Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So far I am loving this PC. I have built most of my computers over time, but these days it is more expensive to build your own than to just buy one. I have been using a several year old Dell Optiplex 790 with a 2nd generation i5 processor, so I was anxious to compare against this one (used you can get a Dell Optiplex, upgraded memory, and an SSD drive for about the same price as this Acer unit). Out of the box the machine was easy to connect. I have an "old school" VGA monitor that this works fine with; it has regular VGA outputs and HDMI, so you are pretty well covered for most monitors or TVs. The machine has the 64 bit version of Windows 10, a 1 Terabyte drive (NOT SSD though), a very speed i3 processor (7th generation dual core), 8GB of DDR4 ram (plenty for most purposes), and a keyboard and a mouse. It has both USB 2 and USB 3 plugs, so you can hook up say a backup hard drive and expect to get very fast performance (nearly as fast as the internal drive). The case is a full case that will appeal to old-school PC folks; it is easy to upgrade components with this type of case. A quick note about the i3 processor. Yes, it "only" has two cores. But does that really matter? In my experience it matters almost nothing. Most applications do not take advantage of 4 cores nor the extra features that are built into i5 and i7 processors. The i3 is a fine processor that will have no noticeable difference for 90% of the things that most people do with their desktop computers (watch movies, surf the Internet, email, and so on). I had no issues with Windows 10, although I still personally prefer the simplicity of Windows 7. But activation was smooth sailing. So how does it work? Very nicely. Funny enough performance is virtually identical to my current machine or slightly faster when doing processing (web surfing or video editing). However, for powering up the machine or just opening an application, my Dell is almost twice as fast. Why? Three letters: SSD. A solid state drive is THE best single upgrade you can do for a machine. Now the great news is that you CAN start with this machine which will be plenty fast for most people, and later upgrade with a SSD drive for around $100 and still keep the 1 Terabyte drive for storing large files (photos, videos, etc.). That is my long-term plan for this machine, and I honestly believe I can get a good 10 years of life out of this computer by doing so. The only downside of this computer is that you cannot expect to play the latest games. It just isn't a gaming rig. But I say buy this computer to do anything from video editing to web surfing to Word or Excel use, and then buy an Xbox One or Playstation 4 for gaming, and you will wind up spending about the same amount as if you bought a dedicated low-end gaming PC. But obviously that is a very personal choice. And I will say that older games (many of the GOG games for example) will run just fine on this puppy. In summary, this is a very solid budget machine that has good long-term upgrade potential. Highly recommended!