Pros: Watching football with a friend, he mentioned wanting more memory for his Gateway laptop. I said, hey, Newegg has a sale, he said, here's a $20, just do it. A week later he's running faster with 2 GB and gets change from his Jackson.

Cons: I paid over $60 for my laptop memory a little over a year ago. These things will happen (and that's good, actually). Oh, and the Eagles lost.

Overall Review: No excuse for not upgrading. Why, when I was a boy do you know how much 2 GB would have cost? How many rooms it would have filled?

Pros: Decent processor, compares favorably on benchmark sites to other laptop CPUs. 8 GB of memory, while seemingly not expandable, should be plenty for most folks in this class. 256 GB SSD -- Well I think its actually more like 240, but that's enough for me -- plenty of space left after cleaning up. Screen -- Crisp hi-res, HDMI port lets you expand that to anything you'd like. Touchscreen -- Hard to get in this price range, very stable and responsive. Graphics -- I'm not a gamer so see no problem with what's in the box. Sound -- Not bad for a laptop, really. Good selection of USB ports. Memory card slot. Small power adapter that runs cool. Battery life seems as good as advertised so far, around 8-ish hours, machine runs cool. Mic(s) -- Stereo mics, not sure how that helps but why not? WebCam -- Haven't used it much but seems just fine. WiFi -- The latest 'ac' tech, I connected at over 800 Mbps to my router! Also quite good at picking up hot spots. Bluetooth -- Latest standard, I'm getting a BT mouse so won't have to use a port for that. Physicals -- It's convertible, usable as a tablet, thin and nice looking, feels really firm and solid. Touchpad -- Pretty large, works well, but I still like mice. Backlit keyboard -- Very nice in the dark, but see later.

Cons: Keyboard -- I have to agree with other reviewers, this is not the best you can get. I'm getting used to the somewhat shallow key travel, but the keys seem to need pretty firm depressions or characters are skipped. That's particularly annoying when typing those accursed blind password fields. The key backlighting is reset every time you put it away and is not configurable. I like one reviewer's suggestion to put a dot above the F10 key. Weight -- A little heavy if you are using it as a tablet or insist on minimum heft. Optical drive -- None, but I have a plug-in external I got for cheap online, and how much do you really need that in the machine these days? Power connector -- Really small, like 3mm x 1mm, you'll want to be careful not to snag your cord, wouldn't want to damage the jack -- that happened to my old laptop. Be careful. No VGA port but you can get an HDMI to VGA converter pretty cheap if you want to use an older monitor. No Ethernet, pretty much assumes you WILL use Wi-Fi. Oh yeah, no floppy, parallel or serial ports, modem or phone jack. If you still live in 1990. Refurb warranty is only 3 months. Some bloatware, not sure yet how much of it is useful or can be jettisoned. Didn't come with latest Win 10 Anniversary edition, from Aug 2016.

Overall Review: My old laptop was an Acer (well, still is, now relegated to basement duty for convenience tasks (email, etc.)) , which I upgraded as well as I could (memory, SSD, software), but after 10 years it was time. Physically it was getting a little beat as I'd take it everywhere. Sometimes Acer doesn't get the very best reviews, but I've found what you get is pretty cost-effective. And with the abuse my 10-year-old machine took, can't really complain. The NewEgg price at the time of purchase was the very best anywhere, and the rebate plus other kickbacks and CC bennies, with free shipping and no (well, ahem, deferred) tax had this at my door for an eventual net $364. Unbeatable! Received this in pretty much a plain cardboard box with just the power adapter and a few sheets of paper. The shipping wasn't quite as fast as I might have liked since I seem to have fallen into the New Year's weekend hole -- I mean, if you just bought a sparkling new toy, even waiting an hour seems like too long. If you need documents, go online to download and print the manual (if you have a duplexing printer that does 'booklet', that works out nicely and doesn't use a lot of paper). Physically although a refurb, mine is in perfect condition. Although only a 3-mo refurb warranty (I deferred buying the extended, I mean that cuts into the great deal, after all), my credit card should extend that by a year, hopefully that will never be an issue. The out-of-box experience is like a new machine, Windows 10 wants you to do the final setup. But as mentioned in the cons, it wasn't the latest Anniversary edition, however you just let Windows Update take care of that and after the initial download, the update/install process zipped by in under half an hour, much better than I've seen on other machines. Thanks to that SSD, I'm sure. Since I'm used to using Win 10, I have no problems with it, I know that's a controversial issue, but not for me. Stable, no crashes, it really seems to 'just work'. After the update, you'll see a chunk of your space eaten up by the old Windows installation -- because I'd been used to running the latest with no problems, I chose to clean that up (just standard Windows cleanup) and that released a lot of space. I did some partitioning to meet my needs, even that goes quickly on an SSD. Still not sure about the bloatware -- Acer includes some support and utility-type stuff and trial software, although I trashed the trial stuff, I'm uncertain of the other things and how useful it might all be. Actually, it found some driver updates that Windows didn't. One of the bigger tasks facing a new machine is transferring and installing all your old stuff. I chose to pull the SSD from the old machine and attach it via a SATA to USB connector and start by copying over my download directory, documents, pictures, all that stuff. One could use networking too. Then went through installing JUST what I wanted -- you know what they say about moving, if there's boxes you haven't opened since your LAST move, you probably don't need it. So that's a good way to clean house, only install what you need now. At that time you'll want to check for the latest, and especially if there are 64--bit versions if you are moving from a 32-bit machine. It's all actually a rather fun and cleansing process. I was on the fence about a touchscreen, a friend says he rarely uses it on his laptop. But this is a convertible so that's part of being a tablet. I do many of those online survey things (helps pay for the toys, eh?) and reaching out and touching all the check box thingies is a lot faster than using a mouse. Also, Edge has that neat drawing feature, not to mention other software that would utilize that. So although I've had it for only a little over a week, most everything about it is positive, perhaps the exception I mentioned in the Cons being the keyboard. Not enough to subtract an egg for, maybe just some of the white. It stays cool, even when I've caught the CPU going into 'turbo' mode to do some heavier crunching. Haven't heard the fan (is there a fan?) yet. The display is tack-sharp, but because of the resolution, the system comes with a recommended text size set at 150%. That makes things more readable but there is an issue in Windows where some text displays, in either programs or Windows dialogs, appear fuzzy or out-of-focus. There's discussions of that online with various workarounds, but this is NOT an issue with the hardware so don't blame Acer. When doing my research, I find benchmark sites to be useful, because these days you can't judge a processor by model number. And although the i5-6200U isn't the Ferrari of the track, it posts good numbers. Summary, in my opinion so far this baby does everything I need, what more would I get with a MS Surface or Mac for a whole lot more coin? Maybe even a whole bitcoin more... Fully recommended. For now, but ask me in a few months.

Pros: I'm reiterating my initial review as this was a Christmas present; crisp, sharp, bright, fits on the desk better than the bulky CRT, less power. Can't imagine a better image. Very satisfied, for a fabulous (Black Friday) price.

Cons: It wasn't free (!?), but the shipping was!

Overall Review: Warning note: Older graphics may not support 1440x900 resolution, dad's 5-ish year old computer on-board graphics ran it, but not at native res. Expecting this, found a great deal on an ATI Radeon 9200 (had to be PCI for this machine), and it's perfect. One reviewer was disappointed in the image quality, most likely not running at native res -- that is critical for LCD displays (just like laptops).

Pros: This is a future present so is not in full use yet, but to check it out I did try it with my (coincidentally) Acer laptop. Results are magnificent (after I set the resolution properly)! Images look richer and deeper on this monitor than the laptop screen, even with no tweaking. No deceased pixels (or parrots). Terrific deal for (oh, Newegg doesn't want price quotes, let's just say a squeak below 3 digits) and free shipping, no tax. Better than your average warranty at 3 years too. Other than obvious features like bigger and cheaper, built-in TV tuner, and a slot for toast, hard to say what could be improved.

Cons: As others have noted, no DVI, but right now don't have that output anyway. I'd only knock off a half-egg for that, so based on what it purports to be, I'll leave it at a fiver.

Overall Review: I got this as a Christmas present for my dad; he has a perfectly serviceable CRT monitor and has oft remarked about its bulk and how it consumes his desk; yet he couldn't justify dropping coin for a flat-panel LCD. So that's the deal about presents, right? Something a person would really enjoy but hesitate to buy for themselves. Maybe I'll post another review after Dec. 25th.

Pros: Got this for my Acer Vista laptop which came with 2x512 MB, but with 256 MB carved out for the integrated video, that's a little short - I did see a lot of PAGEFILE activity. Got it in under 34 hours(!), installed quick and easy, and performance is snappier.

Cons: Bit more expensive than buying 2 separate 1GB modules (non-kit), but I was paranoid about getting a matched pair for dual-channel operation.

Overall Review: I think this could be shipped cheaper in a padded USPS envelope instead of a big UPS box.