Acer Aspire 1 A114-32-C1YA, 14" Full HD, Intel Celeron N4000, 4GB DDR4, 64GB eMMC, Office 365 Personal, Windows 10 Home in S mode

Comment

This review is for the Acer A114-32-C1YA. 64gb of storage, 4gb of RAM, Windows S. Im a semi-retired I.T. tech, so this review comes from that standpoint. After booting the device and logging in (using a Microsoft account, not a local account) I upgraded Windows S to Windows Home. This is a free upgrade, but is not reversible. Windows S supports only apps available in the Windows Store; Windows 10 Home supports Office 365 and 3rd party software. Once Win 10 Home was installed (if you do this, be sure to reboot the system, just to let things stabilize); also Win 10 updates will want to install and the malware definitions of Windows Defender will want to install, so give it some time to do those chores before installing other apps. Before I installed more apps, I removed a BUNCH of apps from the original Win 10 install - the machine comes loaded with "Bloatware" from Microsoft. After the "Bloatware-ectomy and Windows updates I installed Office 365, Chrome browser, DIA (an open source diagramming application), four printer drivers, Splashtop (a remote access application), a "Caps Lock" indicator app, Dropbox and setting up MS Outlook, a couple of GB of data, and have 33 GB free. 8 GB is taken up by the backup of Windows ("Windows.old") and could be recovered by running disk clean / clean system files. I tested Windows Remote Desktop and SplashTop and was able to access remote Windows computers without issue. Setting up an old HP4050n printer took some time - the drivers had to be manually configured. Performance of the Acer with 4gb RAM and an N4000 processor is not earth shaking; it isnt a gaming machine. However, running Office apps or having 3-4 Chrome windows open doesnt seem to task the system. The keyboard is acceptable for the market price (YMMV since keyboards are subjective). Theres no "Caps Lock" indicator on the keyboard. However Ive installed a 3rd party freeware program that places an indicator on the screen when Caps Lock is on. (You can find the software by searching the web). Im finding the screen to be better than I expected for this price point - but again, thats subjective and YMMV. One irritation - "Cortana" wants to search the web, the local device, the planet, the outer planets, and extend the search to the Andromeda Galaxy for all I know. Theres a registry hack that kills ("murders" might be a better word) Cortana and limits searches to the local machine. If I need to search the web, I use Google (or some such); when Im looking for a file or an app, I want the Windows 10 Home search bar to limit the search to the local machine. Once the hack was in place, the search bar works nicely. You can search the web on how to disable Cortana. Be sure to save a backup copy of the Registry before attempting to edit it. Since Bitlocker isnt supplied with Win 10 Home (shame on Microsoft for that!!!) Ive added a BIOS / boot password so that once shut down the machine cant be fired up w/o the password. If you need more storage, a USB thumb drive can be installed (some of them are very small and dont extend out of the USB port by much). Online storage (DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) is also an option (Ive disabled OneDrive on my machine). Theres an SD card reader, but the card sticks out too far for my taste to leave a card in the machine permanently for storage purposes. YMMV. (Edit 2/23/19): I added a 64 GB USB drive and moved my 2 GB of data onto that. I used another computer running Window 10 Pro to encrypt the drive using Bitlocker. Windows 10 Home can unlock Bitlocker drives. If the laptop is lost or stolen the BIOS password will protect the Acer from booting up and Bitlocker will protect the data. The machine is lightweight and would be good for making notes in class or meetings; my primary usage will be to maintain a Windows Server 2012r2 domain controller and network using remote desktop and Splashtop. Email and Office apps run well; Ive experienced no issues. Note that I normally have no more than 2-3 apps running at once; if youre in the habit of having 15 web pages open you may stress the machine more than I do. Dont expect to run online games or Adobe PhotoShop or other intensive apps on this machine. But for me - $250 for a serviceable laptop that can do what I need to do w/o fuss rates 5 stars. (There are other computers in the price range with better specs - but the Acer works for me. YMMV.) (Edit 2/23/2019) After a full battery charge I used the computer on a service call. The computer was in use (no videos, just Office, web searches, and remote accessing clients network machines) from 5 a.m. until 10 a.m.; it was placed into sleep mode until 3 p.m., then used from 3 p.m. until 5:15 p.m. when the "low battery" warning at 20% came on. A little over 7 hours run time, 5 hours sleep mode - not bad at all for the first real day of work. HTH Regards Jim

Show more

Comment

You get what you pay for! I think this is value for money. It’s not built like a tank, it’s plastic but if you are someone that takes care of your things, it lasts just as well. Very good screen resolution and set up is very simple. So far I’ve had no problems with it at all and it does everything I need it to do. I’m not a gaming person at all so this handles everything else very well at a fraction of the cost. I suppose it depends what you need it for. Highly recommended for a low budget computer. If I were to rate it according to those in its class - there would be five stars throughout.

Show more

Comment

The computer seemed ok when we first opened the package(Christmas gift for my wife). Started up fine. Had no issues during use of day 1. Next day my wife told me the computer just turned off on her. I checked it out and it would not turn on. The power on light would come on but the screen would not. I disconnected power and held the battery disconnect button as this does not have a removable battery. The computer then turned back on once I reattached power. I was in the middle of typing something at the start menu and then the screen went black again. I tried the same procedure but this time the power light would come on briefly then turn off. First and last Acer in my house.

Show more

Comment

Only two complaints about this notebook, battery can run down fairly quickly and my main gripe touch pad is a little wonky. I ended up going with a wireless mouse. Keep it plugged in when not on the go and use a mouse and its a great budget notebook at the price. Good screen display pretty light weight and keyboard is fine.

Show more

Comment

The Acer Aspire 1 is the Microsoft answer to the continuing onslaught of affordable Google Chromebooks, featuring decent specs, at a downright affordable price. While I would not want to use it as my only machine, as a secondary device, it has much to offer. An immediate downside is that it ships with Windows 10S, which is a limited version of Windows, that can only install apps from the Windows Store. However, this is easily remedied, and it is a free upgrade to Windows 10 Home, which then allows any Windows program to be used, and is recommended to intermediate and advanced users. At this price, we can’t expect amazing, but the Acer Aspire 1 is a decent laptop. While the exterior is a lightly textured plastic, it is quite thin with a fanless design, and the keyboard is good although the keys have shallow travel. The touchscreen is also serviceable. The display is also ok, and with a 1080p resolution, although it could be brighter, and have richer colors. Still, it does not look bargain to my eye. The 3 USB ports, and HDMI port along with an Ethernet port match up well against many mainstream laptops these days. The CPU is the Celeron N4000, and while it is a dual core part, is the newer Gemini Lake architecture, and has enough horsepower for routine tasks, such as email, word processing and basic web surfing. The Acer Aspire 1 is gimped in a few departments. The first is the “hard drive” which is 64 GB of eMMC memory, which is a cousin to that flash card in your old digital camera, with speeds more akin to a mechanical hard drive than an SSD. The space is limited, but it should have enough for a Windows upgrade, unlike the 32 GB machines. There is also only 4 GB of RAM, which you can feel when you open up more than a few tabs on your browser. Finally, while there are two speakers, they are fairly small, and the audio lacks punch and bass, which is typical for this type of machine. Overall, the Acer Aspire 1 is a more than decent bargain machine. While not suited to advanced tasks such as video editing or gaming, for the basics such as email or web browsing it gets the job done. When I pushed it, it was even able to stream a 4K video quite smoothly. This makes it an ideal device for a student to take to class, a senior citizen, or to take on vacation.

Show more

Comment

I guess it works well. I got it for my 15 year-old daughter, as she was often panicked and losing her mind with last minute word-processing issues and printing needs at 11:00 pm the night before they were due. The idea was I could sleep. Maybe. I havent seen her since. She disappeared into her room, and Im assuming shes just streaming all the G- rated crap she can find. Which means that setup was easy and its functioning with greater capacity than I thought a cheap laptop could. Dammit.

Show more

Comment

I have a middle-school aged child and as he gets older, more of his school assignments are done online. He needs the computer more and more to write papers or hand in assignments in his school portal. After reading reviews for SEVERAL laptops, I decided to take a chance on this one as the reviews were good and the product description was exactly what I needed. This was a great purchase and I would definitely recommend. This came with a 1 year Microsoft Office subscription which is perfect as my son uses Word to type up a lot of his school papers. All software was easily downloaded at start up and the computer was ready to use within 30 minutes of taking it out of the box. The set up was easy and contrary to some reviews, the set up DID NOT use up all of the available memory on this PC. Pros: This is not a Chromebook product, most inexpensive options were Chromebook and this is a standard PC that uses Windows. Screen size and clarity are good, the picture is clear on photos and videos - my son watches A LOT of YouTube videos so I can personally attest to the screen clarity. Lightweight, this PC is not heavy, only weighs a few pounds. Slim build of the product is nice, it allows for easy storage in a sleeve or laptop bag - this PC is not bulky at all. After set up, you can easily link this PC to your other Microsoft/Windows products (like Xbox, or other PCs) with your Microsoft Log-in information. Cons: You get what you paid for price wise - if you need this for anything more than basic browsing, games, Microsoft Office (basic documents) then you may want to consider either something with more memory or buying external storage - that isnt so much a con as it is something to make note of. The Microsoft Office will need to be renewed which will be an additional cost after the 1 year subscription. Was this review helpful helpful? Let me know!

Show more

Comment

Build quality seems good. Product description a little misleading. We were comparing a few other budget laptops. This one seemed to be the best value according to RAM and Processor speed. The specs listed this unit as 2.6GHz, however when we unboxed and checked the actual processor speed it registers as 1.1GHz. After some online investigation I found that the Intel Celeron N4000 has the ability to turbo-boost to 2.6GHz, but only for a short period if time until it eventually thermo-throttles back down to 1.1GHz. Not an absolute deal breaker, but I do feel like they should explain that in better detail in the product description.

Show more

Comment

I just wanted an extra windows laptop for light inet browsing and Microsoft office work, and I didnt want to spend more than 300$. I went through set-up and then it shut off. It tried to reboot itself 3 times before it started. I wanted to give it a chance, I knew it was going to be a cheap laptop - not just price-point wise, like I knew I wasnt getting a quality laptop, and hey, maybe it just needed a little extra time to get going.. (? thats me not wanting to have to deal with returning the thing I guess), but then it shut off AGAIN. So yes, hadnt even owned it 5 minutes and it shut down on me 4 times. Maybe I got a lemon?

Show more

Comment

Solid laptop. Users...first thing you need to google and do is to take this product out of Windows S mode

Show more