My very first impression of the system was installing Starcraft 2, and my first impression was – the power cable colliding with the DVD drive.

A minor irritation, and nothing serious – much like the McAfee antivirus trial (which has spread much like a plague that constantly reminds you to activate it) that shipped with the system.

There is a selection of games you can play using Acer credits. The games are oldish budget titles, which takes away a bit of the impression of getting to try something for free before buying it.

Under these minor irritations though, is a good all round laptop.

It can handle most current generation games reasonably well right now, but it might lack longevity. Skyrim wanted to play with its graphics set to low. In a year or two as more next generation consoles come out it might begin to lag what a hard-core gamer requires.

The large 17-inch landscaped screen translates into a nice big comfortable keyboard complete with number pad. You would be surprised at how useful that sort of thing is, and as a work computer that can handle a bit in the way of gaming this one is more than good enough.

The touch-pad is huge, and supports multi-touch gestures. I still prefer using a mouse.

While the system doesn’t quite feel robust given its plastic finish – it survived a week of going into the Kruger National Park without a computer bag fine apart from a few finger prints. I have known Acers to survive getting run over, and while I don’t recommend testing that, they are surprisingly robust machines.

This is the sort of computer I would recommend to an articled clerk – it comes at a reasonable R9 999 for the i7 core, and R5 999 for the less powerful i5. It is heavy at 3.3kgs with a 600g power supply, but it is comfortable enough in use to make up for building a bit of muscle carrying it around.

This isn’t a dedicated gaming system – it is more of a jack of all trades, which means for a young person looking for something they can both play games on and use for work, it is a very respectable piece of hardware.

Click here for the specifications.