some connector that fell off its connection or something?

Well, no -- they "replaced mainboard, battery, and updated system BIOS," and it "passed all testing."

So, it's nearly brand-new on the inside, and I can only hope that the new bits will work a little longer than a measly two months before they ***** out.

They did NOT change the SSD drive, so everything booted up quite normally.  One thing I had done, which I was VERY thankful for, was to add a 64-gigabyte micro-SD card to its little slot, and ALL of my actual data was on that -- and of course I removed that before I sent it off.  So, none of my precious data was available for prying eyes to see while it was out of my possession.  And for the record, I've still got about 30 gigs of the SD card available, and 70 gigs of the SSD available, as I write this.  I definitely recommend just adding a micro-SD card to increase the storage on S7 notebooks -- I sure look at that little slot as being a great, big plus.

And my perfect-condition notebook appears to be none the worse for the ordeal -- I can't find any scratches, dents, claw marks, or even fingerprints on it, anywhere.  The Acer packaging was very interesting -- a generously-sized box with a simple cardboard insert that held the notebook away from any of the box edges, all trapped in place by a sheet of clear, stretchable plastic.  I just about had a cow until I noticed that sheet of plastic holding it in place -- otherwise, it looked like it was just sitting there loose in the box!  Obviously, it protected the notebook quite well enough.

So, the "repair experience" was truly first-class -- kudos to the folks in Texas who obviously have their act together, and their lack-of-parts problems solved.  However, having to send a virtually brand-new notebook computer in for repair just absolutely STINKS -- I've owned perhaps a dozen notebooks over time, and this is the first time I've EVER had any problems with one.  And I have just absolutely NO CONFIDENCE WHATSOEVER that the new bits won't be just as completely dead as the originals were within the next month or two -- I really can only expect that this will happen again and again, and once the warranty is gone, the best I'll be able to do will be to use the thing as a frisbee for the dog.  Oh, well, at least I got to pay a high, premium price for the dang thing.

And that's my story.  I'll keep on using it, and see what happens, but I sure don't think I'll ever be able to "rely" on the thing, ever again.

thoots