Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is just a quick note to fill in a couple of details not in the listed specs, now that I've actually received and set up 2 of these. The version of ION graphics is listed on the box as "GT218-ION" They work perfectly, so far as I can tell for You Tube HD (and Hulu) videos. (I did first upgrade Flash to version 10.1.) The "wireless" mouse and keyboard work via a nano-size dongle installed in a USB port, and are fine up to a distance of about 5 feet. They are seen by Windows as 2.4GHz, but are not listed as Bluetooth. Both the VGA video to a 20" 1600 x 1200 pixel LCD PC monitor and the HDMI video to a 46" 1080p (1920 x 1024 pixel) LED TV work fine. (I did reduce the resolution slightly on the TV due to the TV's overscanning otherwise hiding the edge of the PC display screen. I'm sure the overscan can also be adjusted in the TV settings to resolve this without reducing resolution, but didn't find the place to do so quickly enough.) Speed is listed as 3.5 on the Windows Experience, compared to 2.1 on our Asus Eee PC 1000 running the 32 bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium. (These new PCs run the 64 bit version.) These are marvelously quiet. The only time the fan is ever audible is for a moment during the initial power-on sequence. I had no trouble installing our Samsung USB DVD player. Just plugged it in and it was immediately recognized. Likewise, pointing to my HP 2605 networked color laser printer - found and configured automatically. (One suggestion: when the printer installer offers to update its list of printer drivers, let it.) It wasn't initially clear how I would reinstall everything if the hard drive ever fails. The PC didn't come with any media to be used for that. (I later discovered the included program eRecovery creates an image of the factory setup on 3 DVDs, with a fourth DVD for drivers, and easily made a set on DVD+RW disks, using the above-mentioned external DVD driveSamsung USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive for Mac and PC SE-S084C/RSBN (Gloss Black).) Another day in and I've removed some of the unneeded pre-installed programs, disabled unwanted startup programs with msconfig, installed Microsoft Security Essentials, Firefox (along with add-ins Firefox Sync, NoScript, Flashblock, and BetterPrivacy), and Microsoft Office 2007 (2010 comes pre-installed, but would have cost me extra.) Windows Update has found and installed dozens of security upgrades. Day 3: Telecommuted using this PC today. The VPN link was fine, as was management of a remote database application and a GoToMeeting that included both audio and video. Nothing I did today spiked CPU utilization about 40%! I also checked electricity used, and found it usually under 25 watts, barely more than the 20 watts used by our Asus Eee PC 1000 netbook, despite this Acer having more cores (2 rather than 1), faster clock speed (1.8GHz in place of 1.6GHz), and a 216GB hard drive (rather than 40GB of SSD.) Both 802.11b WiFi and Gigabit Ethernet Internet links work fine. I'll keep adding more as I finish configuring these, but wanted to post now in case anyone else has been wondering whether these actually exist and are any good. The answer is yes! Update: Two weeks in, this has still been a perfect choice for both of us. Everything is now configured just the way we like, and a full system backup made, just in case. (I used our USB external DVD+RW drive, but any external USB drive with enough space would do.) For anyone wondering whether the standard 2GB of RAM is enough, neither of ours has yet used even half of that yet, even though one of our PCs typically has a dozen windows open in different applications simultaneously. Highly recommended! Update 2: Two and a half years later, this is still a bargain. Nothing I see offered today is as good a value as these were new. That said, we recently felt the need for improvement -- easily and inexpensively satisfied this week, as follows: 1 Upped memory from 2GB to 4GB, using 2 Kingston Technology 2 GB (1x2 GB Module) 1066MHz DDR3 PC3-8500 204-Pin Single Rank SODIMM Memory for Select Acer Notebooks KAC-MEMHS/2Gon each PC. This is specifically recommended by Kingston for this model, and is the same brand as came originally. As expected, it's working well. 2 Replaced original 250GB hard drives with 128GB SSDs Crucial m4 128GB 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD2, one per PC. (We went with a smaller drive because most data is on a separate ReadyNAS. Note: Another version of this is offered that includes a cable for cloning the data, but instead I got Anker® Uspeed USB 3.0 to SATA 3 feet Converter Adapter Cable for 2.5 inch/3.5 inch Hard Drive HDD SSD with 12V 2A External AC Power Adapter for that. Software is also needed to clone the data. I used True Image 2013 for this. It's available for either one or three PCs. Cloning a drive is an option under its Tools menu, and could not be easier. Opening the case was easy after watching a YouTube video titled "Acer Aspire Revo AR3700 - How To Upgrade / Take Apart", but if you've never removed a mainboard from a PC (only needed to install the SSD), you might ask someone with experience to do that. So, for less than either of these cost originally, we've now improved both of them enough to last another several years. Still highly recommended!