[ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu

[Hakan Koseoglu]

On 17 October 2011 07:32, Bob Giles <thecorfiot at 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?"