Pros: The specs for this laptop are top notch when considering the price. I've had it for just under a week so far and it has performed surprising well at everything I've tested.

Cons: The only 'con' that I've come across has been mentioned ad nauseum. The bloatware. It wasn't quite as irritating to me, but if I had purchased this and given it to my girlfriend prior to removing all the unnecessary garbage then it would have become a headache. I don't see that this merits me removing an egg for the review though. Seems like a lazy reason.

Other Thoughts: This was a replacement laptop for an old Dell and for the price (Plus free shipping, thanks Newegg) I still spent less then my girlfriend spent on her original. Not too mention that the specs on this laptop are close to double what she has been using.

Pros: Lightweight, Nice Black layout, Vibrant screen, Decent dual processor, good integrated graphics, very nice speakers and best of all you get these great features for an affordable price. Worth 600-700 dollars easily

Cons: none as of yet, fan can get a little loud but its not even noticeable when you get used to it.

Other Thoughts: pick one of these up you wont be dissapointed

Pros: Its small, light. Powerfull CPU+GPU. Decent size RAM and good amount of hard drive space.

Cons: After running it playing games, then feeling each spot on the back of the laptop then taking off the back panel to take a look. I have come to the conclusion as to why its so hot.

The hottest spot of all is the hard drive, the way the fan is set up, it will blow air from inside the laptop sucking from the hard drive area onto the cpus heat sink thus not cooling the heat sink at all but washing extremly hot air onto the heatsink.

DONT TRY THIS IF NOT EXPERT
My solution is going to be simple, i am going to make my own custom vents directly under the hard drive with a drill. So its going to have multiple holes so heat can soak out at a faster rate, at its current set up the plastic panel is just soaking up the heat and acting as a sweater with no real venting besides the cpu heat sink sucking up its hot air.

I could be wrong but i believe the CPU and GPU are connected to the same heatsink via a copper heat pipe, so both sort of run hot due to the hard drives abnormal temp

Other Thoughts: Some say the fan is really loud. On mine the fan is so quiet i cant hear it, i suspect thats a bad thing due to when the bio reconizes the heat level is unacceptable it kicks the fan into higher gear which makes more noise.

Mine on the other hand does not do this, i would have been okay with more noise.

Pros: Good value, well-supported in Ubuntu, much more solid feel than my old Acer (Aspire 3100.)

Cons: Small screen, but I chose the trade-off of weight vs. size.

Other Thoughts: Very pleased with hardware support in Ubuntu (setup for dual boot.) Wireless and media card reader work out of the box in 9.04. The "restricted" driver from NVidia will be offered after first software update and 3D acceleration works great with it. I haven't tried the headphone or line-in jacks, someone mentioned there might be some work needed there.

This is a pretty fast machine especially in comparison to my old Sempron-based system. Drive is a good speed too, important to me since I encrypt my partitions which adds some overhead.

All in all, recommended for someone looking for a relatively small and fast system at a good price.

Pros: Specs are outstanding for a low-cost, all purpose laptop. I am an AMD and nVidia fan, and though this isn't a gaming laptop, the graphics have 256MB dedicated (much more shared of course) and nice sftw that beats the heck out of the cruddy Intel GMA graphics in so many low-cost laptops. Generous 320GB, 3GB RAM, EXCELLENT feeling keyboard with slight dips in the key caps which keep fingers from slipping off towards the neighboring keys for non-touch typists like me. LOVE the size of this laptop - I went from a 15.4 and was afraid I would miss the real-estate, but I don't even notice the diff and the machine is lighter and easier to use overall and just feels BETTER. Built-in webcam and mic, and apparent support for wifi N (on G and haven't tried that). Nice case and I like that the interior is not glossy because it doesn't gather oily fingerprints. A near-perfect machine with 2 (maybe 3) caveats... but they're significant enough to cost it an egg.

Cons: FAN NOISE FAN NOISE FAN NOISE!! This machine almost never runs without a fan going unless you sit and read a webpage and don't touch anything. And while the lowest speed is fairly quiet, the succeeding speeds are much louder, with the highest speed the loudest fan I have ever heard in any laptop I have ever used. Annoyingly loud. And it doesn't take much to get it there and keep it there. I was DL'ing OS upgrades and the fan stayed on at its loudest the entire time. It was so annoying I considered selling it. I am looking into undervolting and might also try to find a different, quieter better made fan, if anyone makes one. Also the TOUCHPAD is unusually LONG so it takes several swipes of the finger to get the cursor across the screen! I wish it had a calibration adjustment to compensate. The Symantecs settings don't to it. Finally, I am not sure this wifi card supports N even though it was advertised as such. I have G but Device Mgr doesn't show it as having N capability.

Other Thoughts: The front of this machine comes to a sharp angle making it uncomfortable to rest your wrists against. I roll up a towel to rest my wrists on. But the things I love about the machine (keyboard, nVidia, size, weight, case, features) make me want to find solutions to the rest. Some things I will just get used to, but the fan problem needs to be fixed. I won't live with that noise all the time. Also, the machine has vents on the bottom where it draws up cool air into the case, then shoots it out the back vents. So you can't place this laptop directly on your lap or a pillow.... it needs to sit on a hard surface. I place a coffee tray on my lap with a pillow under that. For what I paid $449 + tax and a free Win7 upgrade, I'll be happy when I fix the fan issue! I have a Tosh L305-S5933 & you can't hear the fan EVER! Vista probably makes this mach run hotter than XP would, but I'm waiting on Win7 to dump Vista or I woulda loaded XP. Anyway, aside from the fan it's nearly perfect.

Pros: Very nice System. Able to do everything I purchased it to do.

Cons: BIOS Selection: You really don't have many choices.

BIOS AHCI: One thing I had a problem with is in BIOS, the SATA setting was set to AHCI. Windows Vista Business wouldn't install with that setting turned on. You need to set it to IDE for installation.

BIOS Shared Video Memory: In BIOS you can only select between 64mb and 256mb.

Install & Recovery Disk: You need to use Acer's installed software on the OS, and create a Recovery Disk, and also a Driver Disk. I made both. It's a good idea to make both, so you have the choice of installing other OS's and just carry the software and drivers on a DVD or CD's.

Other Thoughts: If you need drivers for a different OS, or want to create your own custom CD (The Acer Driver Disk has a collection of Software that you may not need), goto http://gd.panam.acer.com/home/
You can choose a Windows Vista, and XP for both x64 and x32.

Pros: Good price. more than enuf for surfin the web.

Cons: battery life not that great 2.5 hours or so. lots of acer bloatware.

Pros: Excellent Price. Solid Case and keyboard. Screen size is a good balance between portability and usability. The blue/black lid is a nice look.

Cons: Didn't worry about Vista and the other software. Just popped in the Windows 7 CD and installed very quickly. All drivers installed automatically except for the GPU. Windows 7 is a must have! Fan is a little loud at times (compared to my macbook) but is not irregular.

nvidia geforce 9M series drivers installed here:
www.nvidia.com/page/drivers

Other Thoughts: No better $500 laptop out there! Should have bought it while it was $430, ugh.

Pros: Beautifully clear and crisp LCD; plenty of RAM, storage and processing power for all the tasks I've thrown at it thus far; light-weight/portable size; comfortable keyboard; and attractive finishing. The webcam's quality is almost unreal - the last built-in cam I used on an old laptop was barely recognizable as a human staring back, let alone myself.

So far this is a terrific computer - for $450 the hardware is unbeatable. I highly recommend this product.

Also the promotional Acer deal to get Windows 7 free in October is nice. I'm running RC now.

Cons: None so far! I've never had a glossy screen before - we'll see if that gets irritating or not.

Also I'm not a huge fan of the bright neon green plastic decals. They're ok I guess.

ps. Everyone complained about the Acer "bloat-ware" - while this irritates me too, its no reason to give this computer a lesser rating. Buy this computer for the hardware, not Vista and the useless Acer "sales pitch" applications and games.

Other Thoughts: I purchased this computer for school and office work while on the go. I have a high powered desktop at home and at work, and figured this computer will allow me to take notes in class, participate in group projects, and travel more easily.

I booted into Vista and immediately made the recovery DVDs. Next I rebooted, deleted all partitions, and installed Windows 7 RC. This went terrifically except for the touchpad, vga, chipset, and audio drivers which I installed manually from the site after the fact (I used Vista drivers no prob). Next I went and entered to receive my free copy of Windows 7 in October, using Acer's promotional deal.

I've installed all the drivers, Firefox, Office 2007, Adobe Suite, AVG anti-virus and all have gone swimmingly. I am a life-long XP user (and occasional Xubuntu) so I had been fearing the switch. So far so good - everything is in a logical place and I'm pleased with my decision. I'd recommend RC for anyone frustrated with Vista.

Pros: This is an update to my previous post. This laptop is still my desktop replacement.

And MOST IMPORTANT. if you were like me you skimmed through the pictures and think the top of the case is black well it's actually BLUE. It's a strong, dark blue color. Not really a plus but not really a con. Better than a basic black like most of em.

Cons: Now after it is has been over 2 months I don't have any cons to report.

Some people complain about battery life well I only have an hour for lunch at work so the 2+ hours it provides is plenty.

Other Thoughts: I purchased a cooling pad because it would get quite hot after gaming for a few hours. I picked up a $15 cooling pad from a comp store and if i position it so the cooling pad sticks out the back of the laptop an inch then much more heat is being drawn out and it stays barely warm on the bottom when I check it.

Also internet explorer was giving me junk errors for trying to check my bank account 3 weeks ago. Never happened before so I ditched it for Firefox and no problems since.

I'm recommending this laptop to everyone.