My own Acer experience...
Mar 25 '00
I got my Acer Aspire in November 1997 at Sears. It seemed to be a pretty good deal for what I was getting. Actually, the system worked great for the first 14 months and the IBM MWave sound card/modem combo conked out.
So I bought an external modem (which I prefer anyway) and a new sound card. Thinking that something was wrong with the BIOS after messing with the IRQ's, I flashed it. That was my fault as I now know to NEVER flash your BIOS without professional help.
This is where my story begins. Mind you, I was out of the warranty period, so no free support for me. I tried calling Acer and they were beyond useless with their so-called tech support. I had friends and my husband trying to help me move jumpers to see if my BIOS was really dead or what, but to no avail.
So I happily trotted off to my local builder of computers (they deserve a thumbs up review of their own) to see if they could help me. Well the owner of the company and I both tried to locate an Acer BIOS chip, but I couldn't afford the long distance any more and he finally found out that Acer won't sell their BIOS chips to a non-authorized service center. ASo much for all that.
I finally had my local guy build me a new computer, cannibalizing all he could off the Acer. That consisted of the P200MMX chip and the Quantum HD, which are still working fine in my year old cobbled together system. He couldn't use the motherboard because it was a totally non standard set up with a daughter board attached to it, this meant my case was useless as well. The cd rom and floppy drives were neatly built to conform to my cool black case.
The moral of the story: It is truly in your best interest to stay away from proprietary systems made with non standard parts when buying a computer. This is because you will have to spend lots of money trying to fix, repair or replace systems for which you can only use parts that come from Acer or similar companies. It is truly much cheaper to start out with something built to specifications from industry standard parts. You can get these from Dell & Gateway as well... or a local guy with a good reputation. It will save you money and headaches in the future.
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Epinions.com ID:
oakborn
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Member: Jenni Schmidt
Location: Columbia, MO
Reviews written: 90
Trusted by: 23 members
About Me:
As non-traditional as possible.
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