Travel Technology - Any opinions on Acer Aspire laptops?

Speaking of "off-brand" laptops... Does anyone here have an opinion on Acer? There's an awesome deal on an Acer Aspire 3003LCI with AMD Sempron M 1.8 GHZ processor (only 256 MB RAM, though) for $567.00 shipped after instant rebate and if if you use a new Buy.com Visa at Buy.com (http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=201995833&loc=101&sp=1). Also, using the Buy.com Visa there's no interest for 6 months.

My laptops don't travel that much, and I've held on to my old Gateway since 1999. It's just time for a replacement. :D IOW, incredible physical durability isn't that important.

Edit: I went ahead and bought it. Okay, the $40 instant rebate and $30 Buy.com visa bonus are not combinable. Fortunately, I needed to buy some memory to upgrade the 256 MB included. So I still got to use my $30 bonus and it's still all good. :D

I just received thsi laptop. At first glance, it appears well-built and it's an attractive machine with a nice large screen. I will post again if I ever have problems with it! :)

Oops, only just saw your post. I own the Aspire 3503 - not a Sempron but a Celeron. It would be very good (at least for my needs) if the battery was not so lousy: it lasts less than an hour. When I bought it I thought that it would not bother me but it does...

I bought an Acer Aspire 3003WLMi at Staples about 3 weeks ago.

The battery life is pretty poor as Meriem has said, plus the Sempron processor appears to run a bit hot compared to the (Celeron?) that was on the Toshiba that I had used briefly.

From a full charge, the Windows battery meter claims that I have 1 hour 10 minutes of battery life. Since it's used 99% at home (and we have an auto inverter for road trips) the battery life isn't much of an issue>

Battery life isn't a big issue for me. I will, however, probably spend the $ to buy the larger replacement battery. I already did buy 1 GB extra RAM. It seems to be an awesome deal for what I got though. We'll see. :D

The screen on mine broke after two days - I took it back and the lady said that was common... I decided Acer may not be the Chinese company for me... perhaps a Lenovo next...

Oh, but apart fom the battery issue they are good, reliable little machines with a lot of the bells and whistles of more expensive brands. I just wish I had been a bit less anal-retentive and bought the one with the Centrino processor (it was about 100$ more).

I bought my first ACER laptop in Dec 2001 and can happily say that the only issue it had since is that the ON/OFF switch (a small mechanism really)broke last year (after 3 years of usage) and was replaced easily by ACER. It has served me well, with no hard drive crashes or screen issues etc etc. I still have it at home but don't use it much now as it is a Pentium III machine with no wi-fi capaibility.

I have had an Acer in the past any my only complaint is that the battery charge didn't last very long after 6-12 months. I know this is a problem with all laptops and they may have upgraded their technology.

I've owned two Acers and never had any issues. Very satisified.

In my case, I reformatted and went with a W2K install instead of XP that shipped in it. I had some fun finding working W2K drivers (and the XP drivers weren't all W2K-capable) for a few of the new components but that happens. Within a day, everything was perfect.

Well I have it all configured, including a 1 GB memory upgrade. With the stock 256 MB RAM, it was a bit sluggish, but with the extra 1 GB (and adjusting the BIOS to 128 MB shared video RAM from the default 64 MB) it is pretty darn fast. :)

Now I have to buy a laptop bag because my current one isn't big enough.

I have had an Acer for the past three years. As others have posted, the battery life drops dignificantly. Mine is Centrino and the battery life now is an hour tops. Besides that complaint, the only other complaint I have is the quality of build of the machine. My laptop does not travel with me, and the screen housing has cracked twice already. Had it repaired by Acer the first time; cracked again not long after I got it back.

I just bought the Aspire 3002 a week ago. $399 plus tax...a 1.6 processor, 256MB, 40G HD, built in WiFi. Bought an extra 256MB for $40. So for under $500 all in, it seems like a pretty good machine.

I had originally bought a Winbook - same specs, same price, but got it home and found no WiFi (as it turns out, the published specs were wrong). I took it back and got it swapped for the Acer. So now that I've seen both the Acer and the Winbook entry level machines, I definitely prefer the "feel" of the Acer.

Only things I don't like are the lousy battery (which will never be a *major* issue for us, just a bit annoying) and the lack of a rubber mouse in the middle of the keyboard. (It just has the touch-screen, which I have never figured out how to use really well.) So we plug in the USB mouse we used with our last laptop...again, annoying but no big deal.