I looked for a laptop with a good specification for a few months and finally bought this model.
The volume control is a bit sensitive but is OK once you get use to it. The battery lasts about 2 hours but less if you intend to do some gaming. The wireless pick-up range is pretty good too, detecting my network from a fair distance away. The bluetooth works brilliantly with Nokia PC Suite. If installing the Ubuntu Operating System, the sound doesn't work.
A big tip - make sure you create a backup of the computer when it asks you because the laptop does not come with any recovery disks and Acer charge around £60 for the recovery disks. You cannot just reinstall Vista to do a clean install as the serial number on the laptop only works with the "Acer Vista" installation disks, not the normal Vista install DVD.

having pondered for 3 months on which laptop to replace my desktop with, i was initailly drawn to the sony fz38m (original price £899) for the blueray and hdmi output facility. i was the drawn to the up and coming acer aspire gemstone blue - its a real eyecatcher - and very usable and quick to set up
i transferred 6,000 photographs to a intergral memory stick from my old desktop compaq sr1150uk (windows xp)which took 17 minutes to upload and the download to the acer was 4.5 minutes!

acer seem to have had a bad rep in the past over build quality but these issues seem to have been addressed and the build is very good, yes many people say the keyboard flexes- it does and from what i tested - it did on other manufacturers as well!!

from a point of costing i could not find another manufacturer sub £1400 with the same specifiaction as this model and to have it custom built would have touched the £1800 mark.

playing dvd's and blue rays in full widescreen is amazing i can only say the difference in quality is not unlike watching vhs to dvd
then watching dvd to blue ray - 3 times the watching experience.

runs counter strike source maxed out in high resolution at 166.6 frames per second - if you want to play the latest games get yourself a next gen console!! but it does run call of duty 4 moderately well .

i thought i was going to be very very wary getting a acer laptop but i have to say i have nothing but admiration for the build and specification of the machine.
if you buy you will not be dissapointed

oh yeah and its pretty good at all the other things you might want a pc for as well !!