AAron's Sales & Lease Rip off, dishonest, deceptive Columbus Nebraska

As a former GM of a Arron's store I know the contracts. Take your computer back and make sure you have all the parts (ie mouse keyboard ect.). Tell them you don't wont it any more. They will tell you you owe this and that and you signed a contract for "X" amont of months and so own. Don't let them scare you. Be nice and stand strong. Once they take the computer have them print out a copy of your lease (or have your copy with you) and have the GM sign by each of the products serial code. Have him or her sign at the bottom that all merch was returned on the date that you returned it. If they try to give you a hard time ask for the "Division Leagl Adviser" phone number. If they refuse to give it to you tell them you are going to contact your state Attorny Genearl. Rember this is a RENT TO OWN product. They can't make you pay for somthing you dont have no matter what they say.
If they have your credit card or banking infromation. Cancell cards and notify your bank because they will try to get the money. Rember you are in the right and the law will stand on your side but your are fighting a big company who handles thousands of issue just like yours and they have the money to hold up repaying any monies taken from you.

First to Atlanta: I feel I am bound to the contract I signed. It has a clause that says I must make like 5 payments, totalling around $705 worth or pay the $705 before I can back out of the contract. if I had saved the 2 payments I have made, and saved one more, I would have been able to buy a computer at Walmart.

But I was worried about paying all the bills I had to pay that I normally make online. Aaron's refuses to let me get another computer, even if it's a downgrade from what i have. If you are a lawyer, and still want to tell me that i am not legally bound to the contract, I would be thrilled to take it back.

Second to Lori of Michigan: The very first thing I do with a new computer is to activate the various protections, and update the antivirus & important programs. Not having problems with Vista, or am I? Windows Explorer really seems to be doing the most crashing. I am used to being able to shut a program before it fully loads, with no problems.

But with Vista, it seems I need to let the program load completely, or it will say it has stopped responding. Then it says it is checking for the problem, and tries to restart Explorer. As for disks, If I asked if it came with restore disks, and they said yes, shouldn't it come with disks?? If they told me "no", it would have been no problem.

I just didn't find out until after I signed the contract (like the Compaq mother board) and they actually delivered the laptop. Don't ask me why they delivered it, I just thought it was their policy. The machine is supposed to be brand new, it shouldn't have "issues", and I shouldn't have to fix or put any money into it yet (and I didn't mean that sarcastically). It has dual Pentium processors that are 1.60 GHz each and the ram is 502 mb (which is pretty low, in my opinion, for even XP).

I will dump all the "craplets", that's a good idea (thank you), but I don't know which programs I don't need on startup (yet). The laptop I got is an HP and as stated to Atlanta, as far as I can tell, I am legally bound to the purchase or at least the $705 (which will probably pay it off for Aaron's).

The full purchase price was around $1400, if I had purchased it outright. I am doing the payments and insurance for about $140 per month for 18 months.

I wish I had known to go with the AMD processor, sooner.

My friends son brought home a new computer from Aarons over Christmas time for me to check for him (I activate all the virus protections, spam programming etc for most of the kids). His has Vista on it, as well as all the craplets that are typically found on a new machine these days.

Start up time? Typically slow because of all the programs loading in the background. An article in the newspaper last night noted a reporters experience with his new lap top, with start up being an issue. His was three minutes on a cold start, 2 minutes on a restart.

This is affected by several factors, including the OS, RAM, and startup programming. You're pretty much stuck with the OS, unless you want to pay out the bling to go back to XP, but the RAM is most always upgradable (and in most computers, they roll off the line with the bare minimum they need), and your startup programming can be tweaked.

As for the installation disks, in an effort to save time and money, most manufacturers have now put the recovery information onto the hard drive (most usually if you pull up My Computer you'll see it listed as D:Recovery). You are the one responsible for backing up the information to CD or DVD (make sure that you have sufficient disks for this undertaking, as you only get to do this ONE time!).

It sounds like you have several issues with this machine, but it can be fixed with a little time and money. If you're running barebones RAM, it's going to crawwwwwwwwl, because Vista recommends at LEAST 1GB to run correctly. This requirement doesn't include any of the other programming that you may be trying to run. With all of our machines, we run double the recommended and we've never had a problem. Dump all of the craplets (programming intended to be a 'trial', advertising etc.), and shut down all of the programming that you don't need running at startup.

As the other poster pointed out, with Aarons, you are free to return the machine to them at anytime, without further obligation. There are several nationwide chains that have decent sales on laptops starting at about $550. and desktops around $400 (watch these one, quite often, monitor is NOT included).

As for Compaq, they are actually a pretty decent machine (look for one with an AMD processor, they tend to be more stable). I know of 20 computers between our family and friends, and roughly 55% are Compaq, with the rest an even distribution of other companies. Once properly setup, the Compaq requires less work than two other well known brands that used to have to be ordered (they are now available through large chains).

Good Luck, and let us know what you decided to do!

Well, Aaron's is a rent to own company. simply take it back! You are under NO obligation to keep it. If you must use a rent to own company, go to another one and see if you can get a better computer. If you are able to save around $400, go to WalMart and purchase a NEW computer.
You are not legally bound to the one you rented at Aaron's.