Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

That's what I'd heard, Popeye - which is why I stayed away from them for the longest time! … But, when I read the specs for this laptop - coupled with the ultra-low price, I just had to go for it. Wound up being a test, too - so I could see for myself the quality of Acer machines. So, far - no problems, and I've been quite impressed with it - in part, because it's quite a bit faster than BOTH of my regularly-used desktops!!!!

Considering how little I paid for it - I am very happy with my Acer purchase. So, all I can say is - you owe it to yourself, Popeye - to give them another chance! … Look for the AMD designs, tho' - rather than the Intels!

Popeye Loc: LifIno

Thank you for the info.

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Sure, Popeye … if you do go searching - think you'll find the best deals on them, at Staples …

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

Whoa! When did that happen?!?! Or is that just a UK thang? Right about the IBM50z era/ fiasco, I gave up. From then on the only pre-builts I had were because they were gifts/ tradeins/ POS systems. That I fixed/ upgraded/ tossed.
I lucked out- I lived a couple miles from a Frys Electronics store. You wanna great system cheap- can you wait a month? This week mobos were on sale. Next week, memory and HDDs. A week- graphic cards. End of month- cases and cables. I love loss leaders!
But back to subject: One of the biggest boons- and banes- of MS is it's designed to work on almost anything Intel. Yes it takes a while to install- everything needs a driver, almost always foreign- but it works. The infamous "BSOD" was almost always a wrong video card driver trying to drive a resolution foreign to the monitor. You can buy a generic mobo, a compatible CPU, a found video card, proper memory and a left over case and build a Windows system. It'll work.
One of my latest little hobbies is converting "older" unsupported Macs to a Windows system. Windows7 was designed to work well with older, cheaper systems- then! Windows10 will run with 4gb ram, but 8 is better. I am writing this on an 8 year old Mac, running Windows10. It'll run up to ElCapitan- but who cares? I got it for $50 cause it had a bad DVD and wouldn't run Sierra. An ebay seller had both a Dell DVD and a 2gb video card- the Mac GPU was 512mb! I did use ElCap to clone my already setup PC HDD to an empty one, and put that in. 4 boots, 20 minutes later (PRAM, MS Windows drivers, then Driverbooster) and it's now a wonderful, reliable system.
From POS to Happy Ending. This make #4 for me, 3 others for relatives.

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Do you mean - building 10 PCs here at home, or do you mean calling them Home-Brews? ... Actually, Harry - I picked up that term from a MS site, when I went to see the notice about them no longer supporting home-built PCs. If you meant the former ... I had a 10-installation copy of Windows XP, so I just kept building them till I ran out of the OS. And, in regard to Intel Designs - all of them were built using AMD chips. When I switched to pre-builts, I chose Lenovo machines. The first had Win 8.0, the second had Win 7 Pro, and the third had Win 8.1. This one came with Win 10 - v. 1511 ... it took me two years to upgrade it to Win 10 v. 1803 (just finished in December) the others have all been upgraded to Win 10. The Win 7 Pro one got Win 10 Pro. The one I upgraded from Win 8.0, though, no longer boots, now - so I guess it was never meant to be upgraded to Win 10. Was thinking of getting one of those Win 10 USB Drives. Whaddyathink, Harry? Reckon that'd work?

GeneG

Back in the 1970's the TRS-80 was known locally as the "Trash-80." I constructed a few switch boxes for users who didn't want to keep changing cables every time they changed a component. My first portable computer was a Commodore 32, which my wife showed me how to use. I wrote a program to determine reference values for hematology and chemistry values for 1000 presumably healthy subjects. Printout took 2 weeks, 200 pages, and burned out a 9-pin printer. My late wife, a math teacher in New York, started teaching her students how to write programs in Basic in the late 1960's as a way to demonstrate that algebra is not a dead language. Word got around. Transitioned from leased ports on a minicomputer to portables when they became available (pre-PC), ending up teaching teachers in ~100 schools in the region. Thanks for the memory!

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Gene - the computers which used Commodore BASIC were the Pet (mostly, installed in schools) the VIC-20 which came standard with 4K and could be expanded with a card module to 20K - hence - the VIC 20, and the C-64 - which, of course - came standard with 64K, and wasn't expandable. There was also the SX-64 - a transportable version, with a built-in 5.25" floppy drive, and a 5" screen, with the keyboard built into the top. Then they produced the C-128 with double the RAM, and designed to be used with separate 5.25" floppy drives. This was the first one which did not depend on a Cassette Tape Recorder. Then, there was the Plus 4 - which may've followed the introduction of the C-64, and before the C-128. Then, they went to the Amiga line. A little while later, Commodore started manufacturing IBM-PC clones - first - the PC-1 - which was similar to the XT … and then, a little while later - the PC-40 - which was an AT clone with a built-in 40MB HD - which, at the time - was pretty classy. Nowadays, of course, there are 2TB Hard Drives, and just about every PC made, now, has, at least - a 1GB HD - how times change, huh, Gene?

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

< Printout took 2 weeks, 200 pages, and burned out a 9-pin printer. <
I once worked in a large aerospace company, and I needed to test print a small Postscript manual.
The print department printed it from an industrial sized 9 pin fan fold printer. It didn't understand Postscript. The next day, they wheeled in a set of boxes ...

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

< I picked up that term from a MS site, when I went to see the notice about them no longer supporting home-built PCs. >
* That's* the part I was curious about. I never heard that, except as an Urban Legend kinda thing.

I had a partner, and we'd build and sell @ a dozen "drag a magnet thru the parts pile" PCs a month, along with "refurbed" laser printers, at swapmeets. From XP on I never had a problem installing M$ Windows on anything. Upgrade problems, tho- rare but there.
That Win8 upgrade- was this one of those Win98 > Win7 > Win8 > Win10-64bit tricks? Plug the HDD in another PC, and suck off all the data you can. Put it back, nuke and pave: do a complete repartition and long format, and install a fresh shiny nekkid OS. You'll drink a lot of tea waiting, but it works. It's the goto procedure.
This unit? CPU, memory, year? You might be better off with Linux Mint, or PCLOS.

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

No, the Lenovos were all bought brand new, from Staples. The first one had/has a 3.4Ghz i3 with 4GB and a 1TB HD, and had Win 8.0 pre-installed. The second one I bought, is one of these mini-consoles - with a 2.8Ghz i3, but accompanied by a Server chip. It also has 4GB, but only a 500GB HD. That one is now updated from Win 7 Pro to Win 10 Pro. The third one I bought uses an AMD chip - equivalent to 3.5GHz, and that one I successfully upgraded to Win 10 from Win 8.1. This one, a mini-tower which sits on top of the now-defunct Win 8.0 to Win 10 one - I bought already equipped with Win 10 Home, but I still had to upgrade it to the current version - 1803 (from 1511) but, since it's only a 2.7Ghz i5 - it did take a while.

Don't remember the years I bought them all - but they've all been purchased since 2002 - pretty sure of that. The current one is less than three years old. The AMD unit is still a current offering at Staples. The other two are now discontinued. The defunct one I've had a while, but can't remember exactly when I bought it. I do remember, though - I had bought an HP from Wal-Mart, and found it to be so heavily laden with Promos from Wal-Mart and HP … even though the specs indicated it was faster than anything I'd built - I found it to be half the speed of the fastest … so, I took it back at the end of the month, got my money back, and then drove to the nearest Staples, just a couple of blocks away, and bought the Lenovo for a hundred bucks less than I had paid Wal-Mart, for the HP. And, there were no Promos to deal with ….

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

Chris! Sometimes it's like talking with my wife- the conversations aren't linear, just parallel.

That 2.7 i5 upgrade speed may have more to do with the size and speed of your ram and HDD, plus drivers to be found/ downloaded/ installed, than the speed of the chip.
Sometimes you can't get there from here, but ... That defunct 8.0 system might be able to receive a 8.1 full install, then the Win10 upgrade should work.

@ 25 years ago I was an IT contractor. At times we'd get approached by the manager's minions- did we have disposal facilities? I had an old fugly pick'em'up truck (Segue! Some of the guys had newish fancy big cars, believing appearance enhanced their perceived ability. They'd get asked for rides- a lot. I had plush bucket seats and an open bed- you want those minis in downtown LA *now*- I;m on it. ) so I said YES! Once I was given a very large box of hard drives, once a room full of 2 year old PCs; most times maybe up to a dozen downtrade leftovers.
My partner and I trolled the middles- you can't afford that $600 to $900 blinky system? I've got a $500 one, all the software installed, more ram and 2 hard drives.
EZ-PZ hobby. Putz around a bit for a week or two and hit the swap. Done soon after lunch, maybe $300 to $500 of "off budget $$"in each of our pockets and we'd buy other folks' crapola also. Notta job, just a misadventure.

Except for these Macs, I don;t have pre builts. One old PC system is now a Kodi box; another is a test mule. Since I tried them out, tho, I really like the Mac Pros as Win8.1 and Win10 machines.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Nostalgia! Look what I found while cleaning up the store room. A relic from my press days. We had one in the assignment editor's office and one in the car. Scanners from Radio Shack.

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Well, Harry … I just did a reboot, and the Performance Indicator in the Task Manager's indicating it's now running at 3.30 Ghz … so, I guess - having a fresh reboot, has a lot to do with it. huh? … I chose this one, btw, because - even though it had a fairly mediocre base speed, it had 8GB RAM - the fastest RAM currently available (at the time) so, that, coupled with the 1GB HD (also, the fastest available at that time) would make up, in some way, for the slower CPU. All the others, with faster CPUs - had the slower RAM, and/or - slower hard drives!!! But, the two-year term it took to do the Win 10 new version upgrade - had more to do with the Dial-Up connection I use, than any other factor. This could also be a contributing factor as to why the upgrade migration from Win 8.0 to Win 10 never successfully happened. When I did it - there was NO upgrade from Win 8.0 to Win 8.1 possible. Even though it seems like a small improvement - they would've been better off calling Win 8.1 Win 9.0. Apparently, there's a lotta stuff different enough between the two - to make the latter one seem like a whole new OS. When I looked into doing it - there was NEVER any option provided, to upgrade to Win 8.1 … just to go straight to Windows 10 ….

BTW, another thing … the original HD became corrupted, and would not reboot, anymore. I took it back to Staples and they indicated the Warranty had expired, and, as such - they couldn't repair it, unless I had agreed to a service charge, PLUS whatever it would cost to fix it. I asked how much that would be, and they told me it'd be so unreasonable as to not be worth it, and recommended I take it to a local PC repair shop. So, I took them up on that, and was relieved to find a Lenovo specialist locally. I'd expected him to be able to repair it, on the spot, or, at least - tell me what was wrong. Since he was pretty backed up, and I needed it back, right away … I asked him to see what he could do, immediately. When he saw it wouldn't boot, he asked me to leave it with him, and I said alright, but, since I had no back-up prebuilt at the time, I asked him what he had in stock. He directed me to this little console with the Xenon chip, and suggested I go with it, as he had nothing else, currently available. He booted it up in front of me, and I was quite gratified to see how quickly it got to the GUI. Then, I said okay, and he reminded me I'd have to return to Staples to get an external CD/DVD Drive, as he didn't have one. I decided - okay, that I'd do that, and walked out with my new server PC, and back to Staples for an external Drive. Flash forward several months, now … and I stopped by that repair shop where it HAD been located, and it wasn't there, anymore. So, it seemed as though the guy had moved, and taken my old PC with him. I gave up looking for it, reminding myself I had a Server machine, which could run circles around that old one, and gave up looking. Next time, I dropped by Staples in that town - about a year, later - I asked them if they had the NEW address for that local Lenovo PC repair shop, and they looked it up and told me - they were no longer at the end of the Green - on the main road, but had moved to a fourth floor walk-up in an old house actually ON the Green. So, I went over there, found them, and asked what had happened to my old PC. He indicated it had gotten stashed in the move, and he had no idea where it was, and to give him a few days, and he'd look for it, and to check back with him, later in the week. But, reminded me it was so long, later, now - he might've thrown it out - but to check back with him, at the end of the week. I did, and he told me he'd found it, but, that with the move and everything, he'd never got round to repairing it.
I grabbed it, thanked him, returned home with it, and then called Lenovo - which is what I SHOULD have done in the first place. They asked me for the number, looked it up, and then told me it was out of warranty, and so - it would cost me to have them service it. I then lit into the whole long story I just relayed to you here, and they decided to ask me to return it to them, to see what they could do. A week later, they called me to tell me the drive was corrupted, and they would replace it at no charge - because of all the palava I had to go through with their AUTHORIZED Local Service Center. I thanked them profusely and patiently waited the arrival of that old PC with the new HD in it. When it arrived, I became gratified to see they had even enclosed the OLD HD in a separate box, inside the package. When I went to boot it up, though, I noticed a hiccup - which seemed to be related to the fact, the license I had was on the OLD HD, and I had to register the new one by calling MS - which I did, explaining to them the whole story, in the process. But, it NEVER seemed to reboot, again - without going through this routine, again. Finally, MS recommended I upgrade it to Win 10 (they never said I should upgrade to Win 8.1, first, tho') and that all my problems should be resolved, by so doing. I did, even though it took me over a month, on Dial-Up - and, for a while, all seemed well. Then, one day, I went to reboot, and suddenly got the dialogue indicating there was no OS!!!! That was about five years ago, now. I've since gone on - first, getting the AMD one, and then, after noticing a slow-down on that one - even with its 12GB RAM, and faster CPU and twice-the-size HD - after I'd upgraded it to Win 10 - I decided to go out and buy, yet a - fourth Lenovo machine - this time - one, with Win 10 preloaded. So, that's where it's at now, Harry ….

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Nice, Ed .. tell you the God's Honest - if I were to run down a list of all the components I have, bought at various Radio Shacks, over three states - CT, Mass., NY - it'd take me a month of Sundays. Not only do I have various Archer switchers, cable channel selectors, denoisers, A/V selectors, alternate cable initiators, Realistic TVs, amps, tuners, receivers, speakers, and Optimus receivers and speakers, I have many, many, other brands of equipment bought there, including Yamaha, Pioneer, Sony, Goldstar, LG, Funai … the list goes on, and on … and I STILL frequent at least one of the three Radio Shacks around here - AT LEAST - once a month. I have a real problem with this thread - which seems to imply they've all closed down. For sure - you couldn't prove it, by me. My whole house is FULL, of Radio Shack label equipment, and I don't see that changing - at ANY point - in the foreseeable future. But, hey, if you guys prefer to think it's closed down - once and for all - go right on thinking it. But, for me - that's just NOT the case!!!!

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

Down here (Australia) the brand vanished in 2011 when Woolworths, who purchased them in 2001, closed the brand.
I owned at least 3 Tandy computers. A big step up usability wise than a single board computer like the KIM 1
The first being a TRS80 model 1, my first "full blown" computer. .
Latter on I got into Commodore (64) including the Amiga.
Nowdays it is PCs when I decided to do thing in the real world, and when our company purchased lots of them, instead of just playing around and learning, Although I did use the TRS80 for a work application (using VisiCalc)