back to article Acer boss quits after board disses his future strategy

Acer CEO and president Gianfranco Lanci has quit the computer maker, after boardroom wrangles over the company's future left him high and dry. His resignation is with immediate effect, said Acer in a statement to The Register this morning. The company's chairman, JT Wang, will take the CEO chair in the interim, while Acer …

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  1. Leeroy

    Title here

    "In addition, we are stepping into the new mobile device market, where we will invest cautiously and aim to become one of the leading players."

    Investing cautiously and becoming a leading player do not seem to go together at all. Perhaps this is what Lanci was trying to tell them ?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Strong foundation?

    I have never heard of anyone being happy with their Acer product. In fact, I always discourage people from buying their stuff.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      well listen up

      i've bought 5 acer laptops not all for me. their laptops are the most reasonably priced that i've seen and work flawlessly. when my current 3 year old personal acer aspire laptop bites the dust, i'll probably buy another acer to replace it.

    2. frank ly
      Stop

      Here's Your First One

      My Acer Travelmate 8000 is still going strong after just over seven years of hard use. The spacebar has a valley worn in it where I hit it with my thumb and the trackpad is mirror smooth in the middle. None of the letters have worn off from the keys and it works just fine.

      It's on its fourth hard drive, but they tend to wear out anyway.

      When I spilled a cup of tea on it, after I'd had it for 18 months, within the warranty period, they replaced the keyboard and trackpad assembly for free, 'as a gesture of good will'.

      It was an Acer service guy who told me how to prep a new hard drive and bypass the security so I could install Windows on a replacement hard drive - how's that for service?

      (I'm not involved with Acer in any way and this Travelmate laptop is my only experience of Acer products.)

    3. squilookle

      I have an Acer laptop

      It is one year old and I am very happy with it. Does everything I need it to and has proved reliable so far.

    4. Mr Brush

      YMMV

      1st Acer thing, Pentium 75 PC back in 1990-something. Bloody Awful.

      2nd Acer thing, AMD based Laptop circa 2005, fantastic piece of kit.

      3rd Acer thing, New i5 laptop bought last month to replace above laptop as it's getting a bit long in the tooth. Just as good, if not better than old one.

      I often recommend them to people looking for good value kit.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Aspire TZ1810

      I've got two of these and they're fab.

      So there.

    6. DrXym

      I am happy

      I've owned 2 Acer laptops. Both worked exactly as designed, were well specced and comparatively cheap compared to some of their rivals. Biggest fault I can lay at Acer's feet is their laptops look a bit boring, a bit generic.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Boring?

        I have two Acer 5000 Ferraris.(5yrs old?) Certainly not boring, but the exhaust can actually burn your right hand!!

        Oh, an one of them visited a certain F1 team in Wokingham and had to be smothered in black sticky tape so as not to offend the engineers... I kid you not.

        I managed to eject one from my bag (forgot to zip it up before I threw it across my shoulders) ; it's cracked but it still works!!

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      reasonably happy with Acer

      Of the 5 Acer machines that the wife and I have had, none has died before its time and as far as I know they are all still working.

      There are many more that have been through the office, also Dell, Toshiba, and HP machines.

      Acer Travelmate 242x and Aspire 3610 machine have poorly designed hinges which fail after 3-6 years, however if treated with care the hinges last OK. Other than that, no systematic failures on Acers.

      On the other hand we have been plagued with just-out-of-warranty failures on HP laptops - which HP is not willing to do anything about. On one particular model the trackpad screws work loose and fall onto the system board, causing a fatal short circuit.

      No complaints about Dell or Toshiba. Of them all, Tosh is probably the one I have the most confidence in.

    8. BingBong

      Two Acer Aspire Ones here

      and they are fine pieces of kit especially for the price (e.g. an Aspire One with *built-in* 3G modem was bought for £189 inc vat and it works great with Ubuntu).

    9. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      re: never heard of anyone being happy

      Had a couple of eMachines laptops, Acer's "value" brand, and they've been fine apart from the user's propensity to drop them and spill stuff on them and shut things in them and use them as trays for TV dinners and let the cat jump on them ... which is why she only gets cheap laptops now, after killing a couple of Toshibas.

    10. Tom 13

      I've always found Acer product to be

      solid affordable product. If you can get there stuff and don't want the premium for the HP, Toshiba, Sony, or Dell brands, it will serve you well. Never bleeding edge, but most users don't want that anyway.

    11. Arbuthnot Darjeeling
      Happy

      I trust

      you'll update your comment - we buy acers all the time - they are good value & reliable.

      Had more problems with toshibas over the years.

      And i can agree with another poster - ubuntu installs without problem, sets up wireless automatically.

      what's not to like?

    12. Robot

      All the notebooks I have owned...

      Year = year purchased

      1991 Toshiba (absolute lemon, plasma screen required replacement every 4 months)

      1992 Compaq (lasted five years, then died)

      1998 Toshiba (belonged to my wife, had it 11 years, then gave it away)

      1999 Gateway (had it 6 years, then gave it away)

      2002 Fujitsu (lasted 7 years, then died)

      2006 Fujitsu (still going strong)

      2009 Samsung (still going strong)

      2009 Samsung (for my wife, still going strong)

      2010 Acer (ultraportable, still going strong)

      The Acer has been a pleasant notebook so far, and by far the cheapest of the ones I have bought.

    13. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Got one for my dad. It's fine.

      He takes it out and about, isn't too careful. Uses it loads - photoshopping and managing digital photos. It's fine. Decent laptop for a reasonable price. Going strong for two years now. Not exciting, not super swishy to look at, but fine.

  3. RichyS
    Coat

    JT Wang

    Oh please let the 'JT' in JT Wang stand for John Thomas...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    puerile and childish

    JT Wang

    wouldn't it be amusing if that stood for John Thomas?

  5. alien anthropologist
    Grenade

    The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    Have 2 Acers myself. A notebook and a netbook (both running Linux btw).

    Happy with both pieces of kit - does the job that it was bought to do.

    Would I recommend buying Acer?

    No.

    I would however recommend not placing your head into your, or a 3rd party, ass. Do not base your purchase decisions on the (often irrelevant) opinions of others.

    Instead evaluate what is available, at what cost, and what suits *your* specific needs and expectations the best.

  6. UBFusion1
    Thumb Up

    They are multitouch too!

    Those of you with Synaptics touchpads, have you tried the new multitouch driver? Go to www.synaptics.com and look in their driver section for the "Synaptics Gesture Suite Device Driver". I was amazed to see it work flawlessly on my aging Acer Aspire.

    Mine is a 6+ year old Turion-based and apart from a HDD upgrade it still works like a workhorse, a tad slow, but very reliably, triple-booting into XP, 7 and Ubuntu. Acers are very popular among students and professors here, because they represent the golden mean between quality and price.

    PS: Dear El Reg, could we please have a unified login into all Reg sites? I have so far canceled several comments because I had not the courage to go through a new registration process. Now that I did, Channel says that my handle is "already taken", but I suspect this is due to an interaction with my main Reg site account. What gives?

  7. Jack 4

    Happy with mine...

    I got an Acer Aspire One 10.1in netbook about 9 months ago. I've upgraded it with more memory, and just recently set it to dual boot Ubuntu and I'm delighted with it. The Ubuntu install was easy as could be and works great with no tweaking, and the netbook itself is handy and comfortable to use.

    So, another Acer owner who's happy with their machine.

  8. Tom 13

    Of course what's clear as mud and what I am the most curious about is

    what were the two different plans?

  9. Homer 1
    Paris Hilton

    My Acer's acer than your Acer

    I have an Acer Ferrari 4000 and it runs like a champ, even on unleaded. You can fry eggs on the bonnet though, and I lost 3 of the tires years ago when it went in for an MOT. The carburettor fills up with dust-bunnies fairly quick, and the upholstery is a bit worn, but I can't complain about the performance - it goes from 800 to 2000 MHz in less than one second! It's practical too, I can take the whole family shopping on Amazon, with enough room to store everyone's junk in the boot.

    --

    Paris, because she understands the value of brand recognition

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You mean people really buy the Ferrari ones? Grown ups?

    Do they make "vroom vroom" sounds as they move the mouse about?

    Actually, just kidding. I know people really do buy them. Saw chap getting one out on the train once. It took for-bleeding-ever to boot. Blue screened, booted again. Crawled into life hourglassing over and over and over again. Then finally after what seemed like ten minutes he finally got to work with his cutting edge example of man and machine in perfect harmony. Playing Solitaire. Vroom Vroom!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    All PC companies will be run out of business by Apple, or end up partnerning with them

    I know, you think I am crazy. Just like when I said the iPod would be popular.

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