Along with 8 other people I enthusiastically purchased the Acer Ferrari. On and a half years down the line we ALL agree that it was a mistake - overheating, hardware failure, short battery life and more are common attributes. I present a letter I sent to Acer Global start of March 2005. I have not received any reply to date, which says a lot about they customer service too:
To whom this may concern,
I am a European customer but I insist that this email
is addressed to ACER headquarters as I am no longer
willing to undertake transactions or discourse with
the service location that has dealt with my issues so
far, that being Dubai.
I purchased my Ferrari Acer 3000 on the 12th of
December 2003 in the U.K. for two
reasons: As one of the first members of the Ferrari
World Club (now You&Ferrari,) Ferrari's only own
Formula 1 membership club, I am for long now a
dedicated fan of Ferrari and proud to be so. Secondly,
I was looking for a laptop
computer that would be effective in aiding me to
undertake my work duties. The association of the
Ferrari team with the ACER brand led me to believe
that the product would be robust and efficient, and my
various acquaintances within the Ferrari entity spoke
positively about the computer. Given that the
specifications were very good, the price was fair, and
the design was fantastic, I proceeded with this
purchase.
At the the end of December 2003 (around two weeks
after my purchase) I permanently relocated from the UK
to Cyprus. A few months later, I started to have
problems with my bluetooth device on the ACER - it was
not recognising other bluetooth devices (it refused to
find my mobile phone and i-paq, both of which had
previously been coupled with the laptop and used). I
refered the problem to Global IT Ltd in Cyprus who
were one of two Cyprus agents. They replied that they
were unable to review my problem as they were not
authorised to open my computer. Having lost a working
day to learn this I bit the bullet and let the matter
go, preferng to focus on my work.
A few months after that, the laptop would not
acknowledge the power cable with the result that I
could not charge the battery. This time, I refered the
matter to CIC Technologies Ltd in Cyprus who explained
to me that I was not covered by warranty. The
Traveller's warranty covered only travelling
individuals and not individuals who had relocated.
Thus I could either send it to the UK where it was
still under warranty there, or travel to a country
with a service centre (not feasible given my work) or
send it to the service centre with which CIC worked
closest, that being Dubai, but that would be at my
cost. With the little choice I had anyhow, I went for
the latter. Dubai initially asked CIC to undertake a
few prelimenary things (flash the notebook BIOS)
before sending it, just to see if that would solve the
problem. This did not work and thus the notebook was
shipped.
Dubai looked at the problem and after three weeks my
laptop was returned. The report stated that the
notebook was not powering up and so the main board as
well as the adaptor were replaced. Even though this
was not covered by the warranty (as was explained to
me by Dubai and CIC Technologies), Dubai did not
charge me anything as a kind gesture of goodwill,
which I appreciated. I was charged however around $200
in shipping charges. When I received the notebook,
immediately further problems persisted. For the first
time in almost 10 months, the notebook started to
crash often and would not allow me to start-up (it
started opening Windows XP Home and then shut down on
its own before the start-up process was completed). In
addition, the fan seemed to be on full-time every time
I turned the notebook on. I once again contacted
Dubai who agreed to take the notebook and review it at
their own expense. I received the notebook a week
later with a report stating that the notebook kept
'hanging' and that the notebook was overheating but
that the issue had been repaired. This was close to
the expiration of my warranty.
Unfortunately the problem was far from repaired and it
is for this reason that I do not want Dubai to be
inolved as I have lost faith in their services.
Since then, my laptop continued to crash - 1-3 times a week. I decided to get on with my work as
this had been disrupted enough - I could bear once or
twice a week. Now my laptop crashes on average 3-4
times PER DAY. It also does not recognise the Wireless
Lan (although the bluetooth is working fine). Some days - it does the exact opposite - recognise the WLAN but not the bluetooth. The
wirreless lan appears at times and works but then the
icon and the functionality disappear. When I press the
wireless lan button to enable it I get a message that
reads 'no device found'. Other times the wireless lan
on the devide manager gives me 'error code 10' and
then disappears from the device manager altogther.
Last month, I reformated my harddisc using the acer
cd's just to make sure the issue was not a software
issue. I reformated the disk again today, this time
round installing XP pro (XP2) directly without the
ACER recovery discs, and using drivers downlaoded from
ACER's official support site. i.e. twice in two months
to make sure the software is ok. I had finished
installing the operating system and everything looked
fine. However, onc I installed the wireless lan
driver, the sytem started freezing up again and after
a restart, the wireless lan network adaptor
disappeared producing the same error as described
above.
I still have the same issues - laptop keeps crashing
and the wi-fi is not recognised. This is a hardware
issue - and now the laptop is out of warranty by one
and a half months. However, if Dubai had been correct
in their procedures, these issues should have been
corrected when the laptop was still under warranty
during at least one of the two times that they looked
at my laptop.
Now my Ferrari Acer 3000 is rendered incapable of
aiding me in my work and I am forced to make
considerations to purchase a new laptop (I use wi-fi
to connect to the office network and my laptop for all
my work - I use the notebook 85% for business and 15%
for other purposes) - only one year and two months of
life. And I am very frustrated! The first way of
venting my frustration is to send this email to Acer
Global - the people at the top and I humbly request
your thoughts and potential actions with regards to
this matter.

You have my sympathy. I have a TRavelMate 800 which on the whole is a superb machine. However, it has been let down on several occasions , once when I installed all my software originally a year ago (took about 4 goes) and once more recently with regard to BLuetooth. I recently got a SonyEricsson p910i and have been trying to link the two for synchronisation, USB direct link works fine, but bluetooth has not. After many failed atempts I did manage to get it set up but after about 3 weeks it stopped working and I have found it is because the laptop does not find the device (using the enabling button on the front of the machine). In desparation I re-installed Windows from the Acer disc, only to get a fatal system error on boot up. Neither Acer nor Microsoft could/would help and advised that I would have to wipe the disc clean and start again - a nightmare beacsue I found that 80% of my backup files could not be restored. Now, after 2-3 days getting thye machine back up and running, I have the same bluetooth problem 'No device' - even though I can get the laptop to recognise and pair with the phone. I have given up - unless anyone has a bright idea....?

I have had exatcly same problems - my acer is about 1 year old and over - heating is a major problem. The HDD temperature programs show a temperature of 73 degrees (Celsius!) sometimes!!!
And, the mother board have been changed once, about 9 months ago.
Do not buy this.

I to have had the same problem, my ferrari would not charge the battery when pluged into power, they replaced the motherboard and power adapter, more recently i have had issues with the bluetooth, from my research the bluetooth device that is in the laptop is no loger supported by the manafacture as they are no longer in business and thus no further software updates. I'm running xp pro with SP2, i have had to revert back to SP1 due to the bluetooth not working with SP2, no responce from acer about this either, but here is a helpful link. didnt work for me tho as once SP2 installed my bluetooth was no where to be seen in device manager.
http://forums.itweek.co.uk/thread.jsp?forum=6&thread=49697

guess what my laptop started random crashes, yay!! had a problem with my speakers blowing but acer repaired them. no crashes before fixing but after its been awful.

HI , I'M A ACER CUSTOMER TOO,, ACTUALLY I BOUGHT A ACER LAPTOP THE LAS MONTH AND NOW I WANT TO GIVE IT BACK BECAUSE I'M HAVING A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH THE COMPUTER,FOR EXAMPLE IT GOT JUST 1 HOUR OF BATERY LIFE,,THE PROCESOR IS CRASHING ABOUT TWO OR THREE TIMES A DAY.I BOUGHT THE LAPTOP IN THE UK BUT I'M SPANISH AND I'LL GO HOME THE NEXT WEEK WHAT SHOULD I DO? SHOULD I ASK FOR A NEW COMPUTER ?

I am also an owner of an Acer Ferrari 3000 notebook, and to this day I've had no hardware problem with it. I bought it a year ago and the only thing that bothers me is the heating of the left side. But neither my motherboard, nor my harddisk or other component has had any problems. I know of the incompatibility with SP2 but I succeded in using the Bluetooth under SP2 by installing the OS from the ACER disks and immediately afterwards installing SP2 from a CD. From time to time an error appears about the Bluetooth stack service but I've had no problem in pairing the notebook and exchanging files with other devices, such as my mobile phone. From my point of view the Acer Ferrari is a wonderful notebook, but unfortunately it seems you had some bad luck with yours.

Hi ive had the same kind of problems aswell.... ive had mine for about a year now and it was working fine. Then i installed windows XP professional and the ferrari 3000 heated up big time and then shut down because of the heat. This isnt good enough, ok my warranty has ran out and I can get a new laptop, but i cant even sell it on to anyone... because then i'll get a load of hassle... i cant believe i spent so much on it and its such a nice computer too.... I think its all looks and no brain (a bit like a model)

You have my sympathy too!
Here is what I went through with a Travelmate here in Greece,,,i cannot even sell it for parts! This is the complaining letter, i sent along with fax. Still no response from Acer (a month now...)
....................
Dear Sir/Madam
The following complaint letter sent to Acer Hellas and Greek Institute of Consumers Authority (INKA) resulting from your company's lack of service and respect to its customers.
“Dear Sir/Madam,
Thirteen (13) months ago, I bought an Acer Laptop, model TravelMate 290. The cost for this purchase was about 1,500 Euro.
During the 7 month of operation the laptop stopped responding and started making noises. I took it for service to an Acer Service Center (MDI) in Athens, Greece. They service center informed me that there was a motherboard and hard disk failure with no reason and they was going to replace them with NEW parts as soon as possible. Couple of weeks later, I took back my laptop fixed and paid nothing because I was still on guarantee.
During the thirteenth (13th) month from purchase and sixth (6th) from service the laptop stopped responding again, it did not power on! I went back to MDI, Local Acer service center and after examining it they told me that there is a motherboard failure and that part needs to be replaced. The cost this time, out of guarantee, would go up to 500 Euros (430 Euro the motherboard and 70 Euro the service center payment).
Why do I have to pay for that damage? Who guarantees me that in the next 5 months the motherboard won't go off again? The answer of MDI's technician was that Electronics are just like that, you can not trust them! THANK YOU, I REPLY!
Why I and my friends trust Acer again? Why I and my friends trust MDI's service again? Why I trust you again if you can not provide me with simple coverage? Do you find it fair and right for a part to fail every couple months and needs a third (3rd) replacement to get it right and moreover the customer pays for it, half the price of nowadays laptop worth?
Please answer to my questions by email (tpallis@freemail.gr) or phone at (+30) xxxxxxx
Best Regards
Theodoros Pallis
PS: The above letter was sent to the Greek Institute of Consumers Authority (INKA). It's the only way that customers, may not find their vindication but at least, can change the way companies look at their After Sales Customer Service.”
Acer Hellas still hasn't answer to my questions. I have sent them all the necessary documents (receipt, laptop s/n, laptop model).
THANK YOU