[ubuntu-uk] Acer 5742 laptop compatibility with Ubuntu

[Bob Giles]

On 17/10/11 10:24, Hakan Koseoglu wrote:
> 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,

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
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