Review on 💻 Acer Aspire 1 A114-32-C1YA: 14-inch Full HD Laptop with Intel Celeron N4000, 4GB DDR4, 64GB eMMC, Office 365 Personal, Windows 10 Home in S mode by Garry Ortiz

This review is dedicated to the Acer A114-32-C1YA. 64GB storage, 4GB RAM, Windows SI, semi-retired, IT pro, so this review comes from that perspective. After booting up the device and signing in (using a Microsoft account, not a local account), I upgraded Windows S to Windows. A house. This is a free upgrade but cannot be undone. Windows S only supports apps available in the Windows Store; Windows 10 Home supports Office 365 and third-party software. After installing Win 10 Home (if you do this, you will need to reboot your system for everything to stabilize); It also needs to install Win 10 updates and Windows Defender malware definitions, so give it some time to complete those tasks before installing other apps. Before installing any more apps, I removed a lot of apps from the original Win 10 installation - the machine came with "bloatware" from Microsoft. After uninstalling bloatware and Windows updates, I installed Office 365, Chrome browser, DIA (an open source charting app), four printer drivers, Splashtop (remote access app), Caps Lock indicator app, Dropbox and MS Setup Outlook, a few GB of data and 33 GB free The 8 GB used were created with a Windows backup ("Windows.old") and could be restored with the command "Disk Cleanup/Clean up system files". . The HP4050n printer took a little time - the drivers had to be adjusted manually Acer's performance with 4 GB of RAM and the N4000 processor is not amazing, it is not a gaming device, but with office applications running or with 3-4 windows, Chrome open, the system seems not to challenge. The keyboard i is acceptable for the market price (YMMV since the keyboard is subjective). There is no Caps Lock indicator on the keyboard. However, I installed a third-party freeware that shows an on-screen indicator when caps lock is on. (You can find the software by searching the internet). I find the screen to be better than I expected at this price point, but again that's subjective and YMMV. One annoyance: From what I understand, Cortana wants to search the web, local devices, planets, and outer planets, and expand the search for the Andromeda galaxy. There's a registry hack that kills (or rather "kills") Cortana and restricts searches to the local computer. When I need to search the web, I use Google (or something similar); When I'm looking for a file or application, I want the Windows 10 Home search bar to limit the search to the local computer. Once the hack was in place, the search bar works fine. You can search the web for ways to disable Cortana. Make sure you back up the registry before attempting to edit it. Since Bitlocker doesn't ship with Win 10 Home (shame on Microsoft for that!), I added a BIOS/boot password so that the machine can't start after shutdown without the password. If you need more storage space, you can install a USB flash drive (some are very small and don't come out of the USB port much). Online storage (DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) is also an option (I disabled OneDrive on my computer). There is an SD card reader, but the card sticks out too much for my liking to leave the card in the car for permanent storage. YMMV. (Edit 2/23/19): I added a 64GB USB drive and moved my 2GB of data to it. I used another Windows 10 Pro PC to encrypt the drive with Bitlocker. Windows 10 Home can unlock Bitlocker drives. If the laptop is lost or stolen, a BIOS password protects Acer from booting, while Bitlocker protects the data. The device is lightweight and suitable for taking notes in the classroom or in meetings; My main use will be to serve a Windows Server 2012r2 domain controller and network using Remote Desktop and Splashtop. Email and Office applications work well; I had no problems. Please note that I usually don't run more than 2-3 applications at the same time; If you are in the habit of opening 15 web pages, you can load the machine more than me. Do not rely on this computer to run online games, Adobe PhotoShop, or other resource-intensive applications. But for me, $250 for a working laptop that can do what I need without fuss, I'll rate it 5 stars. (There are other computers in this price range with better specs, but the Acer suits me. YMMV.) (Edit 02/23/2019) After the battery was fully charged, I used the computer for servicing. The computer was used from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. (no video, only office, web search and remote access to client network machines); It was put into sleep mode until 3pm and then used from 3pm to 5:15pm when a 20% battery warning popped up. A little over 7 hours of work, 5 hours of sleep - not bad for your first real day at work.HTHRRegardsJim