I’ve had several laptops over the years and I’ve always stuck to either Dell or HP...mostly Dell lately.  So far after 4 weeks I’m more happy with this Acer over the others.  The screen is crystal clear and bright.  The keyboard feels good typing and I like that it’s backlit and the processor is super fast.  The speaker volume isn’t very loud but I use headphones so it’s not a deal breaker.  Others mentioned the fan being loud and at times I notice the fan on but it’s not loud in my opinion.  The battery life is about average to other laptops I’ve owned. I don’t know much about the Acer Company in general but when I used to work at RadioShack years ago people bought them up and seemed to be very happy with them.  Now that I’ve bought an Acer laptop I would have to agree.