Acer V Toshiba ? choice for Xmas pressy

[Soubriquet]

folks, I got to tell my dad what to get my ma for Christmas, if I screw up there will be no Christmas pudding for me!! jk

I am favouring two laptops from ebuyer with WinXP pro, Acer Travel Mate 5720

compared with Toshiba Satellite Pro A100-00S

questions, if you can help me find the answer to any or all of these I would be very grateful

1. I heard Acer had problems with slow performance due to excessive software bundles, is that true ?

2. Acer has 2GHz CPU and 1Gb RAM, Toshiba has 1.73GHz CPU and 2Gb RAM. Which is going to run XP Pro the best? (Also what would happen if you put Vista on those a bit later?)

3. I would also like to ask any owners of multiple laptops what is build quality like ? Are they all the same? Is one brand better than another ? Is it worth going up a price rung for something like the Samsung R70 Laptop for better quality or wont you notice it ?

thanks in advance

 

[pukemon]

There are only so many notebook OEMs out there, so the brand name doesn't really make that much of a difference - Acer or Toshiba or whoever will use whichever manufacturer they get the best deal with so build quality per model is going to be hit or miss.

The best advice anyone could really give you would be to see/try out the notebook in person yourself - and whichever one you like the best you should get. I realize that it's a whole lot harder to do this and decide on a model sight-unseen. The specs of the machines are one thing, but some important factors would be: do you like the screen? Do you like the feel of the keyboard and touchpad?

Either of those machines should run Win XP very well provided you clean out the crapware or do a clean install.

 

[gus6464]

I guess you haven't seen a new toshiba lately. They have so much bloatware on them preinstalled it is ridiculous. And the Acer's actally come with less crap installed than Toshiba. But it doesn't matter as you always do a wipe and do a clean install anyways when you buy any laptop.

As far as build quality goes Toshiba is not what it used to be. They have come down a lot in reliability and build quality, whereas Acer has actually improved. I say if the acer is cheaper go with that one and upgrade the ram. Nowadays you can buy 4gigs of laptop ram online for $100 and 2gb for $50.

 

[TC91]

definitely go for the acer, you can just upgrade the ram for pretty cheap if u need to. the acer has the updated santa rosa platform (gma x3100 vs gma 950 too) and it has the much better cpu, one that is 64bit too, in case u ever plan to upgrade to a 64bit os in the future.

 

[Soubriquet]

Thanks very much for your sound advice, puke, gus & TC. Some useful points you raised & it looks like the acer wins.

 

[oynaz]

My latest experience with Acer was 2 years ago. At that time, the build quality was so bad that it was downright ridiculous. A have to this date not met a single Acer-owner who have not had to RMA their laptop.

Based on this, I would stay away from Acer, but things might have changed.

 

[TC91]

i love my acer 5920. really sweet build quality and looks, and everything works perfectly. the newer acers have much better build quality that their previous counterparts.