Acer Aspire One - DO NOT BUY!!!

[featured_spectre]

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.

[featured_spectre]

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...

[Guest Guest]

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

Edited February 4, 2010 by Guest

[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.

[Guest Guest]

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/action/detail?r.s=sc&r.l1=1073861169&r.lc=en&r.l3=1074405506&r.l2=1074400662&type=RESOURCES&itemId=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.

Edited February 4, 2010 by Guest

[featured_spectre]

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!

[featured_spectre]

Thats just the typical Acer rubbish support. Simply put, I NEVER want to deal with them, EVER again.

[featured_spectre]

An update on this...

 

After spending 3 days of telephone tennis, and eventually getting to the Sales Director at Acer, they have decided to take the hit and give us new netbooks or a refund....now mulling it over with my boss, we will test one of the new netbooks they intend to send us, if we don't like it, we will go for the refund..

 

Woo! Result!

[laserblazer]

Well, I've crossed Acer from our shopping list.

[morganw]

I was looking at these as well...

Thanks for the warning.

[Guest theeldergeek]

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

 

I would suggest you add a caveat to this further repair, although you might have already gone too far to get your money back, as it generally applies to the initial repair.

 

I am unsure of the business element with regard the Sale of Goods Act in this respect, but, as a consumer, you have to give the vendor the opportunity to put right the fault in the first instance (that is after you've had the goods a while, which in your case you have). Just because they are faulty does not give you immediate rights to a refund.

It is of course different if they are supplied faulty as opposed to developing a fault during the time you have them.

 

Within the first 6 months, it is also down to the vendor to prove the fault wasn't there when the items were supplied, as opposed to you the customer to prove it was there.

 

Now this next point is key.

 

If they fail to rectify the fault at the first attempt, you are then entitled to a full refund of your costs less any depreciation that the vendor may wish to apply for the time you have had the goods.

 

Now, as I say, you might want to add a caveat to this next repair that you are prepared to give them a 2nd opportunity to repair the goods, but if they fail to do so, you will be rejecting them under the Sale of Goods Act as not fit for purpose.

 

I am not sure, but I think if you allow them to proceed with the next repair, you have indicated that you accept the goods and are waiving your right to demand a refund, unless that is they are prepared to do so. I think it would be worth checking, as you might be heading down a long road otherwise.

 

I had a similar experience with Comet. Laptop developed a fault with DVD drive, sent it away, came back with unrepaired fault. Comet wanted to send it away again, I refused on the grounds the laptop wasn't fit for purpose, and demanded a refund. They dug their heels in, so I wrote to the Directors Office with a letter of action. I got a refund in full.

 

Good luck.

[Mako]

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!

 

I don't mean to derail the thread, but this exact thing happened to us. We bought 45 Veritons that all came with US keyboards. Purchased from Misco, we spoke to our account manager who offered to replace all the keyboards at no cost to us. Perhaps speak with your supplier.

 

Acer - not the best at all. Have had many problems with our Acer hardware.

[featured_spectre]

righty, an update (to an extent)...Found the fault to be the Atheros cards (not just in Acer equipment, in pretty much any netbook). For some reason on the last 3 firmware updates it hasnt been picking up the ruckus wireless as well as it should be. Acer sent us a netbook (with an atheros card) which had problems like before, but they then sent a notebook (with an intel broadcom card) and it worked flawlessly. To be sure that it wasnt just acer equipment, we got another school to come in with some of there netbooks which had atheros and it didnt like it either (they too were on the latest atheros firmware updates).

 

Acer are now speaking with Atheros in regards to this for us, in the hope that they will get their backsides into gear and get it working, as before the last 3 updates it worked fine.

 

The sales director from Acer has come into our place and seen the fault in action, and despite narrowing it down to the atheros card (which is obviously 3rd party), acer are still willing to take the hit, and have offered to also compensate the cost for number of man hours gone into this (which we worked out to be near 300 hours (using 3 techies) since April last year).

 

As such they have raised themselves in my standing for the service since getting to one of the big guys

[OutToLunch]

I don't mean to derail the thread, but this exact thing happened to us. We bought 45 Veritons that all came with US keyboards. Purchased from Misco, we spoke to our account manager who offered to replace all the keyboards at no cost to us. Perhaps speak with your supplier.

 

Acer - not the best at all. Have had many problems with our Acer hardware.

 

Sorry - on the same tangent. Did they replace them with the snazzy Acer keyboards (slimline, volume wheel in corner etc) or just generic multimedia ones? Our supplier did sort out replacement multimedia keyboards but were in the same boat as us when it came to sourcing the actual Acer keyboards

[Jose]

We ordered 32 acer travelmate laptops with intel 4965 dual band 11n cards and are very happy with them.

 

Ruckus has a word document that tells you if there are any issues with certain wireless cards, also with classroom sets of laptops we have a policy of making sure they all support 5ghz now to take the pressure of the 2.4ghz wireless that is more likely to get interference.

[Andrew_C]

Acer being useless? Is anyone surprised?

 

I was given one hell of a run-around over the exploding capacitors in Veritons issue a few years back. They kept replacing HDDs and wouldn't deviate from their repair script. In the end I replaced the capacitors in about 50-60 machines. 17 in each... I got quite good at it!

[featured_spectre]

Last update in regards to this, we have come up with a solution that suits all.

 

They shall be taking back ALL 95 netbooks, and in return, we shall be getting 75 Acer Travelmate Timeline - which comes in ~£399. So they are going to be taking a HUGE hit on this!

 

RESULT for the little man!