The Adventures of Adam Parkzer and an Acer Netbook from Target

A while back, I decided that I would get two new computers for college. One of them would be a pretty powerful desktop to keep in my room that I would use as my main computer. The other would be a cheap and basic netbook that I would take around with me, mostly for quick internet browsing and note taking.

After fishing through Dell’s website, I managed to find a pretty good desktop that had a huge discount, and a 23″ HD widescreen monitor that had another huge discount. I looked around on other websites and it seemed like this was the best deal I could find for a computer and monitor with as good features, so I decided that this desktop was the one I was going to buy. Now all I needed was a good netbook.

A few days ago, I saw an advertisement for an Acer netbook in a Target ad that was selling for $199.99. It seemed like an average netbook that would normally go for around $250 to $300, so I decided to go buy it yesterday.

After I brought it home, I powered it up and let the operating system do its regular first-boot configuration. After clicking Next a few times and putting in my user information, I left to get a snack. When I came back after ten minutes or so, I noticed that it was done loading, and had transitioned onto a plain teal screen with nothing else except the cursor. I figured that it must still be loading, and let it sit for another ten minutes, when I finally decided that something was wrong. I force-rebooted it, and when I powered it back up, the operating system fully loaded, taking me to the Windows 7 desktop.

After about ten to twenty minutes of use, the netbook suddenly blue-screened and restarted itself. Wondering what happened, I let it load again on its own, only to find that seconds after the computer attempted to load the operating system, it blue-screened again and put itself into an endless blue-screen and self-reboot loop. Instead of letting it try to load the operating system, I instead got it to go into System Recovery to take it back to a previous state.

That didn’t work any better. It seemed like it was making some repairs to the operating system, but the recovery attempt went on and on. After twenty minutes or so, I concluded that the netbook broke itself and that it was defective. I repackaged it and prepared the receipt so I could return it today.

Fortunately, after I told Target what had happened and informed them that the netbook was defective, they accepted the return and provided a full refund without charging anything extra for restocking fees (which makes sense, because I wouldn’t expect them to restock a defective netbook anyway).

So that’s my adventure with an Acer netbook from Target. While I was using the netbook for the ten minutes that it worked, I noticed how large the resolution was compared to how small the screen was. Anyone that knows me in person should know that I have miserable eyesight, and the netbook wouldn’t have helped anyway. I currently have my laptop set on a 1024 width resolution, and it’s around 15″. The netbook was also set on a 1024 width resolution, but was 10.1″. If you know that 10.1 < 15, you know that I would've gotten frustrated with the netbook eventually anyway, so I guess I'm glad that it was defective.

As for my computer plans, I more or less changed my mind and decided upon buying one good laptop instead of both a desktop and a netbook. I realize that laptops aren’t as powerful as desktops, but if I take into account the extra money I would’ve spent on the netbook anyway, and find some more good discounts, I’m sure I can find a laptop that’s as good as what my desktop would have been for about the same price as the desktop and netbook combined.

Disclaimer: Please note that by no means am I discouraging you from buying an Acer netbook. I have never used an Acer product before I attempted to use this netbook, so it’s not like all the Acer products I’ve tried have not functioned properly. Also, this simply could have been bad luck on my part when I got a bad netbook, and it is very possible (and most likely the case) that the rest of the netbooks in stock were fine. When I looked up this particular netbook online for reviews, almost everyone said it was an excellent product, and I’m sure hundreds of people aren’t lying in unison.