Acer Laptop Aspire AS8930-6174 Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.40 GHz) 4 GB Memory 500 GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 18.4" Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

Pros: Very big screen, fingerprint reader works great, 500 gig hdd is nice for a laptop, plus it has a spot for a second drive to be installed, DDR3 ram is nice as well. The only game I've tried on it so far is Call of Duty: World at War, and it handles that very nicely imo. The 9600M GT video card seems to hold its own in gaming and what not. I also liked the available ports (HDMI, eSATA, and plenty of USB ports).

Cons: The Cinedash controls to the left of the keyboard only work with WMP, so that's kind of annoying because that was a big selling point for me, honestly. Also, the laptop didn't come with any of the discs for installation, and it cost $19.95 to get them from Acer, that made me a little upset, too, seeing as how I paid for the stinking thing, I should have the discs provided along with it. Also, along with that, most of their support seemed to be outsourced to people with Indian accents, but I eventually got to somebody that sounded pretty American. It came loaded with a bunch of bloatware on it, plus the hard drive was partitioned into two 250 gigs, that was annoying as well.

Overall Review: All around, I'm very pleased with the machine, even though I've only had it for about a week.

Pros: For the price this is a great laptop. The features and the functioning of the keys and finger print scan is very nice.

Cons: So far after I loaded everything on the laptop the partition failed. Could not get it to fix it self. But NewEgg was great and replaced it right away with an new.

Overall Review: I did buy the warranty for any future issues.

Pros: Fast, GREAT picture (arrived with no dead/stuck pixels and hard to overstate just how beautiful the display is), good sound ( I give it an 8/10), lots of hard drive space, great graphics card and processor, SOLID construction...overall a VERY nice machine. Lots of extras I didnt expect from a laptop at this price. Went from the 5920 to this and am SO happy with this laptop. No problems being a desktop replacment. Fingerprint reader, full numpad, a crisper picture than my trinitron crt, low heat, very long range wifi, respectable battery life(3hrs+ for normal browsing and media), absolutely the best laptop I've owned. If you need a portable gaming machine and all-in-one desktop replacement for mobile use, this is it!

Cons: Not as portable as I'm used to (not outrageous, but it IS rather large), but really not bad considering how well this thing works. A pleasure to pack the extra couple pounds around. The only real con to this is Vista, but it actually runs pretty smooth on this machine. Installed Windows7 RC in a dual-boot config, and am really pleased with it on this machine (it's Vista done RIGHT).

Overall Review: Some people have mentioned the "spongy" keyboard (in other reviews of a similar model with the slower processor). Yes it flexes a very slight bit, but honestly I like the feel of this keyboard. Only notice it if I'm actually looking at the keyboard when I'm typing-a feature, not a flaw in my opinion. The smooth gloss finish is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but the sleeve of my shirt takes them right off-I look at the screen, not the backside of the display anyway =p

Pros: Very large screen. Sound system is great. Lots of disk space. Some Linux compatibility... enough to get you running and online.

Cons: The Harddrive was initially partitioned into two nearly equal 250GB drives. A bit annoying, since Vista didn't want to shrink to main one any smaller. Some annoying Acer bloatware (Vista)... takes ~30minutes to remove. PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys are in strange location.. takes some getting used to. It's a little heavier than my previous laptop (17in screen). Not completely working out of the Box with Linux (Fedora 10... see other thoughts, below).

Overall Review: After removing the bloatware from Vista... threw in my Fedora 10 Live CD. In Fedora 10: Network (wireless and wired) works right away. Screen resolution is to max with the default xorg video drivers (better acceleration with the proprietary nvidia drivers). Keyboard response is a bit sluggish (works fine in Vista). Audio drivers need some simple tweaking to get it working (google it).

Pros: for the features this laptop is a great bang for your buck. most others with the same confige cost more...its has a wonderful display and is great for a desktop replacement...and it is portable as any other laptop..yes its big but suprisingly does not have no more weight to it then smaller say the 15. 6 laptops...the way it is configed you can pretty much throw anything at it and it will hammer through..and has extra space for second hard drive

Cons: well there really are no cons as far i see ..just a would be even sweeter if it came with a blue ray drive...even if it would have costed a hundred or so more would really have been the icing on the cake...and infa red port would have been nice for remotes...the hard drive is partioned into two..would have been better to just have it as one...and the blue tooth has to be turned on every time manually ..no option to leave it enabled..and the wireless is the opposite...it stays on until you turn it off

Overall Review: if you want to get away frm the desktop scene ....this is the notebook....nice large screen...graphics strong...decent cpu power....and you can close lid and move it with out have to mess with cords and monitors

Pros: Just taking this laptop out of the seven layers of packaging I was impressed by its exterior look already. Opening it up and seeing a beautiful 18.4" display was even better. It took about an hour or so to create the factory default backup dvds as well as the Apps/Driver backup dvd. I installed itunes and the side media controls do work with pausing, fast forwarding, etc. I couldn't be happier with this laptop for this price. The speakers are great for a laptop and the HDMI output works great on my 42" Panasonic Viera. The side controls are very convenient and the bluetooth works great especially with my MS laser mouse.

Cons: The Acer programs were a pain in the * to uninstall as it comes with about 12-15 trial games installed aswell as a trial for PowerDirector and MS Office. Maybe I set up the fingerprint reader wrong but it works generally well with some hiccups.

Overall Review: The touchpad for navigating has an interesting texture which I'm not sure I like or dislike yet so for now I'm labeling it different. I guess this could be called the 'Alienware' of Acer but I'm sure many will wish to disagree with that statement. So far I am happy with it but only time will tell down the road how it fairs.

Pros: Since I have owned both an IBM Lenova Thinkpad and Dell E1705, I have to admit that this is by far the best that I have had. I love the performance. I even run Ubuntu off of a flash drive with excellent results. Acer has so far been a great buy, and I would recommend to others.

Cons: By far the biggest drawback of the laptop is Windows Vista which is the worst OS on the planet. I can't wait until Windows 7 becomes available. I wish there would have been an option for Windows XP 64 bit at least. Running Ubuntu pacifies me for now. :-)

Pros: Huge screen, 4GB RAM @1066, big HD, 1GB of graphics, fingerprint reader, and the sound is nice. Also, quite cheap for these specs.

Cons: Heavy, hard to find a case for, and somewhat short battery life. No option for quad-core here on newegg. No free shipping...

Overall Review: @Paul S. I don't mean to be rude, but I found it was extremely odd when you said that acer does not have a tech contact so I went to their site and immediately found it (acer.com > United States > Contacts (lower left) > Products & Services > Local contacts). As for driver downloads, I reached download speeds up to 1.5MB/s (not 1.5Mb/s). Glad I bought it from newegg, got it fast.