Acer 5920-6864 : Add your comments here

[gmcgee]

I'll try to take some pics when I upgrade the cpu and post a bit of a how to. probably in krazyphires upgrade sticky.

[Big Dan]

Hi Folks,

Well I got my mitts on this laptop yesterday. It's awesome and actually scores better than my brand new desktop on the Vista scoring. @GMCGEE I successfully ran the live CD and even recognized my wireless card, how cool is that!?! I cannot wait to install Ubuntu and dive right in. My only complaint is there's no restore discs and no way to make a set. I'm going to order the CD from Acer for $20, it's well worth it, this way I can play around with my partitions. Has anyone ordered these CDs? If so does it include Vista and all the drivers?

I do have one question the computer came with two partitions. One is C: and the other is D: and is labeled Data. Here's the strange thing the D: partition is empty. I'm confused because normally a partition like this is filled with restore files. I'd like to use this partition for Ubuntu. Is there any danger in wiping it out?

Thanks,
Dan

[Big Dan]

Guys contrary to my previous post there is a way to make restore discs.. Using Acer's eRecovery software, it walks your right though the process, mine took 2 DVDs.

I've had this laptop a little over a week and am quite impressed with it. It actually scores better than my new HP desktop on Vista's capability tests. It just works, I uninstalled most of the Acer branded stuff.

It's blazing fast compared to any other laptop I've used. I'd recommend this laptop to anyone.

Cheers,
Dan

[bigozone]

Big Dan,
there is also a hidden "RECOVERY" partition, it was 9 gig on my laptop.
after making the recovery DVDs/CDs you could delete that partition if you wanted/needed the extra space... but alot of people around here have had trouble using their restore disks (some people think the problems arise from deleting that hidden partition. so if you delete it you do so at your own risk.

i myself had to get rid of VISTA so i made the restore disks and then wiped my laptop and did a fresh install of XP-sp2 retail.

[Big Dan]

Thanks Ozone. Out of the box the machine has 3 partitions. Roughly half the drive is C:\ another partition is almost the same size called "Recovery" and a third parition of about 4 GB that appears to be a restore partition.

I figured out that the recovery partition holds compressed files that are backed up with Acer's recovery manager, and files encrypted with Acer's encryption app (I forget the name off hand).

I removed all of Acer's reinstalled stuff like the recovery and encryption software. Then deleted the recovery partition. So far I've had no issues.

Because I have no idea what the last partition actually does, I've left it alone.

My current partitioning scheme is:

• 60 GB Vista (ntfs)
• 50 GB Ubuntu (ext3)
• 6 GB Swap (for Ubuntu)
• 4 GB Acer's mystery partition

All in all it's a great computer and runs Vista well. I've decided not to downgrade to XP as I got burnt downgrading my desktop to XP where everything worked but the DVD burner. XP would read discs but not burn them and no drivers were available for XP. Unfortunetly it was an OEM verison of XP so I cannot move it to another computer.

I have a feeling we're fighting a loosing battle by downgrading to XP as soon or later MS is going to drop support for XP as it did with the 9x branch.

[bigozone]

i know what you mean about MS dropping support for XP.... i dread the day, i guess i'm gonna have to bite the bullet and go to some flavor of linux in the near future... i guess i could wipe out one of my slow desktops that i have running win98 and get myself reaquainted,, last time i was running linux the GUI versions were just comming out, so i'm sure things have changed a lot...

but this laptop will run XP pro for a few more years... i've got an older compaq presario 2700 that i may put Ubuntu on just for experimentation.

glad you hear you got those recovery disks made, hope you continue to have nothing but success and good luck in dealing with VISTA. MS will have to come pry my XP off my laptop, i'll never give it up willingly.

later,
bigozone

[Kaden213]

I recently bought an acer aspire 5920-6864 and I have been experiencing problems with viewing videos online. When I try to watch a video sometimes the video will play like a messed up dvd.

[Big Dan]

I recently bought an acer aspire 5920-6864 and I have been experiencing problems with viewing videos online. When I try to watch a video sometimes the video will play like a messed up dvd.

Hi Kaden,

I'm not expert but be sure to check your (Intel I assume) video driver is up to date. Also be sure the source is good, some YouTube videos look like garbage because they're poor quality in the first place then when YouTube transcodes them they often end up looking worse.

Hope it helps,
Dan