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Be Cautious Regarding Acer

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Started 9 years ago by mikiem2
Latest reply from ChrisS

mikiem2
Moderator

It's been widely reported that the founder of Acer & its Chairman told reporters:

Welcome," Shih told reporters in response to a question about whether Acer would be open to a takeover. He added however that any buyer would get an "empty shell" and would pay dearly.

"U.S. and European management teams usually are concerned about money, their CEOs only work for money. But Taiwanese are more concerned about a sense of mission and emotional factors," he said.

Acer has reported steep on-year sales falls in recent months, including a 33 percent drop in July.

It suffered a T$2.89 billion ($90 million) loss in the first six months of 2015, versus a slight profit in the same period last year. It booked losses for all of 2011, 2012 and 2013 amid cratering PC sales.

Its stock price has fallen by nearly half since early April.

Those buying Acer hardware, e.g. monitors & laptops etc., *might* find themselves with orphans in the future. I've been there, having hardware manufactured by a company that either no longer exists, or can't/won't offer support, & it's not pleasant.

While they're putting out a MUCH rosier picture, Dell's recently undergone some pretty drastic changes itself. Believing the hype I bought a monitor from Dell a couple of weeks ago. Tried contacting the company twice since then, but their web site doesn't even show the support requests that they acknowledged in emails. Whether the nonexistent customer support & service is due to lack of funds or something else I've no idea, but assuming Dell wasn't like that before [I find it hard to imagine them growing with zero support], they could be in trouble too.

Posted 9 years ago #
Terri218
Member

I hope they stay in business. I bought an Acer monitor recently.

Posted 9 years ago #
Dragonlair
Member

I bought an Acer laptop back in March. The model was so old (setup last October for Walmart's Christmas sales) that between the time I ordered it and it arrived, it dropped off the Acer site entirely! On top of that, I got the LAST one at Walmart.com!

It's working fine and it was cheap -- Win 8.1 and a TB hard drive for under $300 so I'm just gonna enjoy it as long as I can.

My husband and I maneuvered the "start menu" so it works for us (probably anybody else would scream at the way it works) but I don't plan on updating to 10 even on that unless they get the REAL Windows 7 Start menu back. What they have is so kludgy that it really isn't the same!

Posted 9 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

My husband and I maneuvered the "start menu" so it works for us (probably anybody else would scream at the way it works) but I don't plan on updating to 10 even on that unless they get the REAL Windows 7 Start menu back. What they have is so kludgy that it really isn't the same!

RE: your personalized Start Menu -- what works, works. :)

I would like to plant an idea to maybe stick in the back of your brain to consider... When we get close to the end of the free upgrade period, 10 or 11 months from now, there will likely be a lot more known about how 10 is licensed or activated & registered. Today I'm not sure anyone knows what happens to your win8.1 license if you upgrade, nor do they know if you keep the 10 license if you revert back to 8.1.

**IF** you got to keep both licenses, **maybe** it would be worth it to do a complete disk image backup, upgrade to 10 to get the license, then restore that backup so everything is as it was. There is no key per se for the 10 upgrades -- Microsoft's servers just record an ID for your laptop & that it's licensed to run 10.

I don't think too many people outside Microsoft [maybe not too many people inside Microsoft] know for sure how win10 versions or updates will work in the future. But if they stick to what they've said so far, win10 is the final version, so a license you got 10-11 months from now might be good for the current version of Windows forever.

In that case it might be worthwhile to have the option to upgrade your laptop to 10 for free sometime, maybe years from now.

Posted 9 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

I hope they stay in business. I bought an Acer monitor recently.

If they offer Square Trade warranties where you live, & if it hasn't been 30 days, might be worth considering. If it's been over 30 days they might still sell you a warranty if you call them.

I've not owned anything made by Acer for over a decade, & back then they did have decent warranty service. Nowadays it seems a different story... I read countless user reviews over at Newegg.com when I was looking for a monitor, and many of those reviews didn't have anything good to say about Acer service.

Square Trade warranties start from day one, so they overlap your factory warranty, & last for the number of years on the ST warranty you purchased. If there's a problem you contact them -- if it's under factory warranty they are supposed to help you deal with it. I've had experience with them when stuff went bad after factory warranty, & recently with an AOC monitor that was partially under factory warranty. In those cases they had me print a shipping label which I taped to the boxed unit, & dropped it off to the local Staples for UPS or FedEx shipping, no charge. Once the tracking number entered their system they gave me the money to replace it. Super easy.

Posted 9 years ago #
krypteller
Member

Re: "Update to Windows 10 or not"?

I have upgraded six machines to Windows 10. One of them, an Asus X551CA, is so compactly built, I could not replace the hard disk by an SSD, nor upgrade the memory. So going back to Windows 7 or 8 will mean I have to reformat the disk and do a fresh install. But in the other five (one emachines, one Medion, two Acers) I have replaced the original disks by new ones before upgrading to Windows 10. So I can go back any day I want by just replacing the disk drive. Or even simpler: attach the original disk in a USB connector and cloning the original to the built-in drive, if I would not mind losing the free Windows 10 forever.

An SSD of 240 GB costs just over €100 (Dutch price). A normal disk of 2 TB will be about €50. The SSD comes with software to clone the current disk. Otherwise you can use the free MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition 9.0.

Posted 9 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

Or even simpler: attach the original disk in a USB connector and cloning the original to the built-in drive, if I would not mind losing the free Windows 10 forever.

It can present a bit of a conundrum for those that want to dual boot, at least in the little bit of testing I've done. Microsoft can be as liberal or as strict as it wants when it comes to changed hardware, & with the free upgrade they may be tending to be more strict than with 7-8.1.

To test it out I upgraded a licensed copy of win7 HP 64 in a VM to 10 Home 64. That copy of 10 lost activation set up with an identical VM, as well as with a new hard drive [VHD] in the original VM. FWIW I wound up using the old VHD with 7 HP 64 on it, then changing the name of the VHD file with 10, & it's internal ID that's used by Windows. Then I used EasyBCD to make it dual boot -- I want to see what happens to the 2 licenses over time, though I will probably try to split off the win7 VM at some time in the future, if only to see if it's allowed. ;)

If that holds true [i.e. Microsoft doesn't liberalize their policies], 10 will be licensed forever on that particular SSD in that particular laptop. [You could BTW put 7 on the current SSD, & sometime in the future install 10 to that same SSD, & it would still be activated.] Put it on the old SSD [clone, restore backup etc.] & if it behaves like my VMs, it'll lose activation. In my personal experience however, if you have a regular retail license [even OEM version], & you put 7 on the SSD where 10 now lives, it should remain activated -- if the laptop shipped with 7 it could go either way.

If Microsoft liberalizes their policies you might also clone 10 to an external drive, with everything being the same as before -- no changes to Windows or reactivation required. Unmodified 7 isn't capable of doing that. OTOH right now [in my experience] if you moved 10 to a external drive you'd effectively cripple that license, even if you could get it activated. As posted in another thread I think, I had to reset my tablet, associating it with another Microsoft account to get the 10 upgrade -- among the details Microsoft retained for that account, was that I'd had 10 on a USB drive, & currently Windows on a USB drive or in a VHD is not upgradable.

Needless to say that with the experimentation I'm doing in my VMs, that licensed copy is not tied to an MS acct. And in case someone's not confused yet, I've got a couple of 10 VMs that do have accounts set up for the Insider Preview program, because at the moment having prior insider builds associated with those accounts is the only way to get the current builds, though it's entirely possible there are work-a-rounds, but it's hard to say with certainty since for the last several months people have been reporting stuff that worked for them, but that no one else could duplicate.

An SSD of 240 GB costs just over €100 (Dutch price).

Here it depends on the brand & model -- I've seen them as low as $70 - $75 on sale, less if they had a mail-in rebate, but there are several close to the $100 mark, & some better drives go for $125 - $150.

Posted 9 years ago #
krypteller
Member

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB is €130 excl 21% VAT at my favourite hardware dealer Paradigit.

I bought two Samsung 850 EVO series 250GB €95 excl 21% VAT.

As I am registered as a self-employed consultant, I can get the VAT back. And the net price is tax deductible.

Posted 9 years ago #
krypteller
Member

Re "Microsoft can be as liberal or as strict as it wants when it comes to changed hardware."

As I understand it, they only look at the motherboard for Windows 10 licencing. But I have not checked it. Replacing the disk drive had no effect on the activation.

Posted 9 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

As I understand it, they only look at the motherboard for Windows 10 licencing.

The way Microsoft determines the hardware ID is tied to the mechanism they use to deactivate Windows after a hardware change, and the exact parameters are a very closely held secret. The VM community has figured out that one of those parameters that's given extra weight is the MAC address. The hard drive itself has 3 IDs, one hard coded, one that shows up with the command prompt dir command, & one that's used by their BCD boot setup to identify the drive partition to boot from. In my own experience with VMs & such the 2nd of those IDs can have an effect, but obviously so can the 1st -- you can set the 2nd with a utility from SysInternals at microsoft.com.

Microsoft uses the license key you purchase, or that was inserted via volume licensing, to verify that the copy of Windows you're installing is legit, but they also record the hardware ID to tell whether it was already used on other hardware. Their secret formula tells them how much hardware has changed, & if it exceeds whatever threshold, it's considered another device entirely, & you have to reactivate. With 10 being a free upgrade to many, they've set it up so that there's no need for a key, & more importantly for Microsoft, no need to create millions & manage more millions of keys.

Rather than let you use the win7-8.1 key you already have with a fresh install, it's easier & simpler for them to require an in-place upgrade from a activated Windows installation. At that point they associate a valid license with the hardware ID, same as always. And as I found out with my Windows tablet, they also store hardware data with the Microsoft acct. if/when one is associated with that Windows install.

As far as the motherboard goes, that might be one of the hardware IDs that goes towards the overall hardware ID of a device or system, but it is not the only one. And changing it may or may not trigger deactivation. I installed 8, upgraded it to 8.1, & never really cared for it, so it just sat there, I'm a bit ashamed to say for years without being fired up once. I even wiped it off the hard drive to use that partition for the win10 Insider Preview last fall. Late last year I replaced the motherboard, CPU, hard drive, power supply, & RAM. Then in early August I restored a image backup of 8.1, figuring I'd have to reactivate it before I could do the 10 upgrade. I was wrong -- 8.1 was still activated. 8.1 was also tied to a Microsoft acct., which might have had something to do with it.

Replacing the disk drive had no effect on the activation.

Feeling more of an optimist this morning, THAT is very good to hear - much Thanks. As I mentioned [somewhere] I've read a lot of reports that other people couldn't duplicate -- too many for them all to be mistaken or lies. I take your report plus all that info as meaning that Microsoft is being more flexible, tweaking their hardware threshold a bit to hopefully arrive at something more workable.

That said, I suppose I should also come down to Earth long enough to recognize that Microsoft has for years been a bit flaky with Windows activation, deactivation, & reactivation. Win7, & especially win7 HP, & especially, especially win7 HP sold as a family pack, was notorious for being hit or miss regarding whether you had to call for activation [&/or reactivation] or not. 8-8.1 might have been the same way, but I never paid as much attention to those versions so I don't really know.

Posted 9 years ago #
mikiem2
Moderator

I bought two Samsung 850 EVO series 250GB €95 excl 21% VAT.

Heard/read good things initially about the EVO drives, but then there was a lot of talk of Samsung SSDs getting slower &/or losing data with age or something -- I read once that you had to re-write all files to freshen them up every so often as a work-a-round. Soon afterward I read that Samsung had come up with a fix, then another fix as the 1st one didn't cut it, but was still working on the problem.

Have you ever had any problems with that sort of thing? Was Samsung able to get everything fixed & working?

Posted 9 years ago #
krypteller
Member

Re "Have you ever had any problems with that sort of thing? Was Samsung able to get everything fixed & working? "

I bought two Samsung 850 EVO series around June 1 last. So I have only been using them for three months. I installed them in #2 and #3 on the scale of hours usage /per week. I cannot exchange the hard disk on the laptop I use the most. Apart from that, I have not had any problem with these drives.

I bought both disks at my favourite hardware store and they advised me to buy this particular model. If I have a problem within a few months, I will report it here. Luckily in the EU we have quite long guarantee periods, provided you buy as a private person.

Posted 9 years ago #
ChrisS
Administrator

The slowdown was with the Samsung 840 EVO. The only thing that I've seen with regard to the 850 EVO is concern that it might develop the same problem. Samsung would have done themselves a favor had they named the 850 EVO something else.

Posted 9 years ago #

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