[ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu
Hi Listers! Having successfully converted my wife to Ubuntu Linux the time has come to replace her ageing laptop. I have seen an advert from Dabs offering an Acer 5742 I5 laptop for £399 inc VAT. (http://goo.gl/zcPyN) This appears to fit the bill but I have a couple of concerns. I am happy to remove the installed Windows 7 and replace it with Ubuntu but was wondering whether anyone here has any experience of this model running under Ubuntu. My main concerns are around compatibility of the wireless NIC and graphics. The wireless NIC purports to be Acer InviLink Nplify and the graphics are Intel HD Graphics Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0. Does anyone have any experience of either this machine or perhaps more importantly the compatibility of these components. Any observations would be welcome as I am due to travel to the UK at the week end and was considering making the purchase. The selection here in Greece is both limited and expensive! Thanks for your time. Bob Giles -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu
On 17 October 2011 07:32, Bob Giles thecorf...@gmail.com wrote: Having successfully converted my wife to Ubuntu Linux the time has come to replace her ageing laptop. I have seen an advert from Dabs offering an Acer 5742 I5 laptop for £399 inc VAT. (http://goo.gl/zcPyN) This appears to fit the bill but I have a couple of concerns. I got a similar one (Acer Aspire 5742 Laptop, Core i3 380M) for my mother a couple of months ago and everything appeared to work with Kubuntu 11.04. A couple of people asked if it worked with dual screen and I couldn't test it because it was already off my desk. Now I have managed to test it with a 2nd screen and can report that it works fine (both the VGA and LVDS are 768 pixels high and at 60Hz and I haven't seen any flickering or artifacts, it might be an issue with some other configuration). Their ADSL is pretty ropey and I'm only with them for a couple of days so I'm going to delay the 11.10 upgrade for a while in case there are issues. I managed to leave my Kubuntu installation, any blanks Knoppix CDs at home so if it goes wrong, the laptop will become unusable until I visit next time so better not to risk it. As a result your mileage might vary with 11.10. She's been quite happy with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for a while on an older Tosh, this was supposed to replace that one. Unfortunately I didn't want to inflict the bug called Unity to her so I went with Kubuntu. It's been some time since she used something else than the Gnome 2 interface so as a result so far all I heard is complaints! On the other hand, she's getting used to it. For a 70+ year old, that's some progress! Now if only I could convince my father to pick up the news from the internet, not the newspapers! Tried it this week and failed so far. Apparently the newspapers are cheap enough for to be bothered with the keyboard and a mouse. -- Hakan (m1fcj) - http://www.hititgunesi.org What part of 'ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn' don't you understand? -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu
On 17/10/11 10:24, Hakan Koseoglu wrote: On 17 October 2011 07:32, Bob Gilesthecorf...@gmail.com wrote: Having successfully converted my wife to Ubuntu Linux the time has come to replace her ageing laptop. I have seen an advert from Dabs offering an Acer 5742 I5 laptop for £399 inc VAT. (http://goo.gl/zcPyN) This appears to fit the bill but I have a couple of concerns. I got a similar one (Acer Aspire 5742 Laptop, Core i3 380M) for my mother a couple of months ago and everything appeared to work with Kubuntu 11.04. A couple of people asked if it worked with dual screen and I couldn't test it because it was already off my desk. Now I have managed to test it with a 2nd screen and can report that it works fine (both the VGA and LVDS are 768 pixels high and at 60Hz and I haven't seen any flickering or artifacts, it might be an issue with some other configuration). Their ADSL is pretty ropey and I'm only with them for a couple of days so I'm going to delay the 11.10 upgrade for a while in case there are issues. I managed to leave my Kubuntu installation, any blanks Knoppix CDs at home so if it goes wrong, the laptop will become unusable until I visit next time so better not to risk it. As a result your mileage might vary with 11.10. She's been quite happy with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for a while on an older Tosh, this was supposed to replace that one. Unfortunately I didn't want to inflict the bug called Unity to her so I went with Kubuntu. It's been some time since she used something else than the Gnome 2 interface so as a result so far all I heard is complaints! On the other hand, she's getting used to it. For a 70+ year old, that's some progress! Now if only I could convince my father to pick up the news from the internet, not the newspapers! Tried it this week and failed so far. Apparently the newspapers are cheap enough for to be bothered with the keyboard and a mouse. Hakan, Thank you for your speedy, lengthy and encouraging response! I am seriously tempted to put the order in now! Interestingly, There was a similar model for sale locally a couple of months back that was running a flavour of Linux but it came with a Greek / US keyboard which we passed on. I can't recall the model but I do know that it was not available in the UK market. It seems that it was aimed at the Eastern Europeans. Strange! (The marketing, not Eastern Europeans!) I was drawn to this machine by both the pricing and the fact that I have one of the earlier Acer Aspire Ones that I have been running Ubuntu on since its purchase. Having just installed 11.10 and Gnome 3 plus some serious tweaking, it seems quite sound but then it's early days. I tend to use this machine as something of a test bed. If it works on that ... I have to confess that Unity drove me to LinuxMint on my desktop but am considering returning to the fold! Thanks again for your experiences. Bob Giles -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
