Acer Swift 3 Laptop Review: Affordable And Accelerated With Optane
Acer Swift 3: Software And User Experince
Like all of you, we're not big fans of pre-installed bloatware. When we first booted up the Swift 3 though, we were sadly greeted by a Norton Security trail version, which gives users a free month of service. After the month ends you can either uninstall the program, or buy the full version. You'll want to do one or the other, because when that month is up, Norton isn't shy about constantly nagging you that the trial period has ended.
At least Norton's user interface has gotten better over the years. The latest version simply has one main screen that allows you to run a system scan, identify any problems, and check for any simple performance optimizations.
There is lots of other stuff pre-installed on this machine as well. Acer Collection, for example, is a digital store which can provide recommendations based on the user’s installed apps, preferences, and system status.
Acer Quick Access is a customizable toolbar that offers install access to a handful of settings. Some of the options include the ability to reduce the display's blue light level and enable USB charging of mobile devices when the system is powered down. You can also put the system to sleep, or shut it down entirely using the "Power Button" option at the bottom of the dashboard.
Acer Care Center is a program that gives you detailed system information about both the hardware and software in the system. With this program you can check for information on system components including the Operating System, CPU, GPU and system memory. You can also use Care Center to update your system with the latest drivers and there is a "Recovery Management" option that makes backing up and restoring data a little easier for less savvy users.
As we stated before, nobody is very fond of bloatware. Some more obtrusive apps can slow a system down and the number of popup notifications can quickly get irritating. In our testing we didn't see much of a performance hit, but there were more popup notifications than we would have liked with the Acer Swift 3. Cull out the cruft, if you need to.
