Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

[michaelferrie]

Hi, its unlike me to post and I’m sorry if I have not followed correct procedure and/or posted in the correct place, here is what I have to say...........

I bought my girlfriend the aforementioned net book as a surprise Xmas present, with the intention of pre-installing kubuntu and sorting out all the updating, drivers etc etc and stuff you have to do to get it up and running.To my horror it has an Intel atom processor with a GMA500 chipset. I've used kubuntu since version 6 (draper drake i think) so I’m not a complete idiot (although some may disagree)

Unfortunately getting the video/webcam/microphone side of things up and running was problematic, I managed to fix the power monitor but after a re-start it didn’t work, spotify installed but sound didn’t work, Skype installed but sound didn’t work, flash videos were jumpy and could only be played with hardware acceleration disabled. The web cam couldn’t record and display videos at the same time.

The procedure probably improved my skills in working with kubuntu in the terminal but it was too problematic for her to open on Xmas day, sadly I have had to create an XP startup disk and do (IT).

I may dual boot for her but just in case anyone is thinking of getting one of these for kubuntu I'd give it a miss, I couldn’t give her it for Xmas an tell her that she will have to spend the next month in the terminal trying to iron out the creases

[GreyGeek]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

The Acer Aspire 751h has a notoriously slow CPU, which makes working with it an agony. It got a 2 out of 5 starts on CNET's reader rankings.

The bad: Slower version of the Intel Atom CPU makes even basic tasks annoyingly laggy.

Half of the rankings were 1 star. On that box Ubuntu is just as slow as Windows. If your Acer is running Win7 you may want upgrade your bios.

Here is the Ubuntu 10.04 support site for your Acer: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne/AO751h

If you are running VISTA you may want to downgrade to XP or upgrade to Win 7 Starter. Then try Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition (LTS - Long Term Support):
http://releases.ubuntu.com/lucid/ubu...tbook-i386.iso

Install with dual boot or by wubi.exe.


I purchased an Acer Aspire One A0521 for my wife from Amazon on Cyber Monday for $318. It did not include a DVD but I ordered an external USB RW DVD/CDROM from Amazon for $40 and it works beautifully on both her Acer and my Sony. The AA1 came with Windows 7 Starter preinstalled. I removed all the demoware, bloatware, McAfee and other crap and installed CCleaner and Microsoft's Security Essentials AV product, which is free and without nag ware. IMO, it is BETTER than AVG 2011, which has become expensive nag ware. I was impressed with Win 7's speed when I first began using it, but after a while the spinning wheel began to show up more and more, and even the simple things seemed to take forever to do. Sending an email ... downloading email, changing a web page, saving a file, reading a file. Reboot and the speed comes back for a while. Win 7 does something well which neither Kubuntu nor Ubuntu seems able to do, automatically configure and connect to my HDTV via an HDMI cable and show Hulu movies on the TV seamlessly.

I first tried Kubuntu 10.10 on it but both the netbook search & find and the desktop settings were too slow. However, the 1.7 GHz CPU seemed fast enough but it was running with only 1GB of RAM. I removed Kubuntu. The 2GB upgrade RAM chip I ordered came and I installed it. I then installed Ubuntu's Net book Edition (Unity One). I have a 12MB/sec uncapped bandwidth with 1.8Mb/sec download speed and I could have used wubi.exe with torrent internet install but only 10.10 was offered and I wanted LTS.

I downloaded the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Netbook edition and used it to burn a LiveUSB stick. However, the Acer wouldn't boot from the stick. Don't know why. I burned a LiveCD but Acer wouldn't boot from it, either, so I couldn't test the LiveCD. So, I created a DVD data disk and copied the iso onto it, along with the wubi.exe from the 10.04 LiveUSB stick, which I could mount. With both the iso and the wubi.exe in the Acer's download directory I started wubi.exe as Administrator, entered the GB install space I wanted, the account name and password, and it immediately began to load Ubuntu. About 30 or 40 seconds later I was asked to reboot. I did, and selected "Ubuntu". The installation continued, automatically picked up my wifi AP & password ( ), and began downloading 182 updates. When it completed I was asked to reboot again. When Ubuntu came up the second time I was greeted with a very fast and functional DE. It was a little different from what I was used to, but it didn't take long to figure it out. The whole approach is to maximize the screen real estate for the central part of the app. I could easily use the Acer for my personal computer, and will probably do something like that when this Sony decides its had enough and goes belly up.
I find it interesting that running Ubuntu NE from a file on the NTFS is just as fast as Win7 from the HD, if not faster. It seems that the Ubuntu file on the NTFS is mounted as an ISO loopback device and Ubuntu is NOT running under Win7 nor is Win7 controlling Ubuntu's access to the hardware. Ubuntu has direct hardware connections, which gives it complete control of the hardware, allowing Ubuntu to use its famous Linux security to keep your netbook safe.

It is probably the extra RAM, but Ubuntu is really fast! In fact, I can start this Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E dual core 1.6 GHz CPU with 3GB RAM before I boot the A0521 and the Acer will show the desktop before Kubuntu 10.04 appears on this notebook.

I installed Skype but noticed the sound didn't work. The solution is to install padevchooser. Then open the Volume Control, choose the "Input Device" tab, and on the Analog Device (not the HDMI) unlock the Front Left and Front Right bars, and click the "set fallback" button. Then, slide the Front Right bar to 0% and the Front Left bar at around 50% or so, depending on what volume you want in Skype. In Skype UNCHECK the box which lets Skype control the volume. When you want to use Skype open the Volume Control FIRST, then fire up Skype. If you do it the other way around the mic won't work in Skype. Skype on the AA1 A0521 works very well. If you still can't get the mic to work then open a console and issue sudo alsamixer
You will see TWO mic sliders. The second one will be muted "MM". Arrow to it and hit the space bar. "MM" will be replaced with "00". Use the up arrow key to run the slider to the top of the white section. Hit ESC to close alsamixer. Then recheck the Pulseaudio volume control to make sure its settings have not changed.

YouTube and Hulu videos and movies stream smoothly with no buffer hesitations running either Win7 or Ubuntu NE. Taking pics and recording videos with Cheese worked well, and the 2GB of RAM probably didn't hurt.

AA1 with Win 7 Starter is advertized to deliver 5.5 hours of battery time. My experience is closer to 4.5-5.0 hours IF no video is played. By comparison, the battery life with Ubuntu Net Edition is around 3.5 hours. The difference, I believe, is in the way Win7 Starter throttles down the CPU when the system is idle for any length of time. The AA1 also has a 250GB HD, and Win7 may be turning off the HD when it is not being used. I sense that with Ubuntu the HD is running all the time and the CPU is going at full GHz. But, even with Ubuntu the AA1 gives almost two more battery hours than this Sony gives.

[dibl]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

Acer are famous mainly for "cheap" -- it's too bad they chose such a slow CPU. My Toshiba NB205 netbook has a 1.66GHz Atom N280 CPU that just flies with Debian Linux / KDE 4.5. It's all about the clock speed.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

My wife's Acer Aspire One A0521 has a 1.7GHz AMD Athlon II Neo K125 CPU. Using the 32bit Ubuntu Netbook Edition her Acer is one fast puppy. With 2GB of RAM it is just about as fast as this dual core 1.6 GHz CPUs with 3GB of RAM. On it everything seems solid and well built. But, time will tell. We'll see how well it was made by seeing how well it will hold up after 6 months.

[michaelferrie]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

@GreyGeek
I'm aware of the help page you speak of (Here is the Ubuntu 10.04 support site for your Acer: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne/AO751h)

just spent a week looking at it, I’ll know to avoid the Intel atom + gma500 in future.

I don't know how you all feel about this but I bought this laptop because it had an "intel" processor, I do feel kind of let down by them. My P4 desktop runs like a dream with an nvidia graphics card and only 1GB of ram, my laptop has the core2duo and so I though the atom would be a natural progression. ............. how wrong I was.

A nice 'legal' copy of XP pro on the netbook now and it seems to be coping better, will just have to deal with the viruses and the gradually reducing performance.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

.....
I don't know how you all feel about this but I bought this laptop because it had an "intel" processor, I do feel kind of let down by them. My P4 desktop runs like a dream with an nvidia graphics card and only 1GB of ram, my laptop has the core2duo and so I though the atom would be a natural progression. ............. how wrong I was.

IMO you were ripped off. Is there any way you can return it and get a better model, like the AA1-A0521?

A nice 'legal' copy of XP pro on the netbook now and it seems to be coping better, will just have to deal with the viruses and the gradually reducing performance.

XP is, IMO, still the best OS Microsoft put out. Download the latest CCleaner and install it. Run it before you shut down, without fail . Download and install Microsoft Security Essentials. It contains NO nagware and is free. It is rated very highly and Microsoft will automatically keep its vaccine file updated automatically. It scans quickly or everything, checks downloads, email & attachments, and web pages your browser hits. Microsoft is long over due with this tool.

Oh, BTW, use Internet Explorer to download FireFox and then remove IE icons from the tool bar and desktop and never use it. Make FF the default browser.

[ardvark71]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

Oh, BTW, use Internet Explorer to download FireFox and then remove IE icons from the tool bar and desktop and never use it. Make FF the default browser.

Hi GreyGeek...

There are a few sites out there that require IE to view or use their content, I would advise keeping the IE icons around should this ever come up after upgrading it to version 8.

Regards...

[GreyGeek]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

I don't visit sites that require IE and don't work with agent spoofing, and have been doing fine on the Internet for the last 12 years without it. . Those that do require IE usually (actually) require a Windows only plugin, or some exe or some ActiveX program that exposes its methods and properties to IE.

[michaelferrie]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

Hi all,
@Greygeek

I couldn't return it, its a xmas present for my girlfriend, after fooling around with XP (usb flash install and via a usb cdrom drive) for a while i remembered why I don't use windows if i don't have to and thought it best not to inflict its troubles on my girlfriend

i tried mandriva, had a few issues with that, I couldn't get the video drivers working (although the OS looked good)

have now installed Jolicloud, very happy with it, it seemed a bit overly simplistic at 1st but at least the video works out of the box and she wont have to spend a part of her time looking at a stupid yellow shield that constantly needs an update. actually like it so much i'm going to get myself a netbook its great having you music and the net all round the house.

so now my question is......................................??

if i buy a netbook for myself and want to install the latest kubuntu and have all effects and other fancy stuff working , what netbook should I buy ( i want to have virtual box/webcam/skype/microphone/compiz etc etc etc................

@Ardvark - the only site i've stumbled on recently that has required IE was the Microsoft update portal (-: I wanted an update of something or some tool from them and they were all like IE IE must IE

[GreyGeek]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

Well, I can speak only to my experience with my wife's Acer Aspire One A0521-3782. It works GREAT with Kubuntu 10.04, with two exception: 1) when I connect an HDMI cable to it from my HD TV the video goes black and locks up. I haven't investigated why that happens so I don't know if the fix is easy, or even possible, and 2) plugging headphones into the phone jack does not cut off sound to the PC speakers, so I hear sound from both. Other than that, Skype, video, audio, flash, etc. all work great!

Most significant, this Acer usies a 1.7GHz CPU, not the "Atom" snail, and the HD is 250GB, not the small HDDs that come with some netbooks. I purchased a $40 USB DVD/CDROW (RW for both) which works great, too. This little Acer really surprised me. My wife says she is going to get me a necklace for christmas!

[ardvark71]

Re: Acer Aspire 751h (Intel GMA 500)

@Ardvark - the only site i've stumbled on recently that has required IE was the Microsoft update portal (-: I wanted an update of something or some tool from them and they were all like IE IE must IE

Hi...

The example I thought of when I wrote that is the survey site that I belong to. Until recently, they required IE to be used in order to take their surveys. I tried using IEs4Linux but that didn't help, the exact reason I can't remember.

Regards...