I misread the deal I posted - I thought it was $500, but it's really $500 off... I thought it was too good to be true, since I just bought that laptop a couple of months ago myself for more than $500
If you're looking for performance and want to play games though, the HP rocks. The Acer has a MUCH worse processor (dual-core vs quad-core i7), a slower harddrive (5400RPM vs 7200RPM), a smaller monitor, less resolutino (1920x1080 vs 1600x900), etc.
But it's twice the price, so probably not what he was looking for. Sorry about that.