Acer Aspire One - DO NOT BUY!!!

[nephilim]

Our problem started in March when we bought 96 Acer Aspire One Netbooks (split into 3 classes of 32) from 2 suppliers - CP Ltd and CCS Media (Both of whom have been fantastic in dealing with our issues, its Acer (but not Acer direct from here) who have been a PITA).

We got them and they started to go good, they ran linux as we couldnt afford to add them to the SLA...anyway, I assigned an IP to them, added the proxy on firefox and all was good. About 3 months after purchase, they started to lose the roaming capability across the board, each of them started dropping connection randomly and would not pick up until they had been shut down, and started after 10 minutes.

Spoke with CP and CCS Media who put me through to the same guy at Acer. We had an Acer engineer come out after 12 weeks of telephone tennis, explaining the problems, sending a few random units to be looked over (and they said they found no fault - surprise surprise). Anyway, said engineer came out and said that the fault lays with the Acer Hardware, not us in anyway (I could have saved him the trip but hey, I wanted an engineer to see the fault!) and I got the paperwork to correspond with this.

Anyway, after another 9 weeks of telephone tennis - and being accused of forging the paperwork from the engineer, threatening letters to stop harrasing the staff for a fault that did not exist, they took a few more random units and I explained what they had to do to see the fault, and FINALLY they could see the fault. So we had ALL 96 sent back, and "Repaired". This itself took 4 weeks and we recieved them back about 2 weeks ago, they have since developed another fault.

This time they do not pick up the signal as well as they should, sitting no more than 2 feet from a ruckus AP, they SHOULD pick up 100% signal, as every other shred of wireless device does in our place upto 30 ft away (phones, PDA's, Ipods, iMacs, Laptops, wireless PCs etc) and it drops thereafter, the Acer Aspire Ones now pick up around 45% - 70% (depending on which unit). I phoned back to try to explain this again, and that I want either replacement units or full repair of the units, Acer are now trying to charge me £65 per unit to get them repaired.

NEVER BUY THE ACER ASPIRE ONES EVER, AS THEY ARE PILES OF RUBBISH!!

On another note, my question is, do I take them to court for the equipment not being fit for purpose (with a record of it happening), or demand a full refund from Acer (as CP and CCS Media have done nothing wrong).

Regards

Nephilim

[jjjacer]

Just about everyone knows the atheros wireless card in the aspire ones are junk, usually needing to find just the right driver that doesnt give you problems. the range sucks, and they have constant drop outs. my solution was to through a 10$ 802.11n card inn from realtek and it works perfect.

[RabbieBurns]

We have 200 Acer Aspire Ones and every now and then the wireless just completely stops working.

Only way we've figured out how to sort it is to have to go into device manager.. unistall the wireless nic.. reboot and let windows find it and reinstall it.

Only happened on about 10 out of 200 and over a perioud about 5 months so not really a major issue at all. Theyve been fine the rest of the time

[broc]

On another note, my question is, do I take them to court for the equipment not being fit for purpose (with a record of it happening), or demand a full refund from Acer (as CP and CCS Media have done nothing wrong).

Regards

Nephilim

I am not sure where you legally stand being a school, but if you had bought these personally your claim would have to be made against the company who supplied the goods, not the manufacturer.

Your best bet would be to speak to your LA Legal department.

[chazzy2501]

Here are a few of my golden nuggets when it comes to wifi:

1: most cheapo brands ship wireless cards that use the US spec with wireless channels 1-11. But of course I bet your APs use 1-13 so they can sometime be sitting on an ap and not see it. Manually set the channels of your APs. (remember the divide the channels 1, 6, 11 cellular network style)

2: APs actually create a toroidal field (Donught) so to be directly next to ap doesn't always help.

3: turn off WMM on the APs, you don't need it, I've seen it create problems with crappy drivers.

4: The AP will only work at the speed of the weakest signal, i.e you've got 10 laptops in the room with a good signal and 1 laptop 2 rooms over with a weak signal, they all get the lower speed. If you can set the roaming aggressiveness on your wifi cards higher so they hop to better APs.

5: Todo with 4: Strategically reduce the power of your APs so they don't allow weak laptops to connect 100M away!

6: I've had great success with my home AP reducing the errr... I'll get back to that I forget.

[nephilim]

We have a ruckus system, set up using channels 1, 6 and 11. We are using the Linux versions, not the windows versions, so uninstalling the Network manager is no good as to get it back on you need to restore the netbook (takes anywhere from 10 mins to 2 hours depending how the netbook wants to play).

[localzuk]

Here are a few of my golden nuggets when it comes to wifi:

1: most cheapo brands ship wireless cards that use the US spec with wireless channels 1-11. But of course I bet your APs use 1-13 so they can sometime be sitting on an ap and not see it. Manually set the channels of your APs. (remember the divide the channels 1, 6, 11 cellular network style)

2: APs actually create a toroidal field (Donught) so to be directly next to ap doesn't always help.

3: turn off WMM on the APs, you don't need it, I've seen it create problems with crappy drivers.

4: The AP will only work at the speed of the weakest signal, i.e you've got 10 laptops in the room with a good signal and 1 laptop 2 rooms over with a weak signal, they all get the lower speed. If you can set the roaming aggressiveness on your wifi cards higher so they hop to better APs.

5: Todo with 4: Strategically reduce the power of your APs so they don't allow weak laptops to connect 100M away!

6: I've had great success with my home AP reducing the errr... I'll get back to that I forget.

Ruckus is a managed wireless system, depending on the access points, it allows connectivity at multiple speeds (ie. as it has multiple radios). So, a wireless n client will not be forced to use g or b standard when it connects. As it is a managed wireless system, it does all the power settings etc... automatically.

Being close to a Ruckus AP *should* give a high signal strength - every device I've had near our Ruckus AP's does.

What works with a home system is pretty much never the same as a managed system.

[kevbaz]

Weve been using ours with no problem...

[Gibbo]

The problem with Acer is that they're a consumer brand, and as such treat professionals like consumers and believe the fault lies with us rather than their kit (or like the support guy at Acer who told me I'd invalidated my warranty by installing a "third party operating system" - XP )

I have a few friends with the Aspires and they've all had problems, mainly a black screen on boot up and no POST screen. If a machine can't handle home life, it has no chance in a school.

[j17sparky]

do I take them to court for the equipment not being fit for purpose (with a record of it happening), or demand a full refund from Acer (as CP and CCS Media have done nothing wrong).

Regards

Nephilim

(I hope im right in saying the sale of goods act applys to business's in this case, im quite sure it does.) CP and CCS might have been great but they havnt done everything they should have done. Your contract is with them, not acer. They should have really been fighting your corner at the very least, replacing them outright and taking on responsibility for the fight would have been better.

Personally id just get back in touch with them and see how they can help

[localzuk]

(I hope im right in saying the sale of goods act applys to business's in this case, im quite sure it does.) CP and CCS might have been great but they havnt done everything they should have done. Your contract is with them, not acer. They should have really been fighting your corner at the very least, replacing them outright and taking on responsibility for the fight would have been better.

Personally id just get back in touch with them and see how they can help

Sale of Goods act doesn't apply in business cases. It is for consumers only. Each sale for business is regarded as a contract, and the conditions are down to the 2 parties to have defined.

[chazzy2501]

those points all apply to my 27 smart APs with central management. My Dlink 3200APs use auto channel selection but unfortunately want to use all the channels 1-13. this creates dead spots for my cheapo laptops that cannot use channels 12 and 13.

The last point was just me testing packet size, fragmentation linits etc at home because I live in the centre of town next to offices etc there a shed load of interference from foreign APs and dect phones. I was able to improve the useable range of the wireless but retarding a few of these settings.

[j17sparky]

Sale of Goods act doesn't apply in business cases. It is for consumers only. Each sale for business is regarded as a contract, and the conditions are down to the 2 parties to have defined.

It does to some extent. Like i said im not sure, but its not as simple as it just doesnt apply. Either way i would expect my supplier and supply manager to get it sorted for me, otherwise what is the point in them when things can be bought at the click of a mouse on a web store like ebuyer?

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg...mId=1074405660

In general, when your business purchases goods or services from another business, you have the same implied rights as a consumer would have when buying from you if there is no contract to the contrary.
In the case of goods, unless otherwise stated, you are entitled to demand that your purchases:

* correspond with the seller's description
* are of satisfactory quality - safe, in working order and free of defects
* are fit for purpose - capable of doing what they're meant to do

So unless his contract says "The supplier can sell defective goods to me and i have no come backs", which i doubt it does, afaik the above applies.

[nephilim]

I threatened to sue acer, and they have now decided they will accept fault and take back the netbooks and repair them (again!)

[OutToLunch]

Could be worse, you could have 2 rooms full of Veritons which have shipped with US keyboards (no £ symbol etc) and have Acer stating that they cannot ship replacement keyboards for their own machines!