Acer Aspire 5536

We have two, both running after years of service.

One is stock and running the Windows 7 32 bit upgrade.

What I would recommend is changing the DVD to a compatible one (I put a Blu ray player in) and then changed the hard drive for a seagate hybrid one, now it is running Windows 7 64 bit.

All is running fine and the Turion x2 2.2 GHZ processor is bullet proof.

The only downside to it's age is that the ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Card is a little slow compared with some modern laptops but it will run video in 1080P and is still quite good considering this was a £300 laptop when I bought the second one new.

The speakers are also fine when you get the volume up though we tend to watch film on a 46 inch 1080P monitor so it's normally going down the HDMI line.

please do not buy a acer from day one this computer has been a nightmare.i should have sent it back .it has crashed four times been in the repair shop three times acer back up a joke.now its crashed again lost every thing.pay a bit more and get a computer that works.13 months down the line 280 pounds in rerairs and no computer.acer makes every excuse thats if you can get any sense out of them

Overall verdict: good for the first few months, BAD after that! DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THE ACER ASPIRE 5536!

When I first bought this laptop in October last year, it performed pretty well. It came with Windows Vista (~puke~), plus the free Windows 7 upgrade option. I quickly formatted and replaced Vista with XPSP3 which is better by orders of magnitude, not caring to bother with 7, as maximum system stability and practicality were my key concerns, rather than how shiny the graphics were.

As I said, at first everything was great, apart from the super-shiny screen which makes it impossible to see anything in brightly-lit conditions (but seemingly all new laptops have this, so it's an unfair criticism of this particular model), and the Synaptics touchpad which took a lot of getting used to, and seemed to respond very inconsistently. The battery life is not great, at around 1.5 hours at most when unplugged, but it's ok.

However, a few months after purchase, the real killer problem began to emerge- namely the terrible overheating. I noticed immediately after purchase that very CPU-intensive programs (Handbrake, 3DS Max, After Effects, Valve Hammer Compiler and any other rendering software in particular) was effectively useless on this machine, as it would overheat and automatically shut down after a few minutes of these apps running.

After 4 or 5 months, this problem extended to many different, substantially less intensive programs such as simply watching streaming video online for more than a few minutes at a time. Playing even old games is frought with problems- Call of Duty 2, which runs acceptably on medium settings, will typically last around 10-15 minutes, before the CPU overheats, and ~POP~ off it switches. I recently installed SpeedFan to monitor the core temperatures, and under any kind of load, the CPU can easily exceed 90 degrees C or more.

My advice as a long-term user of the Acer Aspire 5536 is, if you only need this for simple stuff like browsing, emails, word docs etc, then it'll be well up to the task. However, if you play games of any kind, or tend to watch a lot of videos and do other power-hungry stuff, you'll be better off getting a laptop which was actually designed with enough cooling power to cool itself effectively.

Overall, I wouldn't reccommend the Aspire 5536. I wish I'd spent my money on a proper brand of laptop like Dell, IBM or Toshiba, rather than this shiny, badly-performing, mass-appeal pile of rubbish. I've also read several reports of other models in this series having serious overheating problems, so I'd reccommend avoiding Acer altogether if you want a decent, well-designed machine.

The laptop came with Vista and an option for a free upgrade to Windows 7. During the upgrade process I ran into issues with Comodo Firewall/Security. Once that was sorted out (by disabling some of the Comodo components) the laptop worked beautifully. Loads of space, tons of memory and a very good display. Great value for money from Ebuyer for £379 (+£12 for the Windows upgrade delivery.

i think this Acer Aspire 5536 laptop is great, very usefull easy to use

My ceiling price for a laptop was £400.00, so through internet researching up popped Acer Aspire, with the features that I was seeking, Hard Drive capacity, amount of USB ports, 3 Gig memory, good battery life. The 5536 fitted the bill the best. The laptop itself, am pleased with. The manual very basic, too basic, if you run into trouble shooting situations. Stylish in look and there is plenty of time to sign up for Microsoft Office (2 months)as it is on trial to begin with. Overall, am delighted the item with no major hangs ups about it, value for money, excellent.

When the time comes to buy a laptop, the sheer abundance of choice is daunting. The range of specifications and manufacturers leave you reeling. For me, I had to start with price and see what I could get for my money. I set a target of under £400 and set off. Straight away, the Acer Aspire 5536 stood out on the web site I was looking at. At £350 the specifications look fairly good. AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64 2.1 GHz Dual-Core processor, 3Gb RAM as standard, 250 Gb Hard drive, 256Mb (Shared) graphics, and 802.11n (draft) Wireless networking. Installed with Windows Vista Home Basic. I could find nothing in the price range that appeared to touch this. I know with Vista RAM is king, so the installed 3Gb snatched it.

The first thing you notice is the screen. The 15.6 Widescreen Acer CrystalBrite offers a great picture. Reading text is far easier than my desktop TFT monitor with good contrast and the image just seems to jump out at you. The keyboard is well spaced and also incorporates a number keypad. The touch pad incorporates multi finger gestures including enlarge and shrink (like the iPhone) There are 4 USB 2.0 ports (2 on the left and 2 on the right) as well as VGA and HDMI output (Configurable as separate desktops if required). A DVD R/W drive, Ethernet (10, 100, 1000) and modem but no firewire. When you fire it up, it boots quickly and I have been pleasantly surprised by the responsiveness of Vista basic. It lacks some of the polish of the Home premium lacking the glass effect and Aero theme, but as these only serve to consume resources and make your machine run like a dog I am happy. The build quality seems to be good, I don't feel that I am going to snap anything accidently.

In conclusion, I am really happy with this laptop, and would be happy to recommend it. The only minor flaws, are that the smooth top cover picks up fingerprints really easily and that there is a button (and keyboard shortcut) for bluetooth although it isn't installed in this version of the model.