I have an Acer Extensa 390, and I would not buy another Acer laptop. Acer has very good repair service, very fast and friendly. But how did I find that out? The unit needed repairs!
I went through a keyboard, CDROM drive and battery under warranty. Post-warranty, the case has started falling apart (is now held together with some new bolts and epoxy.) Further, the tech support poeple at Acer aren't very knowledgeable - either about their products (I had to inform the tech support guy what chipset was used in my internal modem), or about any OS other than W95/98/NT. I have tried to get help both with Win3.1 and with Linux to no avail. One caveat about the reliability is that my laptop model was designed by TI and inherited by Acer, so may not be representative of quality of Acer-designed laptops. However, customer satisfaction surveys in the major PC magazines confirm that Acer is below average on quality. All in all, I am not unhappy with my Acer, but I would not buy another. -Steve
