Acer Aspire S7-191-6640 11.6" Touchscreen Convertible Ultrabook

Pros: looks nice.

Cons: -wifi issues: wifi will disconnect itself (or "limited access") at random intervals, requiring manual disable/enable of the adapter or a reboot. it's unacceptable, and a google search reveals it's a somewhat common problem.
-clunky extra battery, defeats the "ultraportable" idea
-touch function somewhat useless on a small screen that doesn't fold back/around. Nice for show, not incredibly useful.
-1080p is great - but on an 11.6" screen, it's overkill.
-Windows 8 needs work.

Other Thoughts: I really wanted to like this thing. I probably would if the wifi worked a little more often. With a small SSD, much of my stored stuff is on the network, and I can't access it when the wifi is down.

Pros: Portability and very crisp screen. At first I did not like the keyboard but it grew on me after about 30 minutes. As someone else did, I disabled RAID and went to legacy BIOS and booted up GNU/Linux (Xubuntu 12.10). I was very happy to see the majority of the function keys working. Wifi works great and I was happy to see the micro HDMI working out of the box as well.

Cons: Battery life. but It's not that bad. Having to pay that Windows fee. But hey, it was a good sale

Other Thoughts: If you're a Linux guy with good eyes and you need a good portable machine, this isn't a bad choice.
I'm not using the touch screen so I can't say much about that

Pros: Lightweight, sturdy design, high resolution is beautiful, included mouse is a nice bonus, overall performance is fast though I haven't benchmarked it. Boxing is similar to Apple experience. Got a good deal, paid $900 with free shipping on 3/21/13. Macbook Air at same time and similar specs (albeit inferior screen res) was $1150 (before tax, shipping).

Cons: Keyboard is not very responsive, on my unit the Enter button is especially so. Layout of keys are strange, for example, left/right arrows are divided to accommodate pgup and pgdn. Further, if you use home/end alot, it's nearly useless as they don't get dedicated buttons (they are Fn keys). Also CTRL+SHIFT+HOME misbehaves, maybe because Fn is required in the process. Keyboard is quiet which is good, but productivity took a hit from the above shortcomings.

Battery is short (<2hrs standard, below 4 hrs with extended battery). Ext batt is definitely an afterthought. It is stable and does as it should, but looks like it was made by a 3rd party (as does the mouse). It shouldn't be too hard to get 4hrs with a built-in battery, one would think.

Lid is difficult to open from a closed position. On flip side it seems like a safe mechanism to make it that way.

Bloatware comes standard, but thx to Win8, removing them took just seconds.

Other Thoughts: Overall I will continue to use and see if I adapt to the keyboard. If not I may have to return. My advice: if you care at all about keyboard quality, the 11" Acer Aspire s7, unfortunately isn't up to snuff.

Pros: Lightweight, metal exterior shell, good performance when everything works.

Cons: I have owned the previous model of this ultrabook for just over a year and I have now had the hard drive die and the backlighting on the screen go out. Luckily, if a hard drive failure is ever lucky, the drive died while the machine was under warranty so Acer repaired the machine free of charge. Now the backlight has gone out 13 months after my purchase date leaving me with a near useless ultrabook. Two major failures in just over a year on a machine that gets very little use and has been taken care of is completely unacceptable to me. I would not recomend an Acer product after my experience with this system.

Other Thoughts: Avoid Acer brand ultrabook

Pros: GREAT little Ultrabook! This thing is nearly as light as my Surface! And talk about speed, this thing flies! 12 seconds from clicking Reboot to logging in! Also, this thing isn't much thicker than my Nexus 4 phone is (ignoring rubber feet)!

* RAID0 SSD Zooms (Engadget measured ~925MB/s which is ~7.4gbps!)
* The 1080p screen is gorgeous!
* There are a LOT of reports that WiFi doesn't work well. They're right and wrong. WiFi itself isn't buggy, it just comes with buggy drivers by default. Upgrade to the Atheros 10.0.0.217.v3 (or newer - these are from Dec 28, 2012 so this isn't exactly "new" news) and all is good. Once you upgrade, absolutely no problems anymore!
* The keyboard isn't as bad as I thought! It's actually pretty good!
* Large touchpad with lots of gesture support (the gestures work very well)
* Battery life doesn't seem to be as bad as complaints that I've read. I'm pleased. I can kill the internal battery in 2 hours if I try but it's more likely to last 3-4 hours. Nearly double that with the external battery!
* An external battery? Awesome!!
* NOBODY can complain that this doesn't come with enough "stuff". I love the carrying case, especially!
* VERY quiet. I've yet to hear the fans despite blowing away Windows, installing Visual Studio, Office, SQL Server and other heavy software. (BTW, took me less than 30 minutes to install VS 2012 Prem + SQL 2012 Dev + Office 2013 Plus!)
* Did I say this thing is fast?!
* Hands-down the best deal around on an Ultrabook right now!
* Small laptop right at my favorite hard-to-find size!
* Usually smaller ultrabooks tend to cost more than larger ultrabooks but this is in fact MUCH cheaper than its 13" big brother with practically identical specs!
* Speakers are pretty nice for a laptop - best I've heard recently
* Well-balanced weight. By this, I mean that I can rest the laptop on a desk, pull up on the fairly-high-resistance lid yet the light weight of the laptop is still enough to keep the entire thing from tipping back until you hit the "90-degree point".
* The "90-degree point" is great! When the screen is about vertical, the resistance to open it increases substantially. This keeps your screen from wobbling while you use the touchscreen. This was *very* well thought-out!
* The microSD slot (supporting the largest 64GB SDXC cards, which I have one of) is great as a second-tier storage system. This is PERFECT for your Movies, MP3s, ISOs, and other large files that you want to keep on your laptop but are afraid to because of the limited 128GB SSD in it.
* If you want, you can un-RAID the SSD to give yourself access to two 64GB Drives. Some people will want to do this to put Windows on the C: and have a D: for other data (or other operating systems).
* Backlit keyboard is nice at night!
* The glass extends beyond the LCD allowing Windows 8 charms and other gestures to happen comfortably from "off-screen" to "on-screen".
* This thing is surprisingly *not* flimsy!

Cons: * Only 4GB of RAM. I REALLY REALLY REALLY wish I could have 8GB in this but it's not an option and you'll NEVER be able to upgrade it!
* Only a 128GB option. Personally, that's enough for now and I plan to upgrade later to a similar RAID0 256GB drive (that this laptop's big brother, the S7-391 has as an option).
* The touchpad is sometimes quirky. I've figured out the problem and it's kind of a feature as well. My problem is when I start using the touchpad near the top, usually to move the mouse down, it's "unresponsive" but it's actually performing a "swipe down" gesture (usually on my desktop) which does nothing including doesn't move the mouse pointer. I just need to train myself to not start using the touchpad near the top if I want to move the mouse cursor. However, given that I've only had this for ~1.5 days so far, it's still annoying. I'm sure I'll train myself to get over it.
* Backlit keyboard is annoying in "in-between" lighting. The lit characters have a very low contrast to the silver keys making you wish you could actually turn off the back-lighting in these "in-between" lighting situations.
* The external battery is a little quirky to get plugged in right. I'm concerned (not fearful) about the longevity of the power port mostly because I've repaired them on numerous other laptops that didn't have a quirky-to-plug-in external battery.
* 1080p will be too high of a resolution for some people on such a small screen in Windows. Metro apps are fine but reading text in a browser and icons in apps are a bit small. That said, I'm fine with it and many others will be, too. Just don't expect big text and big icons - get a lower-reslution screen for that.
* This doesn't give you "all day" battery life like some expect. That said, it's unreasonable for an Ultrabook this small to do so. This Ultrabook is about its smallness and lightness, not it's uber battery. Get something else if you need 14 hour battery life.
* Reminds some people of a Macbook Air. I consider this a con because I really despise Apple for the way the treat both customers and competitors.
* My USB-to-Ethernet adapter doesn't work properly. It acts like I unplug and replug it in every 2 seconds (Windows detects, that frequently, that a new USB device is plugged in!). I'm going to have to contact Acer to get a new one. Annoying (since I need ethernet at work) but simple enough to fix.
* Only a 1.7GHz and 1.8GHz option for the CPU. It sure would be nice to get something a little more powerful in here, even at the cost of battery life. That said, I've yet to feel like the thing has a slow CPU. The SSD situation really does make up for a lot!
* The included bluetooth mouse is quirky because of its power-saving features. It shuts itself off after a few minutes of idleness. When it does so, it's sometimes difficult to get it to re-connect. Simply flipping the switch off and back on isn't usually good enough. You usually have to turn it off for ~15 seconds and then turn it

Other Thoughts: 1) Be sure to upgrade your WiFi drivers or you will be very unhappy!

If you plan to re-install Windows (I found it to perform better after doing so to remove the pre-installed bloat):
1) Just in case, grab a 16GB USB drive and create a "Recovery Drive" just in case you need it or Acer support nags you because you don't have it.
2) TIP: Use the included Acer Recovery tool to save all apps and drivers off to USB media before you format/repartition your drive(s). It makes this *VERY* easy!
3) F2 accesses the BIOS
4) If you want to install Linux or non-Windows 8, disable EFI in the BIOs. If you want to re-install Windows 8 from a USB stick, be sure it's formatted with FAT32 and not NTFS.
5) In the previous step, the WiFi drivers are under what you would guess would be the Bluetooth drivers! (strange)
6) You can unRAID the SSD drives if you wish but you lose the performance boost.
7) You won't need another Windows 8 key if you wish to install your own Windows 8. The laptop automagically enters that and activates for you!

Also, if you're like me and want an extra power adapter, you can look on various sites and pay $75 or more for "official" ones but don't do it! You can simply go straight to Acer's Store site to get the real deal for fifty bucks, just look for the S7-391's power adapter. As far as I can tell, Newegg doesn't sell them, unfortunately.

Pros: This ultrabook has stunning looks. The build of the machine feels very solid. Screen resolution is awesome for visual delight, as well as productivity. Had trouble installing Ubuntu 12.04.2 with UEFI, but eventually decided to disable RAID an go with legacy BIOS. Everything is working well now. The performance is great.

Cons: Battery life without attaching the awkward extended battery is not good (around 3 hours). The adapter connector seems a little flimsy.

Other Thoughts: I had my eyes on this machine for a while. The MSRP is a bit high IMHO, but with 25% off from Newegg, the decision was much easier. There are very few choices if you want to go with 11.6" 1080p screens, and this one is probably one of the best. Looking forward to doing some personal projects on it.

Pros: I have not had any problems with the hardware on this system. Windows 8 worked well, and seemed kind of fun but ultimately I need to use it for work so I wiped out Windows and installed Ubuntu linux.
Battery life is about 3 hours without the external battery, more than twice that with the attached battery. Screen is beautiful. Touchscreen is very responsive. Body seems very rigid and strong (aluminum). The keys are backlit which is nice for working in a darkened room.
I did not have any of the issues with wireless disconnects that another reviewer mentioned.
Touchscreen under Ubuntu Unity has all gestures recognized (3-finger window move + resize, 4-finger Unity menu open)

Cons: I wish the battery life were longer, but it is a core i5 and it's driving a big display.
If Windows 8 were on a separate partition instead of spanning a Raid 0 array, I wouldn't have had to wipe it to put on my work OS. It would have been fun to play with more.

Other Thoughts: In order to have working bluetooth, I had to install the daily build of Ubuntu 13.04. Make sure you follow the directions for installing with UEFI, if you want to reinstall Windows some day for dual boot (at your own expense, unfortunately.)

Pros: Very compact and light Good quality Full HD touch screen screen. Comes with clumsy external battery for free, bluetooth mouse and soft case. Relatively quiet when under load, almost inaudible with light work. Two USB 3.0 ports. Video camera. 128GB SSD. The processor is dual core with 2 logical cores and is powerful enough for a normal user. You can run virtual machines but the memory is limited. Sound coming from speakers is good enough and loud enough for Skype conferencing.

Cons: There is a problem with wireless controller that gets disconnected from wireless access point with no reason almost every hour. In order to re-connect airplane mode must be toggled. Read reviews on Amaz*on regarding this problem with S7-191. Keyboard is silver and often is impossible to see the symbols on the keys, especially when backlit is not bright enough. Battery light is not good, that's why Acer included external battery pack for free so you can get about 4 hours battery life with this clunky battery attached to elegant and thin body. Screen doesn't have Gorilla glass as 13" model. Power button is on weird location (next to USB port), you can easily press it by mistake simply by moving the laptop or lifting it. Comes with enough cr*pware pre-installed like Tangent games or some Acer services. Only 4GB memory that is not upgradeable, but I already knew it. Screen brightness is not the best compared with many other ultrabooks, both previous and latest generation.

Other Thoughts: To expand the storage, use 64GB MicroSD card permanently installed. You'll need a 16GB USB flash drive to create recovery media that can be used to restore Windows 8 on SSD to factory condition. You can downgrade Windows to 7 if you wish and there is a setting in the BIOS allowing you to disable UEFI. Touchscreen is a bit overkill since most of the legacy applications were not designed for it and hence are not touch-friendly. USB-to-LAN adapter that came in the package is 100MBit only. Overall, it is a nice ultrabook that is light and pretty but only if you can live with shorter than average battery life, problematic wireless connectivity, not-so great keyboard, low screen brightness and...if you have good sight (text often is so tiny so you can't read it without magnifying glass) :-)