Review of Acer Aspire R7

First, let me share how I came to the decision to purchase the Aspire R7.

I recently decided it was time for a laptop upgrade. I have always had somewhat-beefy laptops, my last two being a Dell E1700 (17" screen) and MSI GT627 (15.6" screen, great graphics, blu-ray player, etc). I started looking along those same lines, and was seriously considering something from the Asus ROG line. I've always loved Asus products, and had I continued along that route, I'm sure that's what I would have purchased.

But then I started thinking about my laptop use these days. I don't generally play the latest and greatest games (I'm still playing Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 at present). I don't do advanced video editing; I have a desktop computer for that. I rarely need to read an optical disc of any type, and when I do, I'm at home where I have my laptop. It was starting to look more and more than I didn't need a beefy laptop this time. So, I started looking at Ultra Books.

Ultra Books intrigued me greatly, and I concluded that this was the route I wanted to go. However, I had 11" and 13" laptops many years ago, when those were the standard sizes. From my experience with a 17" laptop I knew that was too big, and that 13" was too small. I wanted to stick to a 15" screen. The convertible laptops intrigued me, but none came in higher than a 13.3" screen (I loved the Asus Taichi, but it was just too small). Then I stumbled across the Acer Aspire R7, and I was in love.

Now to the actual review.

First, the biggest negative I encountered. This is advertised as a "convertible laptop", but it really isn't. Sorry Acer, but you lost on that one. Although the screen will flip around, it does not lay entirely flat. In addition, because of the large screen size, the laptop has more weight to it than other convertible laptops, making it impracticable to use as a tablet.

The screen itself is gorgeous, and I will give it a perfect score. I have never been particularly interested in touch screens, and didn't really care either way on that particular feature. However, after getting this laptop, I have no desire whatsoever to ever go back to not having one. I rarely ever use the touchpad, and find the touch screen to be absolutely phenomenal.

This laptop has a different layout for the user input area. The keyboard is in the front, and the touchpad is in the rear. I thought this was a bit odd when I first saw it, but wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. I tried it, and I love it. The design works, because of 2 other features - the very responsive touch screen, and the Ezel Hinge. I'll go into this further below.

The "Ezel Hinge" isn't exactly revolutionary, but I've never seen the concept implemented better. It's advertised with the ability to flip around, lay flat, and move forward. I have found the first two things here to be utterly useless, and have yet to find a use for either. Moving the screen forward, however, is something I never want to do without again. When you open the laptop, it is in a standard "laptop layout". However, you can then effortlessly move the screen forward, greatly closing the distance between it and you. I move mine so it's right behind the keyboard, completely covering the touchpad. Because of the fantastic touch screen I rarely use the touchpad, and this puts that touch screen right next to the keyboard, limiting arm movement back and forth. Overall, it's just great.

Storage on this laptop is pretty good. It comes with a 500G traditional platter hard drive, which is more than enough storage for most users. I keep a 2TB USB3 hard drive in my laptop case, just in case I need it; but I believe 95% of users will not need this. If this were the only hard drive, the laptop would take awhile to boot. Enter an MSATA 24G SSD drive! This is used transparently as a caching drive for the OS, and is extremely fast. What does this mean? Instead of taking 1 minute (or more) to boot like a traditional laptop, from the moment I hit the power button it takes 10 seconds to be booted and ready to log in. Many Ultra Books sacrifice storage capacity for speed, and install a single SSD drive. By using this dual method, you get the best of both worlds.

The video capabilities of this laptop are fair, but not great. It is, by a long shot, the most lacking area of this laptop. However, it does play last-gen games if you don't have the graphics way up. It is an Ultra Book, so I consider that a fair trade-off. It does have an HDMI output, which will work with most modern systems one might hook to.

Audio is incredible on this laptop. It has four speakers on the underside of the laptop, and they are louder than anything I've ever seen in a laptop (except for a Sony laptop I had many years ago, which had a large sub-woofer  that could hot-swap with the optical drive). These speakers are small, unobtrusive, and incredibly loud.

The battery life is great. With regular use, I get in the neighborhood of 5-6 hours of battery life from this; far better than any laptop I've ever had.

The keyboard is good, but I won't say great. They could have made the keys a little more sensitive for fast typers, and I find myself sometimes having to hit the space bar a couple times if I didn't get a solid hit the first time. It's not too bad though, and it's not bad enough for me to complain about any more than that. Due to the large screen size there is plenty of extra room on the sides, and it would have been nice if they could have included a numeric keypad. Again, not a huge issue, but it would have been nice.

The operating system is Windows 8. What can I say here? It's Windows 8, and unless you go Apple (or install Linux and such), it's what you're going to use. Personally, I find the Start Screen to be obnoxious and annoying, so I got rid of it. There is a great open source project on Sourceforge called "Classic Shell" which gives you back a start menu. I realize Microsoft is trying to come up with "new" and "better" designs, and I generally try to adapt with new technology. But while the Start Screen may be good for less-advanced users (it's great for my grandparents), those more advanced need something far more capable and efficient. For the time being, I'll stick to having a Start Menu.

The expandability is mostly what you'd expect from an Ultra Book. You can upgrade the RAM, and I don't see any reason you couldn't replace the platter or MSATA drives. It has two USB3 ports, and one USB2 port. One additional feature this has is a proprietary Acer port, which is identical to a mini DisplayPort, but uses their own protocol. The idea is that you can hook multiple connectors to that single port (DisplayPort, Ethernet, VGA), similar to what Apple is now doing. It's an interesting idea, but personally I think it's pretty stupid. I did purchase the VGA adapter for this, so that I can hook to older projectors. I purchased a USB ethernet adapter, which was cheaper and functions just as well. They don't even have an Acer-brand adapter for DisplayPort (yet anyway).

So those are my impressions of this laptop. My overall impression is "great", and I love this thing. It's bigger than your average Ultra Book, but that's precisely what I was looking for, so I'm good with that. It fills a void in the "convertible laptop" arena, without truly being one itself. At $900, I find it to be a pretty good deal, and believe I will be using this for some time to come.

A Different Gun Control Debate

Hell has officially frozen over; I have created a blog. I have never really had an interest in doing it, but after posting the same thing 100x on Facebook threads, I have decided to do this and see how it works. Maybe I'll never make another post; I suppose it depends on whether this post gets seen.

For this, my premier blog post, I have decided to enter the fray of the gun control debate. I grew up in New York, which has relatively strict gun control, and I've lived in Arizona for the last 5 years, which has relatively relaxed gun control.  I've seen both sides of the coin, and believe there is something to be learned from each. My father was a prison guard, and he taught be proper firearms use and safety from a young age. I do own firearms, and I have introduced and instructed numerous people to the subject of recreational shooting. To cover a few other demographics, so you know the type of person this is coming from: I hold a Bachelors Degree in Computer Engineering and work as a Software Engineer. I am a Volunteer Firefighter and EMT, and go bowling Friday nights. I have a great wife, and I have a 2-year old daughter who is just awesome.

First, let's clear up something I'm very tired of hearing. The "right to bear arms" is enshrined in the Bill of Rights of this great country. For those who aren't aware, this is part of the US Constitution, which trumps any other federal or state law. Our Founding Fathers considered it so critical that it was one of their highest priorities, second only to freedom of speech and religion. It didn't then, nor does it now, have anything to do with hunting. It has to do with personal defense, defense of the state, and defense from the state. Many point to the term "militia" in the Amendment as an argument against individual firearm ownership. At the time of its writing, "militia" was loosely defined as all adult, white men living in America. Since then, we have realized limiting any Rights by gender or skin pigmentation is wrong, so this would now include all adults. So please, I implore you: If you want to argue for repealing the 2nd Amendment, then so be it. I will argue against it, but it is a real debate. If you make any reference to "hunting" in a 2nd Amendment debate (unless arguing for repealing it), I will consider that you have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding in the subject matter, and have automatically lost the debate. Personally, I hope I never have to use a firearm in any type of defense, but I do support the old adage of "be prepared".

Now let's get to my real argument, and what I believe could have prevented most of the massacres that have happened in recent years: Consistent gun control.

In this country, at present time, it is not difficult to obtain a firearm, whether through legal or illegal means. I haven't spoken to anyone who has argued this point, so I am simply going to accept that as an axiom for the purposes of this article. Even if guns were made illegal tomorrow, there are far too many guns proliferated through society for any reasonable person to think this will change anytime soon. Given the quantity of guns in society, and the vast number of people who own them, I think it's reasonable to assume that a small number of those individuals will use them for nefarious acts.

So now we've established that:

• Guns are common in our society, and this will not change anytime soon.
• Guns are fairly easy to procure.
• Some people will use guns for evil purposes.

With those obvious facts in front of us, the "gun control" crowd has convinced our politicians that we should get all of our most precious citizens, children, and put them in a location that is has no capability of defense whatsoever. All the massacres we hear about happen at schools or malls, where firearms are prohibited. It's like they believe that putting up a "no guns allowed" sign has placed a magic shield around the location that will prevent guns from entering the premises. When this fails, as any person with a tiny amount of reason would expect, all they can do is stutter "but.. but.. it was a gun free zone!" Were I intent on killing a bunch of innocent people, having a location like this is exactly what I would be looking for.

In almost every debate I have with individuals, regardless of subject, I can usually at least understand the view of my opponent. I may disagree with it, but I can see their reasoning. In this case, I'm at a loss. I do understand the "gun ban" reasoning: If one accepts the premise that it's possible to remove all guns from society, then strict gun control seems like a great goal. I disagree with the premise (a debate for another time), so I disagree with the argument, but at least there is logic and reason to it. But in a society where guns are so common, I do not understand, at all, why one would argue for having "different laws" for the location where we keep our children. It terrifies me that my daughter will be starting school in a couple years, and she will be going to one of the few places in this state that is completely without defense.

Maybe the "gun control lobby" believes these "gun free zones" are a small victory of some sort. "Look, we managed to enact strict gun control here!" But given the points I've listed above, this seems like a very petty viewpoint.

The other argument I hear a lot is for banning certain firearms, or individuals from owning firearms. Let me start by being clear:  I do support gun control, right at the level we have now. Maybe it could use a few tweaks here and there, but overall it's at the level it needs to be. I do believe the current ban on automatic weapons is good, though I believe it should be at the state level, not federal. I do believe the current requirements of background checks and preventing convicted felons from owning firearms are good. But that is where it needs to stop. Anything more and you would be trampling on the Bill of Rights. Anytime you want to argue for a new law restricting firearms, stop and think to yourself, "Would I support this on restriction on the 1st Amendment?" If not, then don't argue for imposing it on the 2nd Amendment. The term "assault weapon" means absolutely nothing. It refers to aesthetics, and very little to actual function. I have a handgun that takes a magazine for feeding. When I lived in New York, I had to have a 10-round magazine to be compliant with state law. Here in Arizona, I can use the full 13-round magazine. I can assure you, it only takes a second for me to reload a new magazine, and has no statistically relevant effect on my firing speed. While picking and choosing features of convenience may appeal to the emotional part of the brain, the logical side will say there is no meaning full effect on what you're trying to accomplish.

To conclude my diatribe here, I beg people to try to remove emotion from this debate. We must stick to logic, reason, and hard facts. If we do otherwise, we fail our fellow citizens, ourselves, and our posterity. Based on facts and actual events, this concept of "gun free zones" must go away to prevent future tragedies. If you want to argue for removing civilian owned guns altogether, fine, but don't argue to slice out specific areas and make them different from the rest of society. It is an argument based entirely on emotion, with no logic or reason. I'm not asking for new laws to "let teachers carry" - I'm asking for the removal of current restrictions. If a teacher, visiting parent, janitor, or anyone else has a legal right to posess a firearm anywhere else in society, let them have it there as well. Only then can we actually protect our most precious citizens.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I don't have high hopes that it will have any meaningful impact, but perhaps added to all the other debates it might play a small role.

Joe Deutschman - jovialwoodchuck
Parks, Arizona

I'm not going to list all the massacres that have happened in recent years, because they are far too numerous. I think it's enough to say that they all occurred in "gun free zones", where nobody but the attacker had a firearm. However, here are some actual events that probably would have turned into bigger massacres, were it not for the presence of firearms in hands other than those of the attacker.

• 1997: Pearl River, Missouri. A student entered the gun-free school zone, killed 2 students, and injured 7 others. The school vice principal retreated to his car, obtained his firearm, returned to the school, and stopped the shooting. In most places, even keeping that firearm in his car would have been illegal. How many lives might have been saved if he had access to it much quicker, and how many more might have been lost had he not had it at all?

• 1998: Edinboro, Pennsylvania. A student entered a school dance, a gun-free-zone. He killed 1 teacher, wounded another teacher, and wounded 2 students. Thankfully not a good marksman, this individual had free reign for his carnage, as nobody could defend themselves. A nearby business owner heard the fracas, realized what was happening, and ran over with his shotgun. He held the gunman at bay until police arrived, preventing any further shooting. How many more might have been saved had a teacher or parent at that dance had a firearm?

• 2002: Appalachian School of Law, Virginia. A student opened fire on the campus, a gun-free zone. He was able to kill 3 people and wound 3 others before being stopped. How was he stopped? 2 students ran to their cars, retrieved their firearms, and stopped him. Why was it necessary for them to run to their cars? Had that delay not been there, more lives may have been spared. Had they not had the firearms at all, more lives almost certainly would have been lost.