Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Acer 5 slim is sleek, beautiful, durable, lightweight, lightning fast (when upgraded to 16gb of ram), and has a ridiculously low price tag. It probably wouldn't be of much use for gaming or CAD, but for basic web browsing, office use, and video streaming, it will do well. I have added some pictures next to a macbook air for size comparison. The screen is bright and beautiful, offering 1080p resolution. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the keyboard lights up! I plan to use this laptop mainly to stream business news, news tickers, and follow several stocks on multiple tabs. For this reason, I knew the RAM upgrade would be necessary. This PC would likely be quite slow if you chose to keep the 4GB of RAM, as 2GB is shared memory. I would recommend at the very least adding another 4GB stick, as there is a slot available and a 4GB stick is quite cheap. I decided to add a second hard drive as well, 128GB is not much, if I recall correctly, only 98GB was available, and that was before any Windows updates! I spent an extra $116 on the following upgrades: Teamgroup 16GB (8GBx2) - 2666MHz , DDR4 Dual-channel laptop memory, and a Kingston 480GB A400 SATA 3 2.5" Internal SSD hard drive. The fact that Acer made this laptop with 2 memory slots and a spot for a second harddrive is part of the reason this laptop has been a bestseller for so long. Without these options I wouldn't have considered purchasing it. I have included pictures of the laptop with the back cover removed, at various stages of adding the Kingston 2.5" SATA harddrive. It is an incredibly easy procedure, but I thought some may benefit from the photos. A bag of screws to secure the harddrive actually came with the laptop, which I included it in one of the photos. Replacing the memory is straightforward. To remove the back panel to access the internals, you simply remove 10 phillips screws. After installing the second hard drive, you will probably need to head over to disk management to partition the new drive. Be very careful with this step, as you can really mess your computer up & delete data, if you click on the wrong things! I haven't installed a second hard drive in ages, I expected windows to gind the drive after the installation, but that wasn't the case for me! This PC includes Microsoft Windows 10 in S mode. I suppose some people will be ok with this mode, as it enhances security and performance by only allowing programs available in the Microsoft Store. The vast majority of us however, will want to switch out of this mode ASAP. Fortunately switching modes is a very simple procedure. Here is the process: Go to Settings  > Update & Security  > Activation. In the Switch to Windows 10 Home section, select Go to the Store. There is also an "upgrade your edition of Windows" section on the screen during this step, do NOT click the "Go to the Store" link below that! On the Switch out of S mode page that appears in the Microsoft Store, select the Get button. Congratulations! Your new computer now has Microsoft windows 10 home, without the restrictions of S mode! Bottom line - this laptop is an absolute bargain! I hope you found this review helpful, if so, please kindly click the "helpful" button! Thank you!