Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've had mine for a few hours so these are just first impressions: The build quality is very high - this laptop feels solid despite being very light. The design is clean and simple, the screen is bright and the colors are vibrant. The sound is well above average for a laptop, but that's not saying too much. This is my first exposure to Windows8 and from what I read in the press, I was expecting to hate it. On the contrary I think for home use it's going to work out perfectly. If you are comfortable with the iPhone style interface you'll have no problem with Windows8. During the initial setup boot it shows you the two main things you need to know in order to navigate. With that I was up and running. I wasn't too sure about the touch screen idea: love it for my phone, but how would the ergonomics feel with a laptop? Answer: awesome. With the Windows8 "tile" based interface, touch just works. I've barely used the touchpad since I got this thing. My other computers seem lame now. Again, this is based on a few hours of use, but the first impressions are very good. I think the Windows OS has made a big step forward out of the cluttered mess it was. I work in the computing industry so I looked a little closer into some of the specs for those who like to know these things: the CPU, as noted is an Intel i5. That doesn't really tell you much, since that can refer to multiple generations of Intel chips. In this case it is the latest and greatest "IvyBridge" dual-core Intel CPU (22nm, Tri-gate transistors). This is a 17w(!) CPU. That is insanely low power for the performance you are getting. This CPU also includes some fairly robust integrated graphics on the die with 16 graphics execution units. This is 4 more than the previous high-end, and 10 more than the current "second tier". I've read up on the benchmarks and it out classes many discrete graphics solutions. This should actually enable you to do some fairly decent gaming on your laptop if you so choose. It will won't compete with a dedicated "gaming" laptop with high-end discrete graphics, but then again it won't cost you 2-3K. One thing to note is that the Intel graphics drivers generally fall short of AMD or Nvidia when it comes to some of the more high-end graphics settings. Most users don't even know how to get to those features, but if you are serious gamer this is something to consider. On the other hand when it comes to mainstream applications and video performance, Intel performs as well or better than the competition. A few things to note: this laptop has a nice big 500GB hard drive, but it's a conventional drive and not a solid-state drive. All conventional drives are at risk of failure, and so you should pick up a cheap external back-up HDD just to be safe (or sign up for an online back-up service from somebody like Amazon). It's cheap insurance. Another thing worth mentioning is that while this is not an "Ultrabook" it's pretty close to being that thin. While cool looking, it does mean you have an adapter for network cables and VGA displays. Nobody should need a VGA display connector anymore (the laptop has a conventional HDMI port) but if you plan to plug into a network you have the adapter to think about. Fortunately the wireless on this laptop is first rate. I've got a pretty high-end business class HP laptop from work, and this Acer blows it away on connection speeds. So my overall impression? This is a great laptop and based on what I've experienced I can comfortably recommend it to anyone. Any doubts I had about Windows8 have been erased. It's simple, intuitive and with a touch screen, computing is kind of fun again. **** Just a note that after a week of using this laptop I still really like it. I'm finding Windows 8 is fairly intuitive to use and learn. That being said if you are really used to tweaking around in the old Windows there are some frustrating moments trying to figure it out in Windows 8. However overall they've made configuring things like privacy settings *much easier* so I think the average user will find themselves doing things in Windows 8 they would never do in Windows 7. I still think that touch is why Windows 8 works and I'm not sure I could suggest buying a non-touch laptop with this OS. I've really gotten hooked on the "10 fingered" touch. It makes my "two fingered" touch on my phone seem antiquated. This makes me wish there were more convertible tablet/laptops out there. It seems like laptop makers are missing the market here.