Each time, we've spent anywhere from $20 to $100 in shipping costs to get the devices to Acer. Once you ship the device, Acer provides no information whatsoever on status, and calls are completely fruitless. Some weeks later, we've always gotten the gear back, but once a monitor case was put on incorrectly and another time, the laptop came back behaving exactly as it had when we sent it. Calls to Acer informed us we could send it back in, again, but we'd again have to pay shipping.

We have found that Acer devices are wonderful while they work, but they almost universally fail. That's not just our experience, but reports we've gotten from many other owners. Heather will tell you her conclusion about the Acer Aspire One in a moment, but unless Acer radically improves its reliability and support, Computing Unplugged has to formally recommend not buying Acer products. -- DG]

I considered the possibility that the Aspire One is simply being overwhelmed by Microsoft Word 2003 and Norton's anti-virus software, but the unit comes with trial versions of Office 2007 and McAfee's Internet security suite. If it can run those, it should be able to handle my older software.

I had been cheerfully telling fellow writers, friends, and family how great the Aspire One was. I now have to temper all of that with, "But if it needs support, you'll be on your own." As I told people about the problems with the device, nearly everyone mentioned their own problems with previous Acer products and with their lack of support.

Rating the Aspire One is difficult. When it's working properly, it's easily a four out of five. When it ate my file, my rating would have been unprintable. My rating for Acer itself is unfortunately not much better. This is my first Acer product, and I suspect it'll be my last.

OUR RATING: 2 of 5