Acer Aspire AM3800-U3802A Pentium dual-core E5200(2.50GHz) 4GB DDR3 640GB Intel GMA X4500 Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit - Retail

Reviewed By: on 12/28/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Will tackle anything you throw at it. Handles WoW CODMW2 LFD2 perfectly. I personally upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and it handles all the visualization. I think its the best piece of equipment you can get for less than 450 bucks.

Cons: Comes with vista... Eww

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Not bad!

Reviewed By: Thing on 12/14/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

Pros: - It is very quiet, I can barely hear it. It also runs cool
- DDR3 memory is a big plus, I can reuse when upgrading to more modern systems (i5/i7)
- You can squeeze a total of 3HDDs in it (see cons)
- PSU ended up being 300w instead of 250w spec'd
- Windows 7 came quickly after, Acer pays for S&H. Migration was painless, the 'custom install' option means a quicker, clean installation with no bloatware on Win7! yay!
- Better than expected build quality for an entry level computer
- Handles 1080p MKV and BluRay just fine, so far it played all media I threw at it
- Top USB ports are handy and "media tray" are quite handy

Cons: - CPU and GPU are weak, so upgrade may be imminent... Do your homework to figure whether that suits you.
- I had to remove the plastic front panel to install the BD drive (not a big deal, but I had to figure that out by myself)
- Challenge cabling/wiring with 3 HDDs + 2 Optical drives
- Some bloatware preinstalled, but easy to remove
- Acer support was not very helpful
- Goes without saying, but anyways: proprietary mother board and BIOS are limited in tweaks / community support

Other Thoughts: I really like the fact that it uses DDR3 memory so I can reuse that whenever I decide to move to i5/i7. For now it fits my needs (as a basic HTPC). It handles 1080p well, Blu-Ray and HDHomeRun tuners with no problem (but don't expect to multitask when doing that, and don't expect games either).

I had issues with Wake-On-LAN and Vista, contacted Acer support and that was a joke... they were clueless about what WOL is and refused to support this feature (WOL works fine with Win7).

My setup has 2x2TB HDDs in RAID1 and the stock 640GB drive serving the OS and temporary media. I also have a cheap BD drive, everything plugged to the stock 300w PSU and it is working great.

I have noticed that Media Center on Win7 gets closer to the machine's limit, though. It does play all media fine with no glitches, but the UI gets a bit unresponsive at times (probably when it is fetching audio/video info while navigating)

All in all I think it is a good value: 5 eggs as it delivered what was e

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Reviewed By: rock36 on 12/11/2009

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Have owned for a month. Quiet & fast compared to my Athlon 1.3GHz which served me well. I like the extra USB's and particularly the convenient location of the 4 on the top of the case. Not into gaming and graphics very acceptable for my applications. Eligible for Win 7 upgrade. Has DDR3 memory versus DDR2. Good variety of available ports.

Cons: None to date

Other Thoughts: Wireless would be attractive with this unit. Bought this through Newegg and am very pleased with their service.

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