Acer is not considered a quality brand but it is also not bottom of the barrel and it sells a lot of computers. I bought an Aspire V3 112p notebook after carefully researching my requirements and budget. It had exactly the features I wanted and the price was right.

A purchase like this is a bit like getting a new toy. There is a sense of excited anticipation when it arrives. You want to enjoy it and you want to like it.

At first I did. It was exactly what I wanted. It had some neat features. The battery life was amazing compared to anything I had experienced before.

After a couple of months the trackpad started randomly freezing. It was annoying and disappointing, but at first it didn’t happen too frequently and it was not a deal breaker. I soon discovered that a freeze could be fixed by toggling Fn-F7. Over time it got steadily worse and I was having to constantly hit the F7 key. I googled the issue and discovered that many people were experiencing it across a range of Acer laptops. There were threads about it on the Acer support site but no real support or even acknowledgement of the problem from Acer. Their only response was advice to take the computer to their repair service. Several people did but the ‘repair’ seems to have mainly consisted of reinstalling Windows, which didn’t fix anything. Since I don’t live near an Acer service centre and didn’t want to send the computer away, I was reluctant to try this.

Eventually I found a few scattered posts from people who said the problem was a bad ground connection and could easily be fixed. I was reluctant to try this since the computer was new and I couldn’t be certain it would actually work, but after the warranty period expired, and with the problem getting worse, I finally decided to bite the bullet. With the help of on-line disassembly instructions, I reluctantly removed the back cover and battery, which turned out to be surprisingly simple and straightforward, and inspected the back of the trackpad.

There are two connecting points on either side for ground straps but only one is used. The connection is not soldered, but made with conductive adhesive which many people have pointed out does not create a good connection and deteriorates over time. Following the suggestions, I carefully (watching the heat) soldered a braided earth wire to the trackpad ground, then soldered it to the metal surround that the other ground cable was glued to, then continued it to the main board and soldered it to an earth connection there and reassembled the computer.

Since I made the repair the trackpad hasn’t frozen once. Only time will tell if it is truly fixed, but it does seem that this has done the trick. I am now filled with two emotions: huge relief and enormous anger. I am relieved that this extremely irritating problem was so easily fixable after suffering from it for nearly a year, and that I was able to fix it. But I am equally angry that Acer let this stupidity happen, and then refused to own it. The fix took all of 30 seconds. It was so easy, and also such basic, elementary good practice electronics. You make a good, reliable connection by soldering it, not by sticking it with an adhesive conductor. How many micro-cents did they shave off assembly cost by taking this sloppy shortcut? How hard can it be to solder a single wire? How many customers and how much goodwill has this idiocy cost them? I for one will never buy another Acer product.