For those having trouble with vista not installing properly, after spending 45 minutes on hold and using a vista disc i happened to have, the product number on the side of the computer wasn't recognized. Luckily the guy from customer service answered at this point. when you power on the computer hold alt, and when the acer screen comes up press F10 repeatedly, it will instruct you to install vista from the partition. should work after that

Yeah at this point, I would just like to be refunded as well.

** Update on my order **

Seneca returned my call today. The tech was very nice and responsive. He agreed with my assessment that I had in fact recieved a brick. He gave me an RMA and I'm sending it back. So the moral of the story is just leave a message and they really do call back.

The computer I received that did work is still working great. It's a nice little machine for the bucks.

Rick

I'm one of the "chosen" 200 who happened to get their systems flooded out.. and their replacement system is a full sized Gateway DX4200 desktop. Is this really a comparable system? The 2 big differences I can see are that the Gateway has a low powered Phenom X4 @ 1.8 GHz instead of a mid-line Pentium dual core @ 2.4 GHz and it's a full size desktop, not the compact media center system I was going to use it for.
The thing I'm most peeved about is the size issue... I can't fit it in my entertainment center where it should be. The proc is worrisome, I haven't had much experience with the Phenom procs so I don't know how they stand against the Pentium Duals. I do know that more cores doesn't always mean more better.

HDMI on this kind of leaps into the vacuum. I'm getting lots of bloom on the blue and red channels. Red and blue text smears horizontally. I don't think it's my monitor, as my other HDMI stuff works fine, without weird color issues. I'm going to try the DVI-VGA and see if it doesn't have the bloom issue.

Success! After spending some time with google, and purchasing a DVI to VGA adapter, It seems that I have a fully functional PC. I think the problem is that when we initially plug the PC in and the video does not work, we immediatly turn it off. This probably disrupts the initial install and corrupts it. Hold ALT F10 on the POST and it will walk you through re imaging with vista. Works well. I am happy now. Kind of.

ROGETRAY wrote:**Shipping Update**

According to our records, it appears that 200 orders of the Acer Space-Saving Multimedia Desktop were not shipped due to water flooding from our vendor's shipment location center.

These orders are delayed in shipment, and Member Services is currently investigating the issue and will find a solution as soon as possible.

Member Services will email all members who purchased this item and have yet to receive any tracking emails. We will also refund the shipping costs for this purchase as well.

We deeply apologize for this unexpected problem and will keep everyone posted with new information.

Sincerely,
Woot Member Services

** Compensation if Woot.com Shipment SLA not met**

What is woot.com's compensation if the shipment SLA is not ment. It has been more than their defined 5 business days since I placed this order. Does woot.com do refunds? Does woot.com wave-off the shipment fee for next customer's order? Why is the shipment issue not posted along with the order info?

After seeing so many blog threads about the problem with the VGA, HDMI and DVI, I wonder if the WOOT.COM BUYERS do any quality review on the vendor products?

**This is definitely a bad Woot experience**

ROGETRAY wrote:**Shipping Update**

According to our records, it appears that 200 orders of the Acer Space-Saving Multimedia Desktop were not shipped due to water flooding from our vendor's shipment location center.

These orders are delayed in shipment, and Member Services is currently investigating the issue and will find a solution as soon as possible.

Member Services will email all members who purchased this item and have yet to receive any tracking emails. We will also refund the shipping costs for this purchase as well.

We deeply apologize for this unexpected problem and will keep everyone posted with new information.

Sincerely,
Woot Member Services

Since I have not received a response from service@woot.com yet (after about 8 hours), and there is no phone number to call, I will direct my questions here.

Will the extended warranty I bought through SquareTrade transfer to this computer? Am I looking at paying more money if so? Is any action required if the warranty is able to transfer? If I decide to get refunded for this computer, will I get refunded my money for the SquareTrade warranty?

The answers to these questions will determine whether I decide to get refunded on the computer or proceed with this new one. I feel an extreme lack of communication regarding the extended warranty. This has been a poor, non-communicative experience. I wish there was a phone number to call for cases like this, especially since I only have until Wednesday by noon to cancel the order.

I'm also one of the "200." Another system doesn't interest me unless it has the same form factor and capabilities (or better) than the original. Honestly, I would be more satisfied with a refund.

So, why would I want to buy something that's refurbished, pay shipping, additionally pay for an adapter that I had no clue I was going to need when I could have gotten this SAME computer with all the documentation and disks for only $50 more at Sams Club? Never again, WOOT.

Hello,
I'm just writing to see if anyone else has had the same problem. Just got the computer a couple days ago, ran into the same problem as everyone else, the VGA sends no signal, went to hook it up with an HDMI cord and now the thing will not start. When I plug it in the power light comes on after pushing nothing, and then goes dark, and then you can not turn it on at all. It will not start!

mussavcom wrote:Here's the deal. The ports that work, DVI and HDMI on top, those are on the video card. The video card basically is too powerful - it pretty much kills the VGA and HDMI that are on the motherboard, the ones near the bottom. Which might explain why it seems to work sometimes but not after a reboot, it's not totally dead but just won't tend to get power. At least that's how I understand it.

I saw a new one of these in Best Buy today (for only $330! drat!), and even on that one the VGA did not seem to be functioning.

Mine did come with a functional DVI to VGA adapter. It's pretty cool, the male DVI only has a few pins - it's basically a DVI-A (analog instead of digital). Ask Woot for one if you need it and didn't get one, and they ought to oblige.

Nope...I emailed them with the non-working VGA connector problem and they told me to go out and BUY an DVI to VGA adapter. Between shipping of $5 and the cost of the adapter, I could have bought this thing NEW with all the accompanying documentation and disks. Won't be purchasing from Woot ever again. The nerve!

i finaly got my computer and the vga did not work so i removed my GX card now it works,and when i turn on the computer the light goes on flashes then turns off i started pressing the power botton repetedly and finaly stayed on and works great.

Single data point: My wife emailed and called them (apparently emailing didn't do much), and they are sending her the missing VGA connector/bracket, so that I can have back the DVI-to-VGA adapter I "stole" from MY card (a Radeon I bought to use in my computer but have not yet installed).

From thinking about the wide variety of experiences people have related here -- along with the experience WE have with the one we got -- I am of the opinion that there are more than one "flavor" of product (but same make/model) that the vendor shipped out.

Ours was sent from the New York warehouse, and, DOES qualify for the free Windows 7 upgrade. Further, it seemed to be a brand new unit (had all the "peel-off" protector junk on the plastic cabinet trim), but, was missing the VGA bits.

However, it DID operate via the native (motherboard) VGA port -- for about two days, until I went to optimize it (i.e., tweak the resolution/bright/contrast/gamma/etc via the Vista config panel). My changes DID "take" however when i rebooted the machine it came up black-screen -- not even the boot-time POST info displayed. That was when I decided to try using my DVI adapter, on the hunch that it had switched over to the video card (frankly I was surprised that the motherboard video worked in the first place -- generally on-board video is deactivated when a video card is installed, to avoid conflicts).

I get the impression that some people got new machines (i.e., factory overstock/left-over when the next model run came out) -- it's not unusual for such excess inventory to be liquidated, after things like monitors and standard warranty are removed -- and, I think other people got machines that were refurbed -- and, some people seem to have received classic yellow citrus products (either "oopsed" by being slipped into the "to-refurb" line but shipped before they were repaired, or... who knows).

Hopefully ALL buyers will be given some kind of satisfactory relief, without major delay.

(From my cursory look at the specs for the "alternate" machine, it looks like a fair deal, IF you can live with the form-factor -- it has greater expansion capability -- can take twice the RAM, and has more card sockets available -- and, with a quad-core CPU will probably be a significantly better performer for processor-intensive operations (video/photo processing and so forth). Raw CPU speed is less of a factor than core number for such work.)

It's New York, they fell out a truck into the "Hudson"...

ExcitementBeach wrote:so are the unlucky 200 of us going to get a soaking wet box full of a broken computer a week from now or was there just flooding in the city where the shipping center is located and not necessarily a flood in the center itself from like a burst pipe or something?

tried acer's windows 7 upgrade and mine *DOESN'T* qualify - Congrats to all those who's systems do!

To all the suckers like me.
I called Seneca today and after 70 minutes of waiting(I did not know that my phone battery is in such a good shape)was told by Customer serv.guy Joe:
"Too bad,we are not going to send you any adapter.
If you have any problems it is Woot you need to contact. They have falsely advertised that the brick needs a trip to local computer store in order to work".
He talked to me like he did not need his job and could care less about Acer Co.reputation.
Oh well.
I also did send an e-mail to woot about the adaptor and of course no reply.


With the notion that some of us will get the adaptors and/or windows7 upper and some won't any hungry laywer could jump on the opportunity and file a little class action and clean up the market a bit.

I think I will keep the brick on a faith basis and hope for the best.

Woot.It was my first and last purchase.
There is better deals and companies.

Well, mine finally arrived. Compared to other Wooters, I guess I should be grateful... But the truth is, I'm more than ambivalent, since the previous owner of my machine was obviously a smoker. Between the stench of cigarettes, the abused case, the lack of upgrade path to Windows 7 and the miniscule discount, I feel a bit abused. Haven't felt this stung since the hair-infested Phillips external DVD drives. (don't ask) Am I responsible? Yup, I clicked the button. But, I also rely on Woot! to maintain a certain quality level, both in products and price. We're supposed to all be in this together, right? From the tenor of the comments on this Woot!, I just feel like the social compact was bent, if not broken... Will I buy more stuff? Yeah, I'm sure I will. Will I feel good about it, or buy as much? I don't think so...

ROGETRAY wrote:Member Services is fully aware of the delay in shipment of these orders. We do not have any compensation for this delay, however, we have offered a replacement( and COUPON code) for the order, as well as an option to CANCEL the order and receive a full refund.

Any Members who ordered this product have been emailed with the shipment update and have been provided options to resolve their order. However, all Members are welcome to write us at service@woot.com and we will be glad to assist them with any further questions or concerns they may have regarding their order.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for this unforeseen inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Woot.com Member Services.

On 25-Aug-2009, I sent an email to service@woot.com requesting a full refund and the customer care staff did make a refund on my order within the 24 hours SLA. Thank you for the quick response Woot.com service team.

I also pay my thanks to Matt Rutledge this morning for the quick response.

Just so I saw so many complains from the blog about the VGA or software issues. I advice the Buyers at Woot.com should do a quality review the the vendor products before posted on your site. Or have some message/caveat on the product page to manage customer's expectation better.

Has anyone else had issues with the optical drive? I tried to make the system recovery DVD's and it basically destroyed about 6 perfectly good DVDs. I then tried to create the recovery using CDs and it wasted about as many as it wrote "correctly". It takes 19 CDs to create the Recovery and pretty much wasted every other CD. So after creating the recovery CDs, I have 19 CDs that it said wrote correctly, and about 19 that were written to but failed the validation at the end. I tried to create a DVD from the included DVD slide show creator and it said it wrote to the DVD, but it is not readable in any other PC or DVD player I have. I tried the same process on an old computer with another DVD from the same spindle and it worked flawlessly. Has anyone else had this problem?

After hours of stress with this machine I'm now in the process of doing the eRecovery.

I found the Alt-F10 trick on the Acer website hours ago, but what they don't tell you is to hold down the Alt and then kill the F10 by clicking on it as many times as humanly possible and as fast as possible while booting up.

I must have done it a million times but not fast enough before I FINALLY got it to go into eRecovery mode.

I hope this helps someone!! :-) I'll let you know if it actually works or not... Good luck!

When I hooked mine up to a monitor I had used on another computer, the monitor didn't recognize it, it went into sleep mode. I tried disconnecting/reconnecting & rebooting and still had the same result. Any ideas on what to try, aside from another monitor?

O M G !!! Vista is installing!!! I'm on the verge of tears I'm so happy, finally!!!

:-D

larrycane73 wrote:When I hooked mine up to a monitor I had used on another computer, the monitor didn't recognize it, it went into sleep mode. I tried disconnecting/reconnecting & rebooting and still had the same result. Any ideas on what to try, aside from another monitor?

Did you do the same thing I did and try to connect it to the VGA port instead of the DVI with an adapter? That could be why. If so, just wait... it gets more fun when you're stuck in an installation error loop with Vista, but we found a resolution for that too..

Enjoy!

lisset wrote:O M G !!! Vista is installing!!! I'm on the verge of tears I'm so happy, finally!!!

:-D

I'm so happy to report that I am typing this message from my new Acer machine running Vista! :-) The eRecovery trick worked! Soooooo happy! Thank you, Woot!

showcaller wrote:It's tempting but I don't think it is that great of a deal. There is a much better system out there anyway. It's called an iMac, made by a little firm called Apple. It might look like its' three times more money but by the time your done setting up this thing, it's possible the iMac could actually turn out to be less money, less headaches, and alot more sane.

Finished setting it up?? End up costing the same as a IMAC? Don't know what kind of math you do, but 299 to 1000+. I think that would be a couple of these plus- ?setting it up?

I was able to talk to Acer support. Followed his instructions to reseat the video card and RAM. But no joy. Got a RMA # to ship it back -- I'm sure that will cost more than $5.

One thing I didn't think to try is pull the video card and see if it works off of VGA. I'll try that when I get home to see if it is just a bad video card.

My Acer brick has the following symptoms: When I press the power button, the power light comes on and I can feel the vibration of the fans spinning up. The hard drive activity light may flicker a couple times, but that is all. No video signal on DVI or VGA.

Well, at first I thought I was one of the unlucky 200 that would get a different machine but after reading about all the problems with the Acer that I would have had to ask my son to help fix...I feel now that i am one of the LUCKY 200 to get a different machine...or at least i hope it runs like a normal 'buy it+ plug it in+ and go' machine!!!

Got my pc in a few days ago, just had a chance to plug it in, it boots and freezes almost immediately. I installed a fresh copy of vista worked great for about 5 minutes and freezes.. sux big time I was really looking to xfer all my movies and stuff this weekend to it. I'm on phone with tech support now hopefully they will get me a new unit out quickly..

Grrr. Won't power up. Now where did I leave that return policy...

fotoneurotic wrote:Unfortunately the recommended processor cache (minimum) for Vista as recommended by Microsoft is 4mb L2 cache, this is a 1mb L 2cache. I have a laptop is an 4mb cache and it runs vista just fine, but half as fast as my desktop that has an 8mb cache and it runs half as fast as my wifes that has a 16mb cache. It's a system built for XP, not Vista.

What processor does your wife have that has 16 megs of L2 cache? I have not heard of one that has that much.

lisset wrote:Did you do the same thing I did and try to connect it to the VGA port instead of the DVI with an adapter? That could be why. If so, just wait... it gets more fun when you're stuck in an installation error loop with Vista, but we found a resolution for that too..

Enjoy!

Yep, seems I did. I got a DVI adapter and the monitor is now recognized. When it boots up, i have the option to select "Other User" or shut down. When I click on Other User, it prompts me for username & password. How did I get there? Is this where the Alt + F10 comes into play?

I ordered an Acer monitor model X233HBID on the same day I ordered the X1700 computer. A week later I received an H233H with no explanation. It looks great but I can only run in in VGA mode. The HDMI and DVI connections don't seem to be active. I think that means the added HDMI graphics board is not enabled. I've tried to fix it and my son who is in Tech support at his company tried last night. I finally decided to contact Acer - no joy. I tried sending an email through acer.custhelp.com but it won't seem to go through. When I registered the computer it said the Warranty expired 1/29/2009, which seems odd because the BIOS date is 10/2008. Can anybody send me in the right direction??

brikeibur wrote:Got my pc in a few days ago, just had a chance to plug it in, it boots and freezes almost immediately. I installed a fresh copy of vista worked great for about 5 minutes and freezes.. sux big time I was really looking to xfer all my movies and stuff this weekend to it. I'm on phone with tech support now hopefully they will get me a new unit out quickly..

THis is complete poo, I have to pay for shipping back to the company because they sent ME a broken pc.. what scaffolding woot.. I recommend you do not deal with this company again!!!!!!!!

After realizing I needed the DVI-2-VGA Adapter, and that the onboard VGA adapter was disabled. I was able to get the Vista install to complete.

Later I learned that there was a screw loose and rattling around inside the case. Luckily, it landed in a benign location and did not cause any shorting. Turns out this screw was originally intended (installed?) as one of the motherboard mounting screws. I replaced it in its original location and checked all the other visible screws for proper seating.

Also, this unit IS entitled to the free Windows 7 upgrade(?) once its available.

Overall not a bad deal if you received a working unit, but it seems that Acer has quite poor refurb QA.

Has anyone gotten the 'replacement' computer yet, for those 'lucky' enough to not get the original offering? Have there been any similiar problems? Mine is due tomorrow and was wondering what to anticipate.

jessieturner wrote:Has anyone gotten the 'replacement' computer yet, for those 'lucky' enough to not get the original offering? Have there been any similiar problems? Mine is due tomorrow and was wondering what to anticipate.

Mine is supposed to arrive today but fedex has its last known location in Syracuse NY still so I'm not holding my breath. But what's another couple days when you paid upfront nearly three weeks ago?