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Thread ID: 61634 2005-09-11 22:21:00 Acer going bankrupt? Should buy another brand? annie (6010) Press F1
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387629 2005-09-11 22:21:00 My daughter is about to buy a laptop in the UK and I suggested a particular Acer model to her. Anyway, she went into a shop called Dixons (or something), similar to DSE here, and was told by the geek in residence that she should buy a Compaq because Acer were going bankrupt.
Does anyone know anything about this? Was the geek hallucinating, or did he actually know something?
And what would your second choice be? - Acers are good value for money, Compaq doesn't seem to stack up in this regard
Any advice appreciated, thanks
annie (6010)
387630 2005-09-11 22:26:00 Well..........seeing at this is the first ever mention I have ever come across of Acer being in trouble then we can assume one of the following

1.The salesman has been inhaling fairy dust

or

2. The salesman is privvy to details only discussed by the company directors.


Assumption #1 looks more likely to me.
Metla (12)
387631 2005-09-11 22:37:00 Thanks Metla - I think you're probably right - could find only a few rumours at chat sites from 3-4 weeks ago using google. annie (6010)
387632 2005-09-11 23:19:00 With net profits that grew by 130 per cent in the first six months of 2005, and turning in a profit of $139.47 million, on revenues of $4.16 billion for the period, compared to revenues of $3.1 billion for the same period last year.
And with sales growing steadily in both Europe, the US and the Asia Pacific region I very much doubt it
bartsdadhomer (80)
387633 2005-09-12 00:13:00 Facts like that need to be used to clobber the salesman, It would be well worth paying them a visit, talking to the manager, passing on the craptastic rubbish spewed forth by the salesman and informing the manager that is why your money will go elsewhere.

or not.

Salesmen should be held accountable for telling outright lies, and I would love to see the Toshiba salesman from the other thread put his 1.6 P-M up against a 3.4Ghz P4......
Metla (12)
387634 2005-09-12 00:45:00 Well..........seeing at this is the first ever mention I have ever come across of Acer being in trouble then we can assume one of the following

1.The salesman has been inhaling fairy dust

or

2. The salesman is privvy to details only discussed by the company directors.

or

3. Salesman gets more commission on the Compaq
Greg (193)
387635 2005-09-12 01:33:00 And Dixons would be something like Harvey Normans or Noel Leemings. Buy a fridge from them if the price is right. Perhaps Dixons stock Compaq, but not Acer. ;)

Compaq has been a disastrous acquisition for HP, though it had the benefit that they got rid of their disastrous CEO (with a multimillion golden payout).
Graham L (2)
387636 2005-09-12 01:44:00 http://www.dixons.co.uk/ Metla (12)
387637 2005-09-12 01:58:00 A quick squiz at Google on Acer news shows them making lots more, expanding all over the place and generally doing well.
Salesman perhaps didn't stock Acer and does Compaqs?
pctek (84)
387638 2005-09-12 03:06:00 I think you're all right. I still think Acer is probably the way to go, have been looking on the web at financial sites and if they're down the tubes no-one's safe.
Now if someone could advise me on the model to buy - she's a student, and will need to run Office 2003 Pro, burn music CDs (she will own the copyright) and maybe play a game or two - Doom 3 would be ideal, but she may not be able to afford a computer with quite that grunt. She also needs some flexibility with connectivity - needs to be able to use dialup and possibly wireless or landline broadband. She's in a hostel, which currently allows dialup to the rooms, and which is arranging some sort of wireless broadband to be available to the students soon.
I had been looking at an Acer Travelmate 4141, GBP 710, (at least at this site, bit cheaper elsewhere) specs here: 2. htm" target="_blank">www.laptopshop.co.uk
It has several things I think are good:
1. Stereo speakers
2. Intel Pentium M 730 1. 6 GHz
3. 512 DDR II SDRAM (2x256), which I read somewhere was good to have
4. Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE80 2. 11b, IEEE 80 2. 11g
5. Something which is called a Wireless NIC: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG
which I assume is the wirelss LAN
6. XP Pro – home would be enough
7. 4 USB ports – keyboard, mouse, printer and one spare
8. Battery life of up to 5h, so presumably 8-cell battery.
However a friend of hers, another NZ’er in UK, working in computing, has suggested she could get a pretty good one for GBP 500 or so.
So I have some questions about the cheaper machines’ specifications.
1. Is 256M DDRAM enough?
2. Which processors are good out of:
Mobile AMD Sempron 2800+
Intel Celeron M 370 w 1MB or 512K L2 cache
3. For communications, I assume that:
56K ITU v9.2 data/fax modem (international PTT approval)
is a dialup modem – correct?
10/100 fast Ethernet I understand
Acer InviLink dual-mode 80 2. 11b/g Wi-Fi network solution (manufacturing)
option
with Acer SignalUp wireless technology support
will be what the ad says is “Built in wireless LAN 80 2. 11g 54Mbps”
which I assume is the wireless LAN thing that is needed to connect to
wireless broadband. Is this correct? Is is as good as the Intel PRO/wireless
described above for the first machine? 220BG
4. Is DVD/CDRW combo drive (no further detail) the sort of thing you can burn music CDs and DVDs with?
Thanks – I would be grateful for any help at all with this. If I cut down the specs I need to be careful I’m not degrading the performance of the thing, my daughter has about as much patience with slow technology as I have – almost zero.
Ta
annie (6010)
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