On 24/03/09 15:45, Sean Gibbins wrote: > Mark Elkins wrote: >> Sean >> >> Even though a staff discount is available is this Acer laptop the best you >> can buy to run Ubuntu? It might actually be a better to buy a Dell (or other >> make if you can get it) with Ubuntu pre-installed. >> >> The reason for this advice has been covered on the Dorset LUG before - >> basically that it can be very time consuming and close on impossible to get >> everything working - due to the complex components used in laptops as >> opposed to desktop pcs. For example internal wireless cards on laptops are a >> particular problem. >> >> Mark Elkins >> Chair and Treasurer >> OSSG >> > Hi Mark, > > That was a staff discount on top of a £100 price drop, which combined came to > approximately £140, plus Tesco Clubcard points (don't laugh - six of us have > traveled to Europe several times for free with those!) and the convenience of > being able to pick up a box and walk away with it. > > You were bang on regarding the wifi, but I have been doing battle with laptop > wifi cards for several years now and relish the challenge! Seriously, I made > some enquiries about the laptop prior to Ellie handing over cash to ensure > that there were no insurmountable issues, and having performed the Ubuntu > 64-bit installation last night I can happily report that everything she > currently uses is working, although I haven't tried suspend and hibernate > yet, and there is mention of a built-in Web cam that I have yet to physically > locate, let alone configure. There may be other exotic aspects lurking, but > we will tackle those if, as and when. > > So, to summarise, at this early point in its life it seems to be a decent bit > of kit for the price. >
Interesting parable (or something): my daughter was given a secondhand Acer laptop a couple of months ago. It had XP Home on it, but Wifi wasn't working. We did a fresh install from the XP rescue disks supplied with the machine, still no Wifi. So stuck Ubuntu 8.10 on it, Wifi (and everything else) worked straight away! Don't know whether it's a general Acer thing, but something to look out for is that on this particular laptop, the USB ports didn't work. The sockets didn't have the plastic central polarising tabs, which means USB plugs can (and had been) forced in the wrong way, destroying the contacts. I spent the best part of a day totally stripping the laptop down and replacing all the USB sockets, but USB was still dead on reassembly. Surprising, as USB is meant to be fully protected. Tim -- Dorset LUG: http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ irc://irc.blitzed.org:6667/dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2009-04-01 20:00
