Acer Travelmate Drops Power

Okay, this is my first problem with this Acer laptop. I am not sure when I bought it, but I would say it is at least  4 years old, maybe a year or two older.

Needless to say this is a most anoying problem, and it is so annoying I have switched to my Acer 5100 laptop running Windows 7 for the time being. Annoying I say, so I posted my issue at annoyances.org:


"You posted the following message to the Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum:
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/1305889163

My Acer Travelmate 4220 laptop lately has started doing something most annoying.
It simply loses power and goes silent. I can't even restart it by powering on - the
power button is not functioning. It will start up after a rest period - not sure
how long it needs.

I just thought I'd ask for a few quick responses to this as to what might be the
cause. It's about 4 years old. I'm guessing it's an overheating problem, but not
sure. When I say "drops power", I mean instantaneously. I could be in the middle
of typing something or could be out of the room. It's unpredictable.

When I do power it back on, my wireless switch has been turned off and I have to
turn it on again every time this happens.

Needless to say I can not rely on this machine.

Thoughts?

Thank you,

Tom"