But if you’re like me who’s just a simple user who use the laptop to surf the internet and don’t play a lot of games or do anything heavy duty this laptop has plenty of horse power!

I received my new laptop 4 days ago. Overall it is great, and I’d love to post a positive review here. It looks great from the outside, the 6-8 hours of battery life is a reality (let’s see how long it lasts before the battery worns out), keyboard is nice, etc… Also agree that the built quality is not perfect, but overall it is fine.

My major concern, is the overall system stability. I am not a heavy user, mostly internet surfing.

However, in the past 4 days, I have experienced a tremendous number of crashes, maybe 2 to 3 a day, just using normal programs such as Skype, Internet Explorer 8 and MSN Live Messenger… At somepoint, the CPU goes to 100% utilization and the system becomes very slow or totally unresponsive, so I need to do a forced shut down. I thought this was due to Internet Explorer, but experienced the same with Firefox yesterday…

I just tried to install a USB AT&T 3G key, and despite a successful installation, now I am unable to log into Windows because on the log on screen my cursor and keyboards are none responsive. I have just logged a ticket with their Support Team, let’s see what they come up.

I have never had some many problems with a new laptop in the past and am considering returning it for a refund.

Again, I would really like to love this laptop, I think ACER has a great product here, BUT I cannot recommended it at this point, and hope I will be able to update my recommendation very soon.

Cons:
Fan is super quit but living in a 450sqft studio I can still hear it from 8-10 ft away…but just barely.
In my small studio even the lowest LED setting is fairly bright.
Wish the CPU was upgradable for future proofing

Other Thoughts: Really non of the cons I listed should keep anyone from buying this WHS. Amazing product for the price (compare it to it’s competition).

In short, I bought this Acer server and successfully installed it on my home network. In very large part, it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing, that is, it automatically backs up my four-computer home network, and it gives me remote access to my data, too. Thus far, I have only one issue which I’ll share in a moment.

The out-of-box experience is pretty good, but don’t expect much by way of documentation. You’ll need to look elsewhere to understand all the ins-and-outs of using WHS. Although the “Quick Start” booklet seems very thick, it’s actually got the instructions in about five or six languages, and so when you read the English section (if you read English), you’ll only see how to set-up the server with a little narrative and black-and-white screenshots that are difficult to read. Fortunately, the setup is pretty easy, and they do include a larger poster with just the absolute essentials (which is what I used), and the poster was good enough. In short, plug-in the ethernet cable from the server to your wireless router, and you’re in business. The server is heavier than I expected, and *quieter* than I expected (much less noisy than my desktop computer).

Then, you install a CD in one of your available network computers to install the Server Console on the installed-from computer, and to begin configuring your new server. One things stands out in my mind here…the instructions say turn-on your server and wait until the blue LED light is glowing steady. Trouble is, there are about seven or eight lights glowing at this point (one light for each of the four disk drive bays, a power-on light, a network light, an “information” light, and possibly a disk activity light), and some of the lights glow purple, not blue. Suffice it to say that you should wait a few minutes just to make sure everything is settled before you start server configuring.

The server configuration went pretty well, I thought. Do a Google search for “Acer Windows Home Server Review” and you’ll find a website where someone has very helpfully documented the entire install process using color screenshots of each step. The installed server console program (running on one of your networked computers) is not resizeable and won’t maximize, which is annoying. You can use Remote Desktop Connection to actually login to your new server (if you have XP Pro or Vista Business/Ultimate running on your computer — home users typically don’t have this).

In a very short time, my old Gateway desktop computer (circa 2003, XP Pro, 2Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, 80Gb HD) was recognized by the new Acer server, and I was creating user accounts on the server that match my desktop computer (you should use a password on your user accounts, and be sure to specify the same password on the server as what you use for the desktop/laptop account).

At this point, I had my first problem — the Gateway’s connection to the server would get lost inexplicably during the first attempt at a manual backup. Long story short, I completely reinstalled Windows XP Pro SP-3 on the Gateway desktop, reinstalled the Windows Home Server Console, and was able to begin getting successful backups until I got to the point where I restored all my digital media files (using Acronis and an external harddrive — not using the new Acer server) and then tried a WHS backup, which fails inexplicably. Could be my aging hardware, but it’s a fresh install of XP and the error messaging is vague and unhelpful.

Notably, my three laptops (running XP Media Edition w/1Gb RAM and two Vista Ultimate machines w/2Gb and 4/Gb of RAM) backed up their contents perfectly — no troubles at all, even backing up a very large VMWare virtual hard drive (which is a single, physical, 20Gb file on my Vista laptop).

Very cool feature: This Acer will wake-up a sleeping (or, I’m told, a hibernating) computer to do the backup in the middle of the night! So, don’t turn-off your computers, just put them in sleep (or, I guess, hibernate) mode so they don’t use much power, but will still get backed-up. The WHS backups are incremental, so you can return to a previous point in time during a restore — you aren’t limited just to what was done last night.

If you’re a Bellsouth customer using a Westell 6100 modem, note that you’ll need to disable the router functions of the Westell modem if you want to successfully use remote access on your WHS. Choose “Bridged over Ethernet” protocol in the modem setups, and then configure your wireless router so it is a PPPoE connection (you’ll need your Bellsouth email and password for the router configuration). Once I got through this headache (Bellsouth tech rep was **useless** and didn’t even know the correct IP for the modem!!), I was able to gain remote access to my server — very cool feature!!

I did a successful restore of my Gateway computer, just to see what that’s like. Very simple. Install a Restore CD in the computer (which must be connected by ethernet, not wirelessly), and choose a backup on the server you’ll use for the restore. I did this twice, and it worked perfectly and easily. A computer with XP SP-3, Office Pro and maybe 5Gb of personal data was restored in about 20 minutes!

In short, it’s a 4-star product because I can’t backup my digital media files on my Gateway. My Gateway desktop hardware is quirky, so that very well might be the problem root cause, but even still, the WHS backup is unhelpful in diagnosing the exact issue for me. (The Windows Event Viewer alludes to a buffer space issue with a socket, but that’s beyond the home consumer’s ability to understand).

**** July 2, 2009 update: I’ve had this for just a few days now, and things are working nicely. I’ve got all my personal data on a shared folder, making all my data accessible anywhere on the Internet (by design – I could turn off remote access if I wanted). Everything is working very well. Using Offline Files and Folders (on XP Pro or Vista Pro/Ultimate), I’ve now got a great solution to carrying my data with me on my laptop. Note, though, that for the auto-backup function to work, your laptop should be plugged in, and I noticed this morning that the kids’ laptop didn’t go back to sleep after getting awakened for backup. I’m not sure whether that always happens or is supposed to happen.

I added another 1TB hard drive…there’s no instruction on how to actually do that, but here’s the key: slide the orange knob on the front of the empty drive bay to take the cage out — swinging that cage door fully open will disengage a hard drive from the server (but at the moment, the cage is empty, so it really doesn’t do anything). One side of the mostly-plastic cage is meant to be gently bent so you an insert the new hard drive and fit it into the four button-pins (it’s not screwed into the cage). When you slide the cage back into the server, shut the cage’s “door” halfway until the cage is slid back as far as it can go. Then, fully close the cage’s “door” to make a snug fit between the hard drive and the server’s pin receptacle. I bumbled my way around to figure this out, as there are no instructions to explain this.

When you power-on your server, it’ll recognize the new drive. You need to add it to the server’s storage space (whether you want to use it as additional storage or whether you want to enable data redundancy so your data is stored on two drives, not just one).

I bought a one-year McAfee license for the antivirus (by default, the server runs Windows Firewall and not McAfee’s firewall). The process was klutzy and confusing after I clicked “Buy Now” on the server console (under the McAfee tab). Although others appear to have gotten a six-month introductory license, my Acer server came with only 45-days, and when I renewed, it didn’t begin the year after the 45-day period, it began immediately, so I essentially lost out on a free 45-day window to use McAfee.

I bought a new APC-branded UPS for the server. By plugging in the data cable running from the UPS to the USB port on the server, the server immediately recognized the UPS. I easily configured my shutdown wishes by remoting into the server (Control Panel > Power Options > Alarms).

Questions? Try commenting and I’ll do my best to answer back.

Cons:
- An odd uncalled for confusing Acer page inserted into the Remote access interface, not easy to remove
- I wish it could backup Macs
- Acer service and support seems non existent

Bottom Line:
A real bargain that will save you time and energy, and if you crash a hard drive once, you will be so glad you had that device backing up every night flawlessly..

Greatly recommended.