🚀 go-pugleaf

In message <4ikjqq$iv4@ecom1.ecn.bgu.edu> - gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Michael
Strahl)18 Mar 1996 15:16:10 -0600 writes:
--
--I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
--The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
--Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.
--
--I am going to set up my system to run both DOS and Linux.  On the
--Linux side I want to set up a web server and do a lot of code
--development (i.e. C, C++, Perl, ...).
--
--With my needs in mind, will the Packard Bell or the Acer prove
--to be reliable.
--
--I'm looking for the pros and cons on each of these systems and
--any real life experiences dealing with Packard Bell, Acer and
--Best Buy.
--

RUN!!! RUN!!! Run away from ANY Packard Bell machine!!!  Those are the lowest,
least-reliable computer systems in the universe.  Their tech support is nearly
non-existant, and their hardware is oft-times non-standard.  They generally
perform way below competitors on benchmarks and on real-world applications due
to their sub-standard hardware.  And forget about adding new components, they
generally won't work.  I've seen too many friends get bitten by the nice price
of Packard Bell computers only to be sorely disappointed later.

Acer, I don't have much experience with, so I'll have to defer to others on
that.

C. E.




+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

   "Imagine there's no heaven.  It isn't hard to do.  No Hell below
    us.  No religion, too."

                             -- John Lennon

   
    C. E. Wyatt
    Atlanta, Georgia
    cewyatt@cew.com
    http://www.cew.com/~cewyatt

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I have customers that are using Acer PCs as Novell file servers. They have had no problems with 
them that I know of (I'm a computer network consultant ). If I  were you , I would get a a pentium
PC with at least 12 MB of ram, and 1GB  hard drive. to do what you say you want to do.

Michael Strahl wrote:
> 
> I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
> The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
> Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.
> 
> I am going to set up my system to run both DOS and Linux.  On the
> Linux side I want to set up a web server and do a lot of code
> development (i.e. C, C++, Perl, ...).
> 
> With my needs in mind, will the Packard Bell or the Acer prove
> to be reliable.
> 
> I'm looking for the pros and cons on each of these systems and
> any real life experiences dealing with Packard Bell, Acer and
> Best Buy.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> MikeDefinitely stay away from the Packard Bell they are a very sub-standard company.  The March 96 PC 
World rates Packard Bell's reliability as poor.  They also rated the Acer as fair.  You might 
consider a Dell or Micron both rate high in benchmarks and reliability.  As far as Best Buy goes 
they seem to be cheaper than anyone else around but don't count on any reliable advice.  Go in 
having already researched.  The 12 months no financing is a good deal but compare that to the 
money saved mail ordering and therefore avoiding sales tax.  Also I had heard from a Best Buy 
employee that every price is negotiable and that if you ask to speak with the manager he will 
budge on the price even if they are already lower than competition.  Good Luck!

gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Michael Strahl) wrote:

>I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
>The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
>Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.

>I am going to set up my system to run both DOS and Linux.  On the
>Linux side I want to set up a web server and do a lot of code
>development (i.e. C, C++, Perl, ...).

>With my needs in mind, will the Packard Bell or the Acer prove
>to be reliable.

>I'm looking for the pros and cons on each of these systems and
>any real life experiences dealing with Packard Bell, Acer and
>Best Buy.

>Thanks!

>Mike

Avoid Packard Bell like the plague unless you never plan on upgrading
anything, and like a system that shorts you on what most companies
consider standard equipment (e.g.  L2 cache....local bus slots..etc.)

Kurt
knowlwk@mail.auburn.edu

An Unsatisfied Packard Bell owner.....  :(

The high end Acer/Altos machines are first rate and quite reliable. I've got 6 in the field running SCO 
OpenServer 5 with almost no problems and excellent performance with ~ 16 users each.

I've 'heard' that the lower end machine (Acros?) has below average reliability. If this is for personal use I've 
had very good results with Micron (mail order).
 

 ... Neil

In article <4ikjqq$iv4@ecom1.ecn.bgu.edu>, gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Michael Strahl) wrote:
>I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
>The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
>Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.

        Packard Bells break.  I used to work in a store that did warranty work 
on them.  Their power supplies are all destined for a short life.  Would never 
use one as a server (then there's service and support, but that's another 
story).
        Couldn't tell ya for sure about Acer.  They're a big company, so 
you'll probably find lots of good and bad reports.

                                                                Mark

Michael Strahl (gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu) wrote:
: I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
: The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
: Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.

NO!!!  How could you have picked the TWO WORST!!  The Packard Hell
and the Asser!!  Price - Low because they're junk!

: I am going to set up my system to run both DOS and Linux.  On the
: Linux side I want to set up a web server and do a lot of code
: development (i.e. C, C++, Perl, ...).

Cool.  Compaq, IBM  or a high-quality system from a mail order
vendor such as Micron, should suit your needs.

: With my needs in mind, will the Packard Bell or the Acer prove
: to be reliable.
:
Uh uh.  I do warranty repair work on Asser (Acer) machines and 
no only are they painted turtle-grease, but they suck.
The Hells you can't even upgrade.  One of the assers wasn't
compatible with the sound blaster.  One of the hells kept
ruining an 850MB hard drive.

 

 
: I'm looking for the pros and cons on each of these systems and
: any real life experiences dealing with Packard Bell, Acer and
: Best Buy.

Best Buy = Best Price, Worst Quality.  And if you walk into 
CompUSA, look at nothing but Compaqs or IBMs.

: 

>Avoid Packard Bell like the plague unless you never plan on upgrading
>anything, and like a system that shorts you on what most companies
>consider standard equipment (e.g.  L2 cache....local bus slots..etc.)

>Kurt
>knowlwk@mail.auburn.edu

>An Unsatisfied Packard Bell owner.....  :(


I agree. My main beef is the lousy service.
While under the in house service portion of my warranty, my graphics
adapter failed. It took 3 weeks for them to finally send someone to
replace the motherboard. 

I wasted hours, literally, by waiting on hold on their useless
customer support line. The waiting periods were long ( 45 min being
common ) and the people were usually not very helpful.

Ken

Michael Strahl (gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu) wrote:

: With my needs in mind, will the Packard Bell or the Acer prove
: to be reliable.

: I'm looking for the pros and cons on each of these systems and
: any real life experiences dealing with Packard Bell, Acer and
: Best Buy.

I figure I'll toss my hat into this ring.

About Packard Bell:

	Avoid this computer like an Ebola outbreak. Packard Bell's are
mostly sold to people who dont know jack shit, frankly, about computers..

Packard Bell uses a fabrication technique known as "surface mounting".
When Packard Bell has their motherboards manufactured, every tiny 
little component is physically *soldered* to the motherboard -- so
that if in the event you blow a little 15-cent resistor, you have
to send the ENTIRE machine back to the factory. Its like 
getting a flat tire on your car, and having to send the whole 
fucking car back to assembly plant to be fixed. Everything is 
hardwired directly to the board, so its unmodifyable, and unreplacable.
Packard  Bell is also notorious for putting bottom-of-the-barrel hardware 
into their machines. Slow, glitchy, and unpolished. Packard Bell machines 
are bottom-of-the-food-chain computers with NONE of the "gingerbread"
bells and whistles which could easilly and cheaply improve their
machines. For example, Packard Bell machines lack 256K Level-2 caches.
This costs a measly $15-20 to implement, and would increase the speed
of the machine to a HUGE degree. They essentially suck, suck hard, and 
suck in FAR too many ways for me to list out here. The list is nearly 
endless. Stay as far away from Packard Bell as humanly possible.

On a scale of 1 to 100, I would rate Packard Bell as about a 35.


About Acer:

	I personally own an Acer Aspire P/100 Charcoal black minitower.
I love the thing, to be quite honest, as it delivers quite a bang for
the buck. However, it didn't come without a few problems. I purchased
*2* Acer Aspires, and had returned them both, until I finally ended
up with the luck of the draw. Acer, as a company, engages in a
practice known in the industry as "low-balling" their hardware.
Meaning, whatever component is cheapest for that paticular week,
they buy it, and slap it into their machines. So in any lot, you
may have an Aspire with a 1 gig Maxtor, a 1 gig Fujitsu, or a 1
gig Quantum, or whatever. This can be a potential nightmare -- if
the Aspire you purchase comes with a crappy Maxtor drive, you can
expect the machine's hard disk to be LOUD, and eminate a very high
pitched whine.. Both Aspires I purchased had Maxtors, both gave off
a damn high-pitched squeal. I brought both back until I finally
got one with a Fujitsu drive which was 10x as quiet as the Maxtor-
driven machines.. 3 trips to Best Buy later.

	See, if companies like Acer were to just stick with ONE
company to provide their hard drives, it would cost them literally
$1-2 dollars more in difference than if they were to jump from
manufacturer to manufacturer every week. Acer doesn't feel they want
to take that small little step to ensure that ALL of their machines
are of high, and dignified quality, and SPEND that extra 1-2 bucks
on a machine. Wether or not you get a machine with a fast, quiet
hard disk is luck of the draw. Ask to see 3 of the Acers on display,
opened up. When the clerk opens them, make note of what hard drives
are in them. You may also want to check out www.acer.com on the Web.

	Acer, as a company, has improved its image and quality 
dramatically in recent years, as evidenced by past and present
Acer owners. I remember when my brother purchased his Acer Acros 486/33
about 2 years ago -- The manual which came with it was printed in
Korean / Chicken English with loveable phrases like "Mate the man
plug into the female and then system reboot." .. To make matters
worse, the manual itself was missing about 10 pages, and had duplicate
pages in its place. A real crap-job, even for 1993.

	The Acer Aspire I purchased was extremely nice, in terms of
documentation, software, presentation, and other areas. All the system
manuals and CD's are beautifully boxed, all the manuals are bound and
clearly written/illustrated in *normal* English. The system manual
is general enough to inform basic users, as well as detailed enough
for seasoned veterans like myself. When I want to upgrade the video
RAM in my Aspire, I want to know *EXACTLY* what type of RAM it takes.
And the Manual tells you so. Theres a whole section for newbies, and
a big tech section for all the $6/hr rent-a-geek technies, too.


The Aspire is a heavilly integrated package. Everything is meant 
to work with everything else. All the plugs are LABELLED! :) Setting it 
up, and getting up and running is an absolute dream, luckilly. All the 
wires and plugs are colored to match their appropriate sockets, so you'de 
pretty much have to be color blind AND pathetically stupid to screw 
anything up. I was up and running within 5 minutes of unpacking the
system.

The real kicker about Aspire's is the first time you boot one up
after getting it out of the box. You're greeted by a full-motion animation
of an Acer representative who greets you, thanks you for buying their
product, and helps you get started. Its VERY professionally done,
very sleek.

I've found my Aspire to be extremely responsive, agile, and configurable.
I've never run into any of the configuration problems listed by earlier
respondees.

I know 3 people who also have Acer Aspire's .. all 3 love em. And
lets face it, they look great; but you'll pay a little extra for
that "look" ... The hardware under the hood is essentially worth
$1000-1100..So you're essentially paying about $500-600 for a great
case and nice software & manuals.

Also, of a really minor note, is that the case can sometimes be difficult
to correctly re-position after removing it. Theres a slight technique
to it. :)

	For some reason, Acer hides the fact that they DO have alot
of the nice bells and whistles under the hood. The Aspire comes with
a 256K L2 cache, pipeline burst cache, PnP BIOS, Energy-Saving stuff,
all the niceties which are common among excellent systems. For example..
You can tell the monitor to fall back to a "low power mode" after
X minutes of inactivity, and tell the hard drive to spin down after
X minutes of activity. Really nice gear.

	I did a huge amount of research and homework when I bought
my computer, (about 2 months ago) ...balancing what I wanted out of
the machine, and how I wanted it to be. I ended up debating between
getting a Dell Dimension P100t and the Acer Aspire P/100 Tower I
currently own.

On a scale of 1 to 100, I would rate the Aspire as an 89..Not a
god-like machine for its class, but a damn good one.

Hope this helps,
Bowie J. Poag

I'll agree with Bowie over the Packard Bell, but disagree about Acer. I 
bought an Acer Aspire P133 and the performance sucked eggs. The hard 
drive was slow and loud and performance was weak. I don't have all of my 
complete benchmarks, but here's one example: 3dbench on the Aspire was 
76.4. On my homebuilt P133, it's 125.

The Aspire comes with a non-standard sound card that, while it is full 
duplex (great for WebTalk), doesn't do Sound Blaster very well. The modem 
was also non-standard and many of my apps wouldn't work with it. 

In short, I greatly dislike most consumer computers that are designed to 
act like a Mac. Take it out of the box and it works. Once you change one 
thing, the whole house of cards comes tumblind down. 

The real bummer of it all was that I bought an Acer Power P60 a year ago 
and it ran like a tank. It was a great machine and benchmarked pretty 
damn high. It never hiccuped on me once. If I was to buy an Acer, I'd get 
the Power. problem is, those idiots at Acer took it out of commercial 
markets (Computer City used to carry it) and only sell it through small 
resellers and mail order. I was quite pissed at Acer for this.

But right now, I'd be leery about buying a computer from Taiwan. Support 
might get cut off. :-\

My advice is to build your own. Buy the right parts and you'll never have 
a hiccup.

-Andy
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Patrizio			"Personally, I think cyberspace means the
patrizio@netcom.com  		end of our species... it means the end of
Los Angeles, Calif.		innovation.  Everyone will think the same
				thing at the same time. Global uniformity"
					- Ian Malcom, "The Lost World"

J. Poag (bjp@flowbee.interaccess.com) wrote:

: I've never run into any of the configuration problems listed by earlier
: respondees.

Try replacing the Acer Magic S20 sound card that comes with the newer
Acers and CompuDyne systems with a standard Sound Blaster 16 or 32,
or Reveal sound card (or most others, for that matter).  
For more information, see my article, "Turtle-Greased Acers
and Late-Model Acer system boards - and Sound Blaster 16 / 32 --
THE FULL STORY".  Then see if you still think it has configuration
problems.

Neil M. Lensky (neill@gate.net) wrote:
} The high end Acer/Altos machines are first rate and quite reliable. I've got 6 in the field running SCO 
} OpenServer 5 with almost no problems and excellent performance with ~ 16 users each.

} I've 'heard' that the lower end machine (Acros?) has below average reliability. If this is for personal use I've 
} had very good results with Micron (mail order).

My father has one of the lower end (Acros) Acer Machines, and it is ok.
We did not have good luck with the tech support for those machines, I
wanted to buy some memory for him for Christmas, called up Acer and gave
them model, etc. requesting information. The told me with conviction to
buy the wrong type of memory. Well, it only cost me the shipping charges
to replace, but I still would not recommend. Expandability for the older
one was also kind of limited, everything built into motherboard and could
only disable all or none.

Tom

--

Thomas M. Buccelli (tmb@idm.com)

#include <std_disclaimer.h>

In article <4ikjqq$iv4@ecom1.ecn.bgu.edu>,
Michael Strahl <gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> wrote:
>I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
>The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
>Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.
>
>With my needs in mind, will the Packard Bell or the Acer prove
>to be reliable.
>

As you can see from everyone else's followups, in general Packard Hell
and Acer machines may not be the best investment.  I would highly 
recommend going with a respected brand like Micron.

From what I see in this weeks ads, the 120 MHz Packard Bell will cost
you $1989.98.  This is a machine is spec'd as follows:
    
    120 MHz Pentium
    1 Gig hard drive
    8 Meg RAM
    1 Meg video memory
    MPEG-1 full motion video
    4x CD-ROM
    16 bit sound
    Speakers
    28.8 internal fax/modem
    Telephony stuff (answering machine, speakerphone)
    Various Software
    15 inch monitor

Did you hear about the lawsuit that Packard Bell lost because they were
sticking (broken) returned hardware into their machines and selling it
as new?  Stay away from a company that does or has done that.

The Acer sitting right next to it in the ad costs $2649.98 has the
following:
    
    133 MHz Pentium
    1.6 Gig hard drive
    16 Meg Ram
    1 Meg video memory
    6x CD-ROM
    16 bit sound
    28.8 internal fax/modem
    Telephony stuff (answering machine, speakerphone)
    Various Software
    15 inch monitor

Please note that on this machine the front panel is designed such
that you are pretty screwed if you want to replace the CD-ROM drive
or floppy drive in the future.  You also wouldn't have the option
of adding another internal CD-ROM, tape drive, whatever to this case
because they designed it such that only *their* hardware will fit
into this case.  That means that in the future they will be the only
ones that can sell you replacement parts or upgrades for those items.

Now if you take a look at a Micron computer that is similar to these
in price at http://www.mei.micron.com/Products/Micron/sheets/p100mpc.htm,
you will see that you can get a *quality* machine from a *respected*
manufacturer for $1999.00.

    100 MHz Pentium
    1 Gig hard drive
    8 Meg Ram
    2 Meg video memory   (This is more than either of the above have)
    6x CD-ROM
    16 bit sound
    28.8 internal fax/modem
    Telephony stuff (answering machine, speakerphone)
    Various Software
    15 inch monitor

For another $440, you can add another 8 meg of RAM, upgrade to a Pentium
133, and get a 1.6 gig hard drive instead of the 1 gig, making it spec
out the same as the Acer for less money.  If you need/want more than
1 gig of hard drive space, I would get it with the 1 gig drive and add
another drive.  I think that for what they charge for larger drives,
you would be better off buying a second hard drive and installing
that.  Take a look in misc.forsale.computers.storage or any of the
vendors listed at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~wharmon/vendors.html
if you are looking for a hard drive.

One other thing to watch out for when buying a computer is whether or
not you will be able to use your existing case, CD-ROM, floppy, and 
cards when you decide that you need that P-6 or P-7 motherboard.

Good luck with your Micron!  (I hope)

--
Mike Gerdts
gerdts@cae.wisc.edu
CAE Unix Systems Staff
University of Wisconsin, Madison

gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Michael Strahl) wrote:

>I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
>The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
>Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.

Try install Windows/NT 3.5 and 3.5.1 in Acermate 800. It's a
nightmare......





Rgds,
K a t s o n
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >8- -
,   ,       ,                                           ''''''''''',
; ,'   ,,  ,;,,  ,,,  ,,  , ,                 /|___   ,'   Have a  ;
;',    ,,;  ;   ',,  ;  ; ;' ;               ( ^ ^ ) .,,  nice day ;
;  ', ',,;, ',, ,,,' ',,' ;  ;              (   O   )   ,,,,,,,,,,,'
------------------------------             (_________)
Katson, P.N. Yeung

In article <4ikjqq$iv4@ecom1.ecn.bgu.edu>, gmstrahl@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu 
says...
>
>I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
>The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
>Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.
>
>I am going to set up my system to run both DOS and Linux.  On the
>Linux side I want to set up a web server and do a lot of code
>development (i.e. C, C++, Perl, ...).
>
>With my needs in mind, will the Packard Bell or the Acer prove
>to be reliable.
>
>I'm looking for the pros and cons on each of these systems and
>any real life experiences dealing with Packard Bell, Acer and
>Best Buy.
>
>Thanks!
>
>Mike
>
>
Seems likethe thing to do to bash P-B........the PB I have had forover a 
year has not given me any trouble...,maybe thier support sucks and maybe 
it doesnt but all I can say is I havent had to find out!!  State of the 
Art?  No....reliable...yes!

Andy Patrizio (patrizio@netcom.com) wrote:

: I'll agree with Bowie over the Packard Bell, but disagree about Acer. I 
: bought an Acer Aspire P133 and the performance sucked eggs. The hard 
: drive was slow and loud and performance was weak. I don't have all of my 
: complete benchmarks, but here's one example: 3dbench on the Aspire was 
: 76.4. On my homebuilt P133, it's 125.

I had considered handbuilding a machine as well.. But when it came down 
to it, the amount of money I'd have to shell out to get what I truly 
wanted was only 2-300 less than what I could get in a pre-packaged system.
The blood sweat and tears of de-tangling hardware was easilly worth the
difference in price. You're obviously going to get better graphics 
performance out of a homebuilt machine.

Suffice it to say, there's nothing to prevent you from buying a 
newer/faster video card and laying it down in one of the Aspire's 
pleasantly numerous PCI slots. :) The graphics performance of the Aspire 
is about on par with most other pre-packaged systems. Its average. Not
exceptionally fast, but not exceptionally slow either.

My Aspire came with 1MB of VRAM onboard, with the capability to add 
another meg. The second meg of VRAM is on the way, actually. Just ordered 
it mailorder on Friday.


: The Aspire comes with a non-standard sound card that, while it is full 
: duplex (great for WebTalk), doesn't do Sound Blaster very well. The modem 
: was also non-standard and many of my apps wouldn't work with it. 

Huh? Thats weird... The soundcard in mine works fine.. I've never had a 
problem getting it to work with *anything* I use. Another case of 
low-balling maybe? Whatever sound card is cheapest that week....?

: In short, I greatly dislike most consumer computers that are designed to 
: act like a Mac. Take it out of the box and it works. Once you change one 
: thing, the whole house of cards comes tumblind down. 

I'll disagree with you here.. For the amount of money I layed down for 
the machine, I dont want to have to *worry* about support, software, or 
other extranneous headaches.

: But right now, I'd be leery about buying a computer from Taiwan. Support 
: might get cut off. :-\

True. But I'd be even more hesitant to buy anything from Apple right now. 
Theyre already doing laps around the industry's toilet bowl--You'de be 
wise not to hang around for the "sluurrgghhsch" noise. :)



: My advice is to build your own. Buy the right parts and you'll never have 
: a hiccup.

True--Granted you know how to do it, and do it right. :) You'll also know 
the hardware like the back of your hand. However, if you're going to be
putting that much money into something, you might as well get a company
behind you, and some form of support outside of yourself.


: -Andy
: -- 
: -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Andy Patrizio			"Personally, I think cyberspace means the
: patrizio@netcom.com  		end of our species... it means the end of
: Los Angeles, Calif.		innovation.  Everyone will think the same
: 				thing at the same time. Global uniformity"
: 					- Ian Malcom, "The Lost World"

--

+-+----------------------------------------------------------------+-+-+
|O| SiGnATuRE V2.0a                                                |o|0|
+-+----------------------------------------------------------------+-+-+
|                                                                      |
|           It's OKAY to HATE MICROSOFT. IT'S STILL *LEGAL!*           |
|                                                                      |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------pq
+=====================================================================bd

Bowie J. Poag (bjp@interaccess.com) 50 Mhz A2500HD/030/882,AmiTCP/IP 4.2
(Go to your local CD store and buy a CD called SUPERNOVA:Ages_3_And_Up!) 

In article <314F3864.7F30@suba.com>, Rich Auchter <"drauch "@suba.com> wrote:
>Michael Strahl wrote:
>> 
>> I am looking into buying a Packard Bell or Acer PC from Best Buy.
>> The attractiveness of these systems are their price and that
>> Best Buy will give 1 year free financing.
>> 

>> MikeDefinitely stay away from the Packard Bell they are a very sub-standard
> company.  The March 96 PC 
>World rates Packard Bell's reliability as poor.  They also rated the Acer as
> fair.  You might 
>consider a Dell or Micron both rate high in benchmarks and reliability. 

It is my understanding that Acer and Packard Bell are the same company, or 
Acer is owned by Packard Bell...  Is this correct? I've heard it or read it 
somewhere. That's something to think about, as I would suggest something other 
than Packard Bell.
The only problem I saw when I looked into Acer computers is that the case is 
real funky and not necessarily suitable for everyone's tastes. It's just 
cosmetic, so it doesn't really matter, but one drawback is that the CD ROM 
drive is sort of "built-in" to the case, so not easily upgradeable. You will 
need to get a replacement faceplate for a standard CD ROM drive, or in adding 
extra drives. Just extra hassle. Tech support is not necessarily that great 
either. I've had great success with NEC, they were the first to really make 64 
bit graphics cards and 28.8 modems a standard in their systems. They don't 
make you pay for a ton of unwanted "free" software, and with the extra 
accessories (faster modem, etc) the prices are still not much more than other 
brands. Tech Support can be pretty bad at times, yet some people are quite 
helpful there. My system is quite fast and reliable, and setup was a cinch. 
(except that they labelled the input and output on sound card backwards... but 
I won't get into that...) Just my thoughts..
Mark P.