I have been promising to write a review of my new Acer 9810 laptop, their top on the line unit, for about a week now. I set about clearing up some issues with it this morning so that I could complete the process of transferring my data from the old Dell and start using it full time. This while I was recovering from what I suspect is a moderate case of food poison from my local McDonalds. One issue, extremely slow network transfers over the wireless connection and dropped connections is pretty important to me while the other, missing drivers for the Bluetooth VoIP phone that came bundled with the system isn’t of any importance. At one point I was put on hold for nearly 40 minutes while the woman that was assisting me attempted to locate the drivers for this unneeded Bluetooth phone. If I had known, I wouldn’t have asked.

It is however kind of annoying to order a piece of equipment of this alleged caliber and have it shipped with unusable accessories. I didn’t even want or need the Bluetooth phone but while I was on the telephone attempting to resolve the issue with the wireless network adapter I thought I would find out where the drivers were located so I could get them download just in case I ever wanted to use it. After being told to download a program that wouldn’t run under Microsoft Vista Ultimate I was finally given instructions to download from the slowest server in the states. No kidding, a 44 Meg file (44 Megs for a driver??) estimated it was going to take six hours and forty seven minutes to complete but then timed out after about 2 Megs. So this issue is on hold for now, I will try their download server in a few days to see if they have their network connectivity issue corrected.

The Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG adapter paired with Windows Vista Ultimate is a sad combination right now. This may improve if new drivers are developed as the drivers included with this system are dated 10-29-06, several months before the official release of Vista. I was looking around over at LapTopMag.com and saw that they experienced the same issue I’m having and said “We were surprised by the 9810's low wireless throughput, however: just over 3 Mbps at both 15 and 50 feet from our router.” With the unit positioned just a few feet from either my D-Link or my Belkin 54g wireless routers I get between 50% and 75% connectivity according to the built in meter. This usually settles down at 60% and the download times back this up. It takes nearly twice as long to pull a file off of my local network with the Acer as it does with any other local wireless system.

Acer’s fix for this was to tell me to call my ISP. Not by just one technician but by two of their elite staff members. I was told "our only responsibility is to make sure it works and we don’t have to be concerned with how well it works.” I’m starting to regret buying two computers from this company and wish I would have went back to the IBM/Levono models. Or maybe got a Dell, at least then I would have known what I was getting with a price that reflected the ‘value’ that was being passed on to me.

Another issue with the system is I cannot get Remote Desktop to work correctly. I can connect but then shortly after getting the welcome screen I am disconnected. But that is not all, the wireless adapter in the Acer becomes disabled and the system needs a reboot to correct the problem. A most annoying result of hardware being rushed to the market before it has the necessary drivers to support the operating system it is being sold to run. I have taken all the steps I can to get a solid connection including updating to the latest RDP client, version 6.0, on my XP box and disabling the firewall temporarily. I have also tried using both XP Professional and XP Home as clients so I think I can safely rule out the client systems.

The general attitude that I seem to get from their tech support team is that if it isn’t easy to fix then they aren’t willing to help. I was told that I could send the unit in for repair, call my ISP, and to try restoring the system with the factor disks. The factory disks that weren’t included with the system but I had to create myself from the restore partition. I think sending back an eight day old system for repair because of an obvious driver issue is ludicrous and only goes to show the lack of training they have provided their support staff.

While driver issues with new operating systems have come to be expected this type of response to the issue has not. If they have a known problem and all it takes are a couple of minutes searching around on the web to find out this is a known problem, be honest with your customers. I would have been perfectly happy being told we are aware, we apologize for the inconvenience and expect to have a driver ready in a reasonable time, such as 60 days.

I think my next course of action is going to be writing a letter thru Planet Feed Back. If you have never used their service it is actually a great place to attempt to resolve issues with larger companies. Often times the executive staff does actually care about customer satisfaction even though that message gets lost down on its way down to the front line. I had a problem with a Sony 60” television last year where it was repaired 6 times in 3 months and each repair for the same problem of dramatic red color shifts. Nearly every module in the television was replaced, some parts three times, without the problem being corrected. A letter thru Planet Feed Back got me a refund of the full price paid for the television in less than two weeks. I am still a loyal Sony customer because of how this was ultimately handled even though the support people never returned phone calls or helped in any meaningful way.

I don’t want my money back on this unit as I got a really good deal on it and am overall happy however this issue must be corrected in a timely manner without putting more stress and aggravation on me if they ever want me to buy a third computer from this Acer company.

21 Days-