I frequent a lot of communities like this, although I tend not to participate as heavily elsewhere as I do here. A lot of great stuff can come out of these forums, despite what most folks think/say.
So one particular case happened this weekend regarding my quest for the perfect sub-$400 laptop to plug into my Home Server based network.
Acer released a good looking new SSD (solid-state-drive [think Flash]) based laptop with Linux pre-installed, called the
AcerOne. With a lot of these inexpensive models, folks are buy them with Linux preinstalled and installing XP on their own to save costs (~$100). A fair number of users were reporting more problems than usual with the upgrade. Acer was virtually useless in helping solve the problem (they claimed that XP drivers weren't out for the SSD, which is a myth as drivers don't run the SSD) until a group of users broke it down for the rest of us.
Turns out that by sharing information amongst the forum, it was discovered that Acer used two different SSDs - one from Intel and and one from Samsung - in their first run models. Well, the Intel choice reads and writes at about half the speed of the Samsung model and virtually cripples the machine. They broke it down even further from where the machines were purchased and what SSDs they got.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the US models (purcahsed mostly from Newegg) have the Intel chip and Newegg has started sending them back to Acer for the Samsung models. So, if you're looking for the Acer One, I'd wait a little while. I suspect the Dell UMPC will be out in a matter of weeks anyway which should drive the market price down even further. Here's to hoping they used Samsung chips!
