So, a few years ago I had two family members which within a small timeframe both received new (different model) Acer laptops.


Both laptops had many faulty, completely nonfunctional USB ports. One laptop in particular had NO functional USB ports, so I called support and had them send a replacement. The replacement too had many faulty USB ports. Sadly the family member who owned the laptop did not inform me of this (they are NOT tech savey), and instead choose to live with the 1 functional USB port, rather than going through the several week long replacement process (in their defense they had made the laptop apart of their professional life and weeks without it would be very harmful). So we let things drop, though keep in mind thats 3 laptops all with faulty USB ports, shitty manufacturing. Hell' through the countless laptop's i've repaired and countless laptop hardware problems I hear around the campfire, I have only heard of faulty usb ports once.



Several years later, the laptop which was not replaced, suddenly refused to boot, no post, no video, just hit the power switch lights flash, few second later the unit turns off and and a few more seconds later reboots into the same the process of few seconds of lights and reboot. NO sounds or beeps, i hear the HDD starting, ram is good, both ram slots are good, heatsink is clean and functioning.




First thing i do is scour the internet for any help and find that, COUNTLESS Acer laptop customers with varying Acer laptop models have-had/are-having the EXACT same problem and no solution. Though, there are lots of "try-this" and "oh this worked for me", tried em all and no luck.

So you guys know me. I completely disassemble the unit in search of the problem, everything checks out (even reseated the CPU and GPU heat sinks) except the motherboard, something on it is fried. Though since i am no engineer and my electrical knowledge is rather limited when it comes to troubleshooting and recognizing actual faulty electrical components, I cannot find the exact problem. Though it could be corrupt bios (claimed common cause of the problem when i was scouring the net), but I could not find any documentation for auto bios recovery for the model in question.

Keep in mind that this laptop has never been moved from its desk resting place and aside from a little dust, does not have a SINGLE scratch on it. Given the plethora of users encountering the exact same problem, and that this laptop had never even been bumped or anything that might have caused this, points to a manufacturing defect.





So reluctantly i contact acer support and through a significant language barrier (I have nothing against the guy though), wants to charge me $200 and shipping to fix the laptop as it is technically out of warranty. However, should this problem actually be a manufacturing defect, I'd be paying $200 to fix a problem that'd only inevitably happen again, and again be exploited into paying another fee. Furthermore, $200 could go a long way into investing in a brand new, far superior laptop, which is not made by such a shaky company.


Now let me say that I, never before, have EVER encountered a computer manufacturer that did not stand behind their products enough, to replace a laptop, desktop, or rack-mounted server, that encountered a manufacturing defect (though toshiba was DAMN close, i'd implore anyone to avoid them too), till now. Hell Asus repaired my 7 year old, 4 years out of warranty laptop FREE of charge (they even payed for overnight shipping both ways) after it's video card died as a result of a defect and have had very near identical case with both Dell and HP both replacing the hardware free of charge.


Its at this point that i scour the web, figuring that someone has had to have legally filed something against Acer. its at this point that I discover a large class action lawsuit (Acer gave out years and years AND YEARS of laptops with fragmented windows OS's to save a few $$) in which both laptops qualify for, but sadly the date for application as a class member ended only a month ago. However, this and everything above says quite a lot about the companies ideologies and methodologies.


Clearly they do not care about their image, or the quality of their products. I am sure there's a lucky few Acer laptop customers here, whom are unbelievably lucky to have never encountered a problem (or I won lottery odd chances of a long series of lemon laptops).


I am not one to try and smite a company by encouraging others to boycott their produce. But rather to warn/caution people as to save them from serious headaches and loss of the little finances floating around the economy these days. I implore everyone to avoid Acer's laptops at all costs (though other items such as monitors seem fine, though i shiver at the thought of something happening that'd force me to deal with their 'support)



I'll have to see what comes of the support department for this laptop, but I am justifiably unhopeful.