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expired Posted by VioletHaddock489 | Staff • Oct 4, 2023
expired Posted by VioletHaddock489 | Staff • Oct 4, 2023

Target: Acer 15.6" Aspire 3 Laptop - Intel Core i3 - Windows 11 $299.99 + Free Shipping

$300

$450

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Target [target.com] has Acer 15.6" Aspire 3 Laptop - Intel Core i3 - 8GB RAM - 256GB SSD Storage - Windows 11 for $299.99. Shipping is free.

Highlights:
  • Core i3 processor from Intel® delivers unmatched speed and intelligence, enabling impressive gaming, productivity and creating experiences with faster Wi-Fi 5 connectivity. Purposeful Design. The classy look of the Aspire 3 is matched only by the convenience of its thin, easily portable design.
  • Visibly Stunning. Get more monitor real estate for these amazing visuals with the 15.6" Full HD display with a narrow-bezel design. Keep your eyes free from strain and watch
  • Or work for long sessions using Acer BlueLightShield™. The Power of Wireless. Stream, download and browse to your heart's is content! The 802.11ac WiFi 5 provides a smooth Internet experience at connection speeds that are up to three times faster than previous generations.
  • Ports for All Occasions. With three USB ports, including two USB 3.2 Gen 1 and one USB 2.0, you're always prepared for any situation – whether plugging in for a presentation or using the latest peripherals. If needed, you can also connect to an external display via the HDMI® 2.0 port when the occasion calls for a larger screen.
  • Intuitive Navigation. The easy-to-use Precision Touchpad is more responsive than traditional touchpads, accurately sensing fingertips and movements so you can work more effectively. All day battery life, up to 9.5 hours.
Product Info
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Deal Details
Product Info
Community Notes
About the Poster
Target [target.com] has Acer 15.6" Aspire 3 Laptop - Intel Core i3 - 8GB RAM - 256GB SSD Storage - Windows 11 for $299.99. Shipping is free.

Highlights:
  • Core i3 processor from Intel® delivers unmatched speed and intelligence, enabling impressive gaming, productivity and creating experiences with faster Wi-Fi 5 connectivity. Purposeful Design. The classy look of the Aspire 3 is matched only by the convenience of its thin, easily portable design.
  • Visibly Stunning. Get more monitor real estate for these amazing visuals with the 15.6" Full HD display with a narrow-bezel design. Keep your eyes free from strain and watch
  • Or work for long sessions using Acer BlueLightShield™. The Power of Wireless. Stream, download and browse to your heart's is content! The 802.11ac WiFi 5 provides a smooth Internet experience at connection speeds that are up to three times faster than previous generations.
  • Ports for All Occasions. With three USB ports, including two USB 3.2 Gen 1 and one USB 2.0, you're always prepared for any situation – whether plugging in for a presentation or using the latest peripherals. If needed, you can also connect to an external display via the HDMI® 2.0 port when the occasion calls for a larger screen.
  • Intuitive Navigation. The easy-to-use Precision Touchpad is more responsive than traditional touchpads, accurately sensing fingertips and movements so you can work more effectively. All day battery life, up to 9.5 hours.

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Model: Acer 15.6" Aspire 3 Laptop - Intel Core i3 - 8GB RAM - 256GB SSD Storage - Windows 11 in S Mode - Silver (A315-58-350L)

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Oct 5, 2023
168 Posts
Joined Jun 2016
Oct 5, 2023
BradyA
Oct 5, 2023
168 Posts
Quote from Andrepartthree :
Not trying to start an argument by any means Smilie but I admit I was a bit confused when I saw this after doing some internet research

Looks like the model number is A315-58-350L so used that for a google search and came up with

https://community.acer.com/en/dis...re-a315-58

https://community.acer.com/en/dis...m-capacity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjKfFaP4SzY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE-mKJy1V0U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X...3g4&t=249s

Apologies for two of those youtube channels not being in English (not trying to sound racist I swear ! ) but honestly still thought those videos were helpful just for showing the "guts" of the laptop from the inside ...

The impression I got was that there was a slot you could stick ram into , an m2 drive you could swap out and a drive slot bay for a 2.5 form factor ssd drive ... I know acer laptops often come with the 2.5 hard drive enclosure included to make it easy to pop one right in there...

If this is the case and the laptop can be upgraded you could always just slap say a 16 GB stick of ram and a secondary 2.5 form factor ssd drive in there to put files on and/or install other programs (I'm guessing... hoping?... 256 GB would be enough for a basic win 11 install plus whatever programs you put on there? Could be wrong wiser heads than mine would know Smilie ) ...

Mind you this is all pure speculation on my part, anyone who has had actual experience with one of these laptops please jump in your feedback and advice would be greatly appreciated Smilie
I was just going off the target product page but you might be right
Oct 5, 2023
771 Posts
Joined Oct 2017
Oct 5, 2023
Andrepartthree
Oct 5, 2023
771 Posts
also you might want to snag a usb 2.0 or usb 3.0 thumb drive say 32 gb or more .. actually grab two of them if you don't have a few already lying around at home.. and make an acer recovery bootable drive you can use to 1) restore the laptop back to it's original condition if some nasty virus cripples windows, windows just goes "nope" and blue screen of death's you after some windows update gne wrong or whatever

Also .. at the risk of sounding like a commercial for Macrium Reflect Smilie .. I've heard nothing but good things about it and my one experience using it was super pleasant (Windows 10 restoration) .. it's very expensive at $70 but on Black Friday the past two years they've dropped the price to $35 ... AOEMI is free by comparison .. Acronis True Image was my go to for the longest while but dropped them when they went to subscription model mode .. I found that my earlier (year 2017 or so) version one license purchases of Acronis flat out would not work on Windows 11

If you look around on the internet there are ways to acquire the free older versions of Macrium (say version 7) that they kindly offered for free .. I relied on Norton's file insight program to say " Yes thousands of users have used this file and it's safe" but that's a consideration too though you'd need some way to verify such a file was safe before even thinking about installing it .. in any case Macrium does let you create a bootable usb drive ... the current free version of Macrium is good for 30, maybe 45 days and that's it, can't make any more backups past then.

One other thing - you lose dual channel mode if you slap a 16 GB ram stick in there but I've heard of people doing it all the time on the 'net and their laptops are still usable.. they just have to put up with it given this soldered ram nonsense laptop manufactuers are doing nowadays (rolls eyes)

If you can hold off on the purchase I'm wondering if it's worth waiting to see if say an i5 processor drops down to the $300 price range for an acer .. we have untli October 2025 before Microsoft says " forget you windows 10 users no more security updates for you " Smilie
Last edited by Andrepartthree October 5, 2023 at 02:15 PM.
Oct 5, 2023
2,127 Posts
Joined Oct 2011
Oct 5, 2023
MWink
Oct 5, 2023
2,127 Posts
Quote from Andrepartthree :
also you might want to snag a usb 2.0 or usb 3.0 thumb drive say 32 gb or more .. actually grab two of them if you don't have a few already lying around at home.. and make an acer recovery bootable drive you can use to 1) restore the laptop back to it's original condition if some nasty virus cripples windows, windows just goes "nope" and blue screen of death's you after some windows update gne wrong or whatever

Also .. at the risk of sounding like a commercial for Macrium Reflect Smilie .. I've heard nothing but good things about it and my one experience using it was super pleasant (Windows 10 restoration) .. it's very expensive at $70 but on Black Friday the past two years they've dropped the price to $35 ... AOEMI is free by comparison .. Acronis True Image was my go to for the longest while but dropped them when they went to subscription model mode .. I found that my earlier (year 2017 or so) version one license purchases of Acronis flat out would not work on Windows 11

If you look around on the internet there are ways to acquire the free older versions of Macrium (say version 7) that they kindly offered for free .. I relied on Norton's file insight program to say " Yes thousands of users have used this file and it's safe" but that's a consideration too though you'd need some way to verify such a file was safe before even thinking about installing it .. in any case Macrium does let you create a bootable usb drive ... the current free version of Macrium is good for 30, maybe 45 days and that's it, can't make any more backups past then.

One other thing - you lose dual channel mode if you slap a 16 GB ram stick in there but I've heard of people doing it all the time on the 'net and their laptops are still usable.. they just have to put up with it given this soldered ram nonsense laptop manufactuers are doing nowadays (rolls eyes)

If you can hold off on the purchase I'm wondering if it's worth waiting to see if say an i5 processor drops down to the $300 price range for an acer .. we have untli October 2025 before Microsoft says " forget you windows 10 users no more security updates for you " Smilie
Don't bother with making an Acer recovery flash drive, which will probably have all the preloaded garbage. Get the media creation tool directly from Microsoft and use that. Even better, but much more difficult, make a Ventoy flash drive, with the official Windows ISO and an old, bootable Macrium Reflect ISO. You could even add some Linux ISOs.

Quote from FenrirCo :
Why would an i3/8GB have S-mode? I thought only the super junky systems did this.

S-mode would be way better if it was actually a decent 'slimmed down, lower resource mode' but still let you do things like, you know, install Firefox, and not not 'fling the computer out the window in frustration' mode.
A lot of cheaper Acer models come in S-mode. I agree with your assessment of S-mode. I simply describe it using another S-word. I didn't mind it as much in Windows 10, when you could permanently knock it out of S-mode simply by temporarily disabling Secure Boot. That trick doesn't seem to work in Windows 11.

Quote from OI3AIVIAISBLACK :
It just comes activated that way. You just turn it off. S mode is crap
I have not found a way to directly disable S-mode on Windows 11, without a Microsoft account (needed to get the app from the Windows Store).

Quote from bdoubya :
How bad is this? Is it an okay processor for lightweight web and excel and word and ppt stuff? No gaming needed for me.
It should be more than adequate. Even a first gen I3 is generally adequate for those purposes.

Quote from coursesix :
It's perfectly fine for those tasks. The 8GB of RAM will be more than sufficient for those uses as well. From Googling, it appears that it is only using 1 slot of RAM, so if you really needed 16GB of RAM (or wanted dual channel speeds), you could buy an 8GB stick for ~$12 on eBay and upgrade yourself (very easy to do).

In my view, the main thing that kills the deal killer here isn't the CPU or RAM, but the display. It is a TN panel -- which means poor viewing angles (quite important on laptops) and washed out colors.
I've been really disappointed by how Acer has cheaped out on newer models. Several years ago, they had some fantastic deals. For under $300 you could get a mediocre CPU, 4GB RAM (with 1 stick in one of two slots), a 128GB NVMe SSD (in a standard 2280 M.2 slot, with an empty 2.5" 7mm bay), backlit keyboard, and a fairly decent full HD IPS screen. Now, even the slightly more expensive models seem to forego the upgradeable memory, backlit keyboard, and they seem to have screens that are terrible, even by TN standards. I can't recommend these machines anymore.
Oct 6, 2023
5,184 Posts
Joined Jun 2010
Oct 6, 2023
FAL
Oct 6, 2023
5,184 Posts
Quote from bdoubya :
How bad is this? Is it an okay processor for lightweight web and excel and word and ppt stuff? No gaming needed for me.
It's ok for $200. Any Intel i core the last 5 years is good enough for email & youtube , 8gb ram can handle 10 chrome tabs, and park it on your tabletop

On the expensive side for $300. You could do far better 16/512 deals from $255 Gateway(Walmart /Microcenter) , $400 Acer Swift (Costco), $250 Dell (Refurbished), Lenovo Flex
Oct 6, 2023
30 Posts
Joined Oct 2014
Oct 6, 2023
chiefarab
Oct 6, 2023
30 Posts
This one is on sale for $350, how is this?

https://www.target.com/p/hp-15-6-...A-88951295

For my dad casual office use and browsing/downloading, I think its a good deal considering the CPU and storage.. + 5% Off red card + $10 circle Credit + $40 credit for opening redcard. Seems like a decent deal. What do you guys think?
Oct 6, 2023
771 Posts
Joined Oct 2017
Oct 6, 2023
Andrepartthree
Oct 6, 2023
771 Posts
Quote from MWink :
Don't bother with making an Acer recovery flash drive, which will probably have all the preloaded garbage. Get the media creation tool directly from Microsoft and use that. Even better, but much more difficult, make a Ventoy flash drive, with the official Windows ISO and an old, bootable Macrium Reflect ISO. You could even add some Linux ISOs.



A lot of cheaper Acer models come in S-mode. I agree with your assessment of S-mode. I simply describe it using another S-word. I didn't mind it as much in Windows 10, when you could permanently knock it out of S-mode simply by temporarily disabling Secure Boot. That trick doesn't seem to work in Windows 11.



I have not found a way to directly disable S-mode on Windows 11, without a Microsoft account (needed to get the app from the Windows Store).



It should be more than adequate. Even a first gen I3 is generally adequate for those purposes.



I've been really disappointed by how Acer has cheaped out on newer models. Several years ago, they had some fantastic deals. For under $300 you could get a mediocre CPU, 4GB RAM (with 1 stick in one of two slots), a 128GB NVMe SSD (in a standard 2280 M.2 slot, with an empty 2.5" 7mm bay), backlit keyboard, and a fairly decent full HD IPS screen. Now, even the slightly more expensive models seem to forego the upgradeable memory, backlit keyboard, and they seem to have screens that are terrible, even by TN standards. I can't recommend these machines anymore.

(slaps head).. you're right of course thanks for pointing that out Smilie ... from what I understand if you use the thumb drive to make a windows 11 install usb bootable drive , the ISO should pick up on the product key that's "hardwired" into the .. motherboard I'm guessing?.. for the laptop and just let you install win 11 without the bloatware.

You would however want to take note of the version of Windows .. home, pro or whatever.. on the laptop and write that down and select that same version when doing your clean install of win 11 or else you'll run into headaches from what I understand.

Being the paranoid sort I'd probably also do the acer recovery drive on a different usb drive so you can just restore it back to the original factory settings in case something goes horribly wrong during the win 11 install so you don't brick the laptop but from what I understand the risk of that is low (still better safe than sorry or I think so anyways Stick Out Tongue )
Oct 6, 2023
2,325 Posts
Joined Mar 2011
Oct 6, 2023
DJsDA
Oct 6, 2023
2,325 Posts
anybody know if this laptop would be able to connect to a 3440x1440p ultra wide 144hz monitor for cloud gaming? I see it has hdmi 2.0 but not sure if the on board graphics on this laptop are fast enough for high end cloud streaming.

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Oct 6, 2023
2,127 Posts
Joined Oct 2011
Oct 6, 2023
MWink
Oct 6, 2023
2,127 Posts
Quote from Andrepartthree :
(slaps head).. you're right of course thanks for pointing that out Smilie ... from what I understand if you use the thumb drive to make a windows 11 install usb bootable drive , the ISO should pick up on the product key that's "hardwired" into the .. motherboard I'm guessing?.. for the laptop and just let you install win 11 without the bloatware.

You would however want to take note of the version of Windows .. home, pro or whatever.. on the laptop and write that down and select that same version when doing your clean install of win 11 or else you'll run into headaches from what I understand.

Being the paranoid sort I'd probably also do the acer recovery drive on a different usb drive so you can just restore it back to the original factory settings in case something goes horribly wrong during the win 11 install so you don't brick the laptop but from what I understand the risk of that is low (still better safe than sorry or I think so anyways Stick Out Tongue )
I'm pretty sure there's no need to make note of anything. The Windows installer will even detect the version (in this case, Windows 10/11 Home in S-mode) and install that without asking. This can be a problem for people who paid to upgrade to Pro, since the version stored in the UEFI never changes. Even if the installer couldn't determine the Windows key (and on machines that don't have a key in the BIOS/UEFI but were previously activated on Windows 10/11), as soon as it was able to connect to the Windows activation servers, it would recognize the hardware fingerprint and activate Windows. By the way, Windows 11 licenses work for Windows 10 as well. If you wanted, you could wipe it and install Windows 10 instead. In that case, temporarily disabling secure boot should knock it out of S-mode.

I am definitely one of those super paranoid people but there's virtually no chance a vanilla Windows installer will brick a machine. However, before wiping new machines, I usually make an image of the factory OS, using (an old bootable copy of) Macrium Reflect. They tend to be about 15GB.
1
Oct 6, 2023
8,623 Posts
Joined Nov 2004
Oct 6, 2023
XYpride
Oct 6, 2023
8,623 Posts
Quote from MWink :
However, before wiping new machines, I usually make an image of the factory OS, using (an old bootable copy of) Macrium Reflect. They tend to be about 15GB.
I used to do the same but then realized I never recover from backups anyway. I always do fresh installs.
1
Oct 6, 2023
4,918 Posts
Joined Jun 2019
Oct 6, 2023
The_Love_Spud
Oct 6, 2023
4,918 Posts
The CPU is the dual-core Intel Core i3 1115G4

This CPU is fine enough as a dual-core i-series, putting it head and shoulders above any of the Atom-based CPU systems at typically lower prices. However, plenty of four core i series CPU laptops have appeared at comparable prices to this deal and present a much better long-term investment as a productivity laptop.

My favorite sleeper CPU in this category is the i3-1125G4 with four cores but without the more advanced Xe graphics of the 1135G7 model.

Good luck!
Jon
2
Oct 7, 2023
168 Posts
Joined May 2007
Oct 7, 2023
tonymon1
Oct 7, 2023
168 Posts
Quote from OI3AIVIAISBLACK :
Always 5% off instantly with target red card
If your credit card doubles manufacturer's warranties, then you lose the 5% discount in exchange for a second year warranty.
Nov 8, 2023
171 Posts
Joined Oct 2006
Nov 8, 2023
HavenZ
Nov 8, 2023
171 Posts
now $ 249.99 + tax
Nov 8, 2023
4,917 Posts
Joined Dec 2009
Nov 8, 2023
rdcrds
Nov 8, 2023
4,917 Posts
Quote from HavenZ :
now $ 249.99 + tax
I just seen that wonder how good a deal that is
Expert
This user is an Expert in Video Games
Dec 17, 2023
2,749 Posts
Joined Nov 2014
Dec 17, 2023
R0B0TPIRATE
Expert
This user is an Expert in Video Games
Dec 17, 2023
2,749 Posts
Quote from FAL :
It's ok for $200. Any Intel i core the last 5 years is good enough for email & youtube , 8gb ram can handle 10 chrome tabs, and park it on your tabletop

On the expensive side for $300. You could do far better 16/512 deals from $255 Gateway(Walmart /Microcenter) , $400 Acer Swift (Costco), $250 Dell (Refurbished), Lenovo Flex

So this at $249.99 and getting the 5% Redcard discount this is a very nice deal for normal people right?

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