I brought my acer 3680 some 2 years back and from my experiance with the same till now, I am satsified with the product. Its because till date I have not have to go to any mechanic to get something fixed that went wrong. I just added more RAM some six months back and increased it to 1.5 GB from the initial 512 MB that was orginally provided. and for that also, I did not ask anyone to upgrade the RAM, I just brought the RAM, opened the panel of my laptop and fixed it in the jack. the additional RAM was immediately recognised by my laptop and I experianced enhanced speed and procesing power immediately. that was the only time, I had to open my acer laptop.
Another good thing about acer is that they are affordable in comparison to other laptop brands. However, there are things that I would like acer to improve upon such as battery life, and life of other parts such as DVD Drive, and cooling fan. may be I watched too many movies, but my dvd drive now makes strange noises and takes a long time to load cds and dvds. same type of problems are faced when I try to burn data on cd/dvd. also the cooling fan now graons like typical ceiling fans during bootup, otherwise its quite silent during normal operations. these problems have started only recently and I cannot take the laptop to the customer care center because the warrantly was only for 1 year. talking about customer care center, the official acer center in pune is very costly because when I asked them about 1 GB RAM upgrade charges, they quoted 1800, just double of the 900 I paid for the Samsung ram that I got from outside and installed it myself.
However, I am not complaining because I too understand that everything has an expiry date. so now I am either thinking about buying a new laptop or getting my present one serviced to get rid of the problems that I am currently facing. If you ask me whether I wil again go for Acer, then I think I will say "not sure". this is not because I am not satisfied with my laptop, but only because I always like to try new things. so if you are looking for cost savings and a decent laptop, then iw ould say you go go for an acer. however, dont ask the shopkeeper to give you some warrantly on the battery, because after 2 years, my battery lasts only for 20 Minutes, yes, you are right, it has become more of a desktop, cause I cant use it without a power connection. I beleive that new acer laptops may not be having battery problem.