Is my new Acer netbook broke?

I have the one - the touchpad is fairly poor. If you’re not used to touchpads in general I could see it being a struggle. Having the buttons at the side, rather than underneath, makes things more difficult - and it does manifest some odd pointing behaviour.

That being said - you get used to its design and I use it with no real problems. There is one persistent issue of a swirl shape appearing now and again as a pointer - I think it may have something to do with a mousewheel function, and I’ve not worked out how to sort it out.