Originally posted by: chuckey
Originally posted by: Nab
Originally posted by: KnightFall
Originally posted by: Nab
Does Aspire come with a lot of extra stuff like the Dell laptops do? I hear its better to reformat and clean install for Dell, should I do the same for this laptop?
Off course every company install lots of crappy programs...
Its always better to format and clean install the winXP
After I do that, is it going to be hard to get drivers or reinstall any of the acer stuff? I'm not familiar with laptops, as this will be my first purchase. I read earlier in this thread that all the drivers are available on their website, is it as easy as download and double click?
You need to grab the drivers from Acer's PanAm or European site.
I picked up one of these puppies and its working great for me. I'm getting about 2.5 hours of battery life (75% web surfing, 20% perl programming and compiles, 5% guild wars )
Now I got sick of the pc being filled with the standard acer crap (i had a hellulva time getting stuff off the missus' ferrari 3400), so I went ahead and did a clean install of XP Pro.
NOTE: This is for the Compusa version, I believe the european version comes with a tv tuner and remote.
Pre-install:
--D/L'ed all of the drivers onto D:\temp and extracted them. It took about an hour for me to grab every single one of the drivers.
Panam Site (you must enter in Aspire 5670 and hit submit):
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/...rPanAm.com&pupv=pu&formid=3394#results
European Site:
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_5670.html
--Formated the HD to NTFS using the windows cd. This was a big deal for me, FAT32 is great and fast for smaller sized HD's, but with a 50gig partition full of music and video, NTFS is the king. I did a clean format of C: with the SLOW format of NTFS (its executes chkdsk which is decent for finding and HD weaknesses)
Install Process:
--Installed windows xp pro onto C:
--Enabled IR
--Installed the following drivers:
1. Intel Chipset
2. ATI VGA Driver
3. Intel wireless (I got this from the Acer European site)
4. Conexant Audio drivers
5. Conexant Modem drivers
6. Broadcom 5789E LAN drivers
7. Bluetooth drivers (I got this from the Acer PanAm site)
8. CCD Drivers (webcam)
9. FIR (Fast IR, the CIR is for the remote which we don't have )
10. Touchpad drivers
11. 6in1 Card Reader
12. Acer ePower mgmt (VERY IMPORTANT, this puppy is much better than the default windows power mgmt).
13. Acer Launch manager (For the quick launch buttons in the top right hand corners and media buttons on the left side)
--Installed the following OPTIONAL software
1. Acer Empowering Framework (necessary for everything below)
2. Acer ePresentation (easy to use tool for setting up on projectors)
3. Acer GridVista (multi-screen utility)
4. Acer eSettings
Post-install:
--Firefox
You will lose the *nifty :roll:* acer screensaver that uses the webcam.
Hope this helps out! I love my acer lappy, but I do wish it came with a better case colors (I miss the glossy red finish on the ferrari 3400). It runs smoothy and the X1400 video card is about the equiv of the old ATI9700 mobility.
You can't beat it for 1300 bucks after rebates, with a free printer and router and $100 food coupon!