Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

OK, let me be upfront. I have not bought a new computer for, what, 9 years? My Mac Pro still works. Well, in fact. I used to have PC's and Macs, but since 2010, only a Mac. I run Windows 7 on my Mac, as well as (of course) OS X. I have avoided Windows 10 for as long as it has been out... :) But I need another computer, and this one looked like it might just be perfect. Opening the box and getting the stuff out was easy, and assembling the computer (one screw) was very easy. Just take off the rear foot on the stand, insert and tighten the screw. Replace the foot. So far, so good. Plug it in. Put batteries in the BT keyboard and BT mouse. The instructions were for USB keyboard and mouse, so I was quite happy they shipped with BT. And now.. .TA DA! Power it on. And wait. I did not measure the time, but it must have been 2 minutes or more until finally Cortana started speaking. OK, this is cool. Never set up Windows 10 before... She asked if I was in the United States, and I said "YES." Oops... Still listening... Ah. Forgot to plug in the camera... So I did, and rebooted. Same problem. Computer can't hear me. So, I was given the option to click on my country. That's when I noticed... NO CURSOR! Checked the mouse - yup, LED blinking... So, I called their support line. I had to wait a few minutes, but not too bad at all. I had a little difficulty understanding their speech - but then, I have a hearing problem... :) But he was able to get me to "find" the BT dongle that plugs into the USB port, hidden in the battery compartment of the mouse. It works for both keyboard AND mouse. So, plugged that in, rebooted, and we have a CURSOR!!! Still, Cortana can't hear me. So we proceed with setup. At some point in setup, I was asked for permission to use the microphone... :) Ah. I said OK, and the next question from Cortana I answered and ... she heard me! OK! So far, two things that would have made the setup much easier: 1. Make sure we know about the BT dongle in the mouse 2. Make sure we know that Cortana can't hear us until after we enable the microphone OK, so we completed the setup, and ended up on the Win10 home screen (of which I am not familiar). Sure looks different than Windows 7! But GORGEOUS..! WOW! This is one amazing display! Black is really BLACK, and the amazing background image of (I guess) water or something is truly beautiful. It stands out against the pitch black background, making it look almost 3D! Very VERY impressed by the screen, and the ease of adjusting its angle. So, proceeded to update the system software, and play around with settings. I measured boot time at about 100+ seconds, slower than my Mac Pro, but not bad. But I totally LOVE the screen! I have what was top of the line LCD from 2010 on my Mac, but there is no comparison! Computer seems pretty fast (fast enough for what I am going to use it for), very nice packaging - beautiful in fact. It's almost as nice as a iMac.. :) But a lot less expensive. And I must say, Windows 10 interface does seem to be an improvement, now that they have had time to get a lot of bugs out. You can read the specs: 1GB hard drive, Gigabit ethernet, fast wifi, turbo-boost, i5 processor. Nice keyboard - feels good (but different - have to get used to it), and good mouse as well. So, 5 stars to Acer! This is a reasonably priced super duper computer - will do must anything unless you are into video editing (probably can do that to, but not as fast as a pro would want). And it only uses like 15 watts of power, or something like that! No fan, so very quiet. I like that. You can hear very softly the hard drive when it is reading and writing, but I did not hear it spinning up at all. This unit takes very little space on the desktop - another very nice feature, has HDMI output if you want to feed it to another display, and both USB 2 and 3. Now the built-in stereo speakers are dinky, but that is what you would expect for such a thin device (it is very thin on the top, thicker on the bottom). So audio out jack can be used to feed external speakers with some actual bass... :) I never use built-in speakers because they always sound tinny... But in a pinch, you can certainly hear Cortana with them... I will repeat something I said earlier: The screen is BEAUTIFUL! Heck, it could be HAL behind the screen, I would still love the screen! Or maybe Cortana is HAL, with a female voice? :)