<story><title>Acer disables BIOS for laptops sold through Amazon? (2020)</title><url>https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RKILN7HFLF4CS/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arp242</author><text>I worked at a repair tech at a local computer shop, already over 10 years ago. Certainly all the tech people were secretly a little bit embarrassed we were selling Acer laptops. I did some sales too, when it was busy and people were needed, and always tried to steer people away from Acer.&lt;p&gt;For some of their models we had over 50% return rates. Far from all models mind you, but still: it was ridiculous. Many came back after warranty as well with hardware issues related to the casings and hinges. Their warranty service took forever and often we had to send back the machines again because they didn&amp;#x27;t actually fix the issue (we weren&amp;#x27;t allowed to repair them ourselves too, we had to use their repair centres; other vendors tended to be more flexible about this, especially if we had a long relationship with them).&lt;p&gt;But they were cheap. So we sold many.&lt;p&gt;We didn&amp;#x27;t usually sell ThinkPads, but we did on special demand. One customer returned theirs for whatever reason (T400 IIRC). We put it in the showroom, and it was there for well over year before we managed to sell it, at quite a loss I might add. We actually had a lot of business customers as we also did office management etc., but people just don&amp;#x27;t want a €1,000 laptop.&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is that ThinkPads just don&amp;#x27;t look good to most people when put next to flashy Asus or Acer laptops. The keyboard is more &amp;quot;wonky&amp;quot; instead of the neat rectangular square; it&amp;#x27;s clearly better designed instead of the cramped 1cm Shift keys and such, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t look as good. The more matte display is better for loads of people, but it looks kinda crappy next to a bright Acer in demo mode showing off cool pictures. And the &amp;quot;black box&amp;quot; design doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to appeal to many people&amp;#x27;s tastes (although personally, I always felt it looked quite handsome; I miss the blue Enter keys btw, I always thought they added something).&lt;p&gt;Oh, and gosh, don&amp;#x27;t get me started on the Acer &amp;quot;laptop&amp;quot; they put out with a desktop Pentium CPU, regular DIMMs, and 3.5&amp;quot; HDD. That was truly an abomination.</text></item><item><author>xnyan</author><text>In college I sold a lot of laptops for best buy. Acer often had great specs, seemingly solid looking hardware that was clearly influenced by good designs (Apple) and a great price for the specs and features.&lt;p&gt;All laptops have problems, but Acer was by far the worst - More often then not, the problems stemmed from bad heat management (the most common killer of laptops IME) and quality control that was seemingly laser focused on avoiding problems for exactly as long as the warranty lasted.&lt;p&gt;PSA: Lenovo has tons of problems w&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;t how they operate as a company, but the thinkpad is far and away the best overall non-mac laptop brand you can readily buy anywhere in the world.</text></item><item><author>nrjames</author><text>I purchased one of these computers for my child. It made a loud buzzing noise and turned off last week. I discovered the locked BIOS for myself when I tried to boot from a USB to diagnose the problem. Acer wants $619.99 to diagnose it at their repair center, since it is 2 weeks out of warranty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>barefootcoder</author><text>About 4 or 5 years ago I was working at one place as a consultant where I’d previously been an employee. Being a consultant I provided my own hardware.  I needed really beefy hardware for the project, so I bought a brand new Thinkpad P50, completely maxed out.&lt;p&gt;One day the IT guy was making the rounds distributing new laptops.  I got to chatting with him about the new hardware and he said something like “yeah, these are great compared to that old thing, 8 GB, dual core, 256 GB SSD… blah blah…”, while pointing to my brand new Thinkpad.  I started telling him the specs on my Thinkpad (which are still good today, but were especially good then) — quad core i7, 64 GB RAM, RAID striped dual M.2 SSDs, … he just said something like “Oh” and walked away without continuing the conversation. Haha…</text></comment>
<story><title>Acer disables BIOS for laptops sold through Amazon? (2020)</title><url>https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RKILN7HFLF4CS/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arp242</author><text>I worked at a repair tech at a local computer shop, already over 10 years ago. Certainly all the tech people were secretly a little bit embarrassed we were selling Acer laptops. I did some sales too, when it was busy and people were needed, and always tried to steer people away from Acer.&lt;p&gt;For some of their models we had over 50% return rates. Far from all models mind you, but still: it was ridiculous. Many came back after warranty as well with hardware issues related to the casings and hinges. Their warranty service took forever and often we had to send back the machines again because they didn&amp;#x27;t actually fix the issue (we weren&amp;#x27;t allowed to repair them ourselves too, we had to use their repair centres; other vendors tended to be more flexible about this, especially if we had a long relationship with them).&lt;p&gt;But they were cheap. So we sold many.&lt;p&gt;We didn&amp;#x27;t usually sell ThinkPads, but we did on special demand. One customer returned theirs for whatever reason (T400 IIRC). We put it in the showroom, and it was there for well over year before we managed to sell it, at quite a loss I might add. We actually had a lot of business customers as we also did office management etc., but people just don&amp;#x27;t want a €1,000 laptop.&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is that ThinkPads just don&amp;#x27;t look good to most people when put next to flashy Asus or Acer laptops. The keyboard is more &amp;quot;wonky&amp;quot; instead of the neat rectangular square; it&amp;#x27;s clearly better designed instead of the cramped 1cm Shift keys and such, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t look as good. The more matte display is better for loads of people, but it looks kinda crappy next to a bright Acer in demo mode showing off cool pictures. And the &amp;quot;black box&amp;quot; design doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to appeal to many people&amp;#x27;s tastes (although personally, I always felt it looked quite handsome; I miss the blue Enter keys btw, I always thought they added something).&lt;p&gt;Oh, and gosh, don&amp;#x27;t get me started on the Acer &amp;quot;laptop&amp;quot; they put out with a desktop Pentium CPU, regular DIMMs, and 3.5&amp;quot; HDD. That was truly an abomination.</text></item><item><author>xnyan</author><text>In college I sold a lot of laptops for best buy. Acer often had great specs, seemingly solid looking hardware that was clearly influenced by good designs (Apple) and a great price for the specs and features.&lt;p&gt;All laptops have problems, but Acer was by far the worst - More often then not, the problems stemmed from bad heat management (the most common killer of laptops IME) and quality control that was seemingly laser focused on avoiding problems for exactly as long as the warranty lasted.&lt;p&gt;PSA: Lenovo has tons of problems w&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;t how they operate as a company, but the thinkpad is far and away the best overall non-mac laptop brand you can readily buy anywhere in the world.</text></item><item><author>nrjames</author><text>I purchased one of these computers for my child. It made a loud buzzing noise and turned off last week. I discovered the locked BIOS for myself when I tried to boot from a USB to diagnose the problem. Acer wants $619.99 to diagnose it at their repair center, since it is 2 weeks out of warranty.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stordoff</author><text>&amp;gt; when put next to flashy Asus or Acer laptops&lt;p&gt;Speaking of Asus, I&amp;#x27;ve had no end of issues with the Asus laptop I&amp;#x27;ve been using for the last 3-4 years. Decent spec for the money, but:&lt;p&gt;* audio output no longer detects external devices&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve had to replace the display twice due to it flickering&amp;#x2F;losing part of the image&lt;p&gt;* multiple keys (~10) fell off the keyboard[1]&lt;p&gt;* bottom case cracked when I lifted the laptop (plastic appears to have gone brittle over time)&lt;p&gt;* drive&amp;#x2F;RAM access cover is held on with electrical tape, as it&amp;#x27;s broken away from the screw that should hold it in place&lt;p&gt;* charger cable insulation broke where it meets the DC Jack; replacement charger is starting to do the same&lt;p&gt;* trackpad occasionally isn&amp;#x27;t recognised from a cold boot&lt;p&gt;* USB3 ports are flakey - the slightest nudge can cause devices to disconnect (tried with multiple devices&amp;#x2F;cables, and they&amp;#x27;re all fine on other machines)&lt;p&gt;* keyboard sometimes locks into repeating the last key until I disconnect a USB device or change my keyboard layout with the mouse (probably a software issue, but I haven&amp;#x27;t managed to track it down)&lt;p&gt;Combining the repairs (display, bottom case, keyboard, charger) with some upgrades (SSD, HDD, RAM, WiFi card), it&amp;#x27;s a real ship of Theseus at this point. There&amp;#x27;s not _that_ much of the original machine left. This is my first Asus machine, and I really can&amp;#x27;t say I recommend it.&lt;p&gt;[1] And I didn&amp;#x27;t notice until after I&amp;#x27;d ordered the replacement keyboard that it&amp;#x27;s not really designed to be replaced without replacing the top case (it fits between the top case and a metal shield, and they&amp;#x27;re heat staked together), so that was an interesting repair</text></comment>