Acer Aspire TimelineX AS1830T-68U118 11.6-Inch Laptop (Black)

I have had this laptop for less than a year and it is still under warranty. I have already sent it in twice to be fixed. The first time was because of a crashing issue and the second time was because a group of pixels in the LCD screen died. Each time I had to pay for shipping and was without a computer for more than a week.
My real issue is that after getting the laptop back from the pixels issue, less than two days later more pixels died. I called ACER customer support and they told me that I would have to pay for the screen to be replaced this time even though the laptop was still under warranty. I find it unacceptable to be required to pay to replace something that they were just supposed to have fixed two days ago! I also think that having to send a laptop in for servicing 3 times in less than a year is unreasonable.

So, I got this to be a portable music performance laptop. The basic qualities I needed were: reasonably powerful (in terms of processor speed and available memory), long battery life, portable, and useable keyboard. It succeeds in all those areas. The 8hrs battery life advertised is a bit of a stretch; I imagine it's possible if you reduced the screen brightness to a minimum, disabled wifi, etc. and basically did nothing. In real life though with regular usage (running a web browser or SuperCollider, Traktor, Ableton etc.) I seem to get ~6hrs, which is still pretty good.

The complaints I have are mostly around interaction with the device. Firstly, as others have mentioned, the keyboard feels a bit cheap. It certainly has nice large keys and is pretty easy to type on (I'm using it now), but it also kind of bows in the middle and, well... It just feels a bit cheap. Secondly, the trackpad sucks. It has the same brushed metal surface as the body of the laptop, which looks great, but is a bit chafing as a touch surface. I should point out that I play steel string guitar with high tension strings, I've built up some nice calluses on my fingertips and it _still_ feels a bit uncomfortable to use the trackpad. Beyond that, it's not very responsive; while it supports mouse gestures, it is so bad at identifying and responding to them it's more of an annoyance than a feature. I've taken to using a small travel mouse whenever I need to "seriously" do some work on it.

Overall, I'm happy with the purchase. As I said before, it fulfills exactly what I needed out of a portable laptop. I definitely don't like some of the choices Acer made (no doubt to improve their bottom line), but it does the job and for a reasonable price.

The i7 processor really shows, I'm running some design applications in this little device and it's a breeze. I like the fact that it is light , but I would like it to be even lighter, then it would be like an iPad on steroids. 500gb HD, HDMI output and a LED back lighted screen for under $ 850 make it an unbeatable value.