This isn’t going to be easy.

After 5 years of constant service to the Acer community, The Acer Guy has reached the end of the line.

This has been one of the hardest professional decisions of my life and one I have taken with consideration and a heavy heart but it’s the right one.

The simple fact is, despite having a community to die for, somewhere near 10 thousand pages indexed, 6,000 inlinks, 360 articles, 6,400 replies (an average of 18 for every article), 25 thousand registered forum members with 6,800 posts and close to 1 million unique visits per year, it hasn’t garnered enough support in certain key areas to be considered anything other than a private hobby.

In addition to the site itself, The Acer Guy also has an active presence on all major video, image, micro-blogging and social sharing sites with over 4,500 friends and more than 530 subscribers on The Acer Guy’s YouTube channel alone.

YouTube in particular was my favourite weapon for community building and dialogue, with “normal” videos clocking up an average of 100,000 views each, and some ranked #1 on Google for specific keywords (“How to recover an Acer Aspire One”).

And let’s not forget the most visited page of the site: the Contact Form. I receive something like 50-60 mails every day of the year from people with issues and, as Morris and Simone will testify, try my best to answer every single one.

These numbers aren’t bragging material – they’re proof that an active social media presence is a worthy project that brings together Marketing, PR, Customer Support, Human Resources and Acer customers under one roof.

Yet building a formidable reputation for authority and transparency requires some serious maintenance and I can no longer do this on my own. Trust me: it’s not a question of bottling out; it’s a question of principle.

Acer desperately needs an instrument like this but as long as The Acer Guy is up, there’s no real reason to develop something similar, so sacrificing it will, in some ways, help give their official social media communications agenda a much needed kick start.

So, in no particular order, except for the first two, I’d like to thank everyone who made a difference to The Acer Guy.

To Morris Lee and Simone, without you The Acer Guy would never have gained the first class reputation for service and advice it clearly deserves. Credit for that is yours alone and I am forever in your debt. I wish Simone in particular the very best of luck with his own new adventure – you have no idea how incredible being a father can be!

To Michelle Gonzales, Peter Senften, Jing Yeow, Eelke, Ferry Meidianto, Rich Black, Hugues Gontier, Emanuele Tosetti, Karsten Wenk, Federica Spotti, Vincenzo Grimaldi, Cristina Gualteri, Cristina Saita, John Cowan, Roberto Mainardi, and countless others, none of this would have been anywhere near as special had you guys not shown up and offered your undivided support. I believe I still owe Roberto a beer or two.

To Emily Penn and Pete Bethune, many thanks for simply doing what you do. You brought a social responsibility wake up call to the Acer community and I’m proud to have been able to put you guys in touch with the right people in Acer. I’ll do my best to make sure the bond lasts.

To Valentina from Risvegli. I am deeply sorry I never managed to get the causes section up and never fulfilled my dream of sending PCs to the orphans in Kimbondo. Please send my love to little Depardieu, and tell him he’s not forgotten – I just need to find another project to start on.

And of course my biggest thanks goes out to Gianpiero Morbello, without whose blessing this project would never have started in the first place.

One of my father’s most profound (and bizarre) pieces of advice was an Irish proverb: “If you die with a debt, you’ve made a profit”. Thanks to The Acer Guy, I have a debt of gratitude with all of you that makes me one of the richest people on earth.

Thanks Guys. Rock on.

Even though this laptop is titled with Aspire, it is actually the Aspire TimelineX series. The Timeline is a business end line with better portability, battery and features.

The battery is the biggest deal in this model. It comes with a 9 cell battery that extends out to the bottom of the laptop. While this may not be the perfectly traveling shape, it does offer a better keyboard angle

Most of the Timeline(older generation) and TimelineX only offers the intel graphics option. However, this model comes with both intel and a beefy ATi Radeon HD5650 packaged as “Hybrid graphics”. By using the intel, you get a solid 7-8 hours battery and pushable to 12 at extreme light use. The ATi does offer about 4 times more graphics power for gaming but it sucks away the battery like water for a 4-5 hours of light use and 2 hours in 3D intensive games.

Even a great battery life, it packs the following specs:

Intel Core i5 460M (2.53GHz up to 2.8GHz turbo)
ATi Mobility Radeon HD5650 1GB DDR3 (frequency: 550MHz core, 800MHz Memory)
4GB DDR3
640GB 5400RPM Western Digital drive
DVD Super Multi DL drive(no bluray)
Broadcom 802.11n (b/g/n support)
Bluetooth 3.0

The physical appearance is very clean and discreet. A solid black brushed aluminum finish with a pushed out textured and polished acer logo provides a professional feel. The profile is extremely thin(without the 9cell of course) under 1 inch. 5.4lbs with a 6 cell, and probably just under 6lbs with 9 cell still superior to my old 5920 6.6lbs!

the left side has a ventilation air exhaust followed by a VGA, HDMI, RJ45 Gigabit, USB 2.0, audio input, speaker headphone out that should be dubbed with S/PDIF aswell.

On the left front, there is a 4 in 1 multi card reader, the image above shows a after market MicroSD to SD adaptor so I can have one extra compatibility on the go.

The air intake right below the touchpad keeps it nice and cool even during a heavy use

On the right we have a power jack, DVD ROM without an eject button and 3 USB 2.0 ports, I would wish for a better location as if a heavy use of USB cables and devices, they will get in the way if you are using a mouse.

There is nothing at the back other than the huge 9 cell battery.

The screen is extremely bright, LED back lighting lits up the screen instantly without a warm up time like older generation of LCD does. The screen has a crisp 1366×768, an aspect ratio of 16:9 (I prefer 16:10 as it is closer to 1.618…) that makes the movie viewing experiences much more pleasant as no screen space is lost to black bars on HD contents. while the 768 pixel hight is not exactly enough for some taller apps or in some cases, 3D mark vantage benchmark.

The video card is a HD5650 that sits nicely at 550MHz/800MHz core/memory 3D profile clock speed, a little push to 700/1100 makes a jump from 7640 to 9499 where as the intel graphics only scores 1385 in 3D Mark 06 tests

The processor is a nice i5 that runs up to 2.8GHz, while it is not a 1.6GHz i7, most current applications can still take advantage of single thread at 2.8GHz if it is a single threaded application. While a multi threaded application can still the on 4 threads at both cores. This makes the CPU a great budget and a good performer

The 4GB DDR3 can be upgraded to 8GB max. Not the most packed but good enough for your Windows 7 64 bit and your office applications and the games that will run on the HD5650

Hard drive packed with this notebook is somewhat disappointing. 640GB is a great capacity but only a single partition on stock. where as most other acer laptops comes with 2 partitions instead. This drive makes a noisy and worrying clicking noise on typical use, no matter what stress the hard drive is under, it makes the clicks. A small help from QuietHDD app can fix this issue due to some AAM and APM settings on the hard drive itself.

The keyboard is a nice full keyboard with the new Acer’s keyboard design(water lily). Big room between keys to allow easy cleaning. The numeric keypad is what I have always been missing from my old 5920G. above the top right of the keyboard are 2 keys, one is a Acer power management only available when unplugged(providing extended battery use) and the other for DVD ROM ejecting as there are no buttons on the DVD ROM itself. The DVD will be powered down if the Acer power management is engaged and will be powered up again if the eject button is pressed once, and next press will then eject the drive.

While the speakers are not as “Home Theater” as it claims, it does provide a better virtual surroundsound effect over the older 5920G. without the Subwoofer, the quality of music is not exactly the most enjoyable clarity like the 5920G, maximum volume is not on par with it either. However, it is bearable for most situations.

Touchpad is a multi touch touchpad with 2 finger scrolling and pinch zoom, the bottom 2 keys are fused together. Pressing left will give you a left click, and right will result right click, might require some getting used to. For those big on touchpad, the default driver DOES disable the touchpad for a good second if any keyboard keys are pressed. This is to prevent accidental clicking with your palm. This is not an option unless you use other drivers that does not offer this feature, it can be rather frustrating if you rely on the touchpad most of the time. This will make you wait for the touchpad to become responsive all the time. (gaming with this driver is impossible with a touchpad)

The webcam is a 1.3MP camera (up to 1280×1024) but the framerate is not as good as the 5920G’s 0.3MP at the same 640X480 setting. Even at 640×480, it will appear choppy unless under an extremely well lit environment.

Pros:
+Great battery life
+Good performance for it’s size
+Light
+Nice looking external design and very sturdy build

Cons:
-Typical laptop speakers
-Higher screen resolution at least 1440×900
-Most ports are on the right side.
-Big battery

Overall: 8.5/10

Wow. I never thought we’d be geeking it out with the best of them but if you look closely at this video from G4-TV, you’ll see Acer notebooks and the all-in-one PC showing some wicked gaming action on display at the brick-and-mortar Wired store in New York.

The video description says: Head to the WIRED store in New York City if you’re looking for the coolest gadgets to buy, from a $4,000 toilet, sumo robots and more! That’s just what Diana Falzone did and luckily, she shared her adventures with us.

If you’re in New York and have the chance, drop by the store, take your picture next to the Acer AIO, post it on The Acer Guy Facebook page below and I’ll send you an Acer Lanyard I swiped from the PR dept…

TheAcerGuy | Promote Your Page Too

For those of you with better things to do with your time, I’m going to write a quick report on the Global Press Conference held yesterday in NY.

First thing to say is that it was a major event as far as Acer was concerned and it’s interesting to see that the journalists took us a bit more seriously than in the past.

At one point yesterday, the things being announced in NY by Acer occupied three of the leading articles on Engadget so all in all, we got decent coverage.

Special mention goes out to Ross Miller who, unbeknown to him, took over the live commentary when the Acer live stream went down (egg on face anyone?).

I wonder if any of the thousands of people who tried to connect to Acer’s official video stream decided to follow Mr Miller’s frequent updates? Oh well, sh** happens…

Oh, and if you missed the event – as I did – and really want to see what went down and when just click here and you’ll be whisked over to Mr Miller’s live blog page.

Just remember to scroll from the bottom of the page upwards…

So what did Acer unveil yesterday?

Here’s a quick checklist:

Clear.fi (new interface and release dates)
alive (digital content store)
Three tablets (4.8″, 7″ and 10″ Android and Windows versions)
Acer ICONIA (Touchbook)

Clear.fi is destined to replace what is now called Acer Arcade. It’s the digital media player of the future which not only gets a great new interface that’ll be on all Acer products including smartphones, but allows digital content to to shared seamlessly across connected devices. In essence, it creates a single media environment out of all the individual components connected to the same network.

There are – as ever – DRM restrictions at play here and this is designed NOT to allow illegal P2P sharing but it’s a pretty nifty system.

And yes, I did name it.

alive is the mega-baby I helped create (at least brand wise). I’m really rooting for this particular product and Roberto, Alberto and Jordi deserve full credit for their efforts here. How many air miles did you guys clock up putting this baby together?

alive isn’t another iTunes although they do overlap in more than one area. First of all, it’s a feed based system, meaning that Acer makes the platform directly available to content partners who then control what gets sent through it. This means that the contractual business models are a LOT easier to manage and gives the entire platform much broader scope to work with. The result is that you the user get a much bigger choice of media types.

Second, the recommendation engine at work here is a lot more refined than normal, meaning that out of the myriad of choices of different content, your recommendations get updated much more frequently over a broader scope of content. Still have to see it in operation but on paper it looks pretty damned slick.

And yes, I did name it.

The tablets are a mystery right now, if I’m perfectly honest. I’ve seen and held the 10″ Android model as well as the 4.8″ smartphone but have very little else to tell you other than the tablet is a LOT better looking than the iPad (my opinion of course) while the 4.8″, 21:9 smartphone is, well, enormous. I see the point and reasons for doing it, but personally wouldn’t want that log in my jeans pocket if you see what I mean…

And yes, I did name them, although the jury’s still deciding.

Finally, the ICONIA. This is one serious slice of ego-pampering. It’s very luxurious to use, a LOT less mechanical than the click clack of keyboards and touchpads we’re all used to and a completely novel interaction experience. I think they did an amazing job with the Acer Ring (not my name) and when you see it in action, you’ll think exactly the same thing too.

The ideal buyer for this is someone who wants a highly visual, touch-based desktop replacement. It’s certainly not the most practical ultraportable and I’m not sure how effective the virtual keyboard is outdoors but as an indoor media controller, it’s the real deal. Have to wait and see whether buyers agree.

And yes, I did name it – and the segment too (Touchbook). Wonder if that will catch on…?

Remember last year when we hooked up with Pete Bethune and the Earthrace (Ady Gil) boat that was cruelly sunk in the Antarctic?

Well that’s all thanks to Emily Penn who Acer helped out by sponsoring her with a first-edition Acer Aspire Timeline.

Just got this letter (and some photos) from her with a quick update I thought you’d appreciate hearing about. She’s currently in Rio winding down but is expected back in the UK from November to February if any radio broadcasters or journalists want to catch up with her…

Hi Michael,

Great to chat earlier today. It reminds me of the other world and that gap we need to bridge

A couple of shots of the trusty Acer attached here. One is of the Acer in the Navigation Station while performing a search pattern over Jaseur Seamount. I was plotting points on the boat GPS system, calling out bearing and distances on the radio and entering the data from the depth sounder into my Acer to create a 3D model of what were seeing beneath the surface. The second photo was at anchor in Rio this morning – me checking my email underneath the Christ Statue (my office for today – who knows where it will be tomorrow)!

To quickly summarise my action packed last few months… I’ve been working with Pangaea Explorations (www.panexplore.com) on the beautiful 72ft Global Challenge racing yacht, Sea Dragon. This boat was designed to sail around the world, against the trade winds. It is an absolute machine! It cuts through the waves and maintains a high speed even when crashing into the swell. The perfect vehicle for getting the scientists, journalists, film crews, technical divers and educators out there into the middle of the ocean, to do what they need to do, and bring it back to land.

Which is exactly what we just did.

In August we left Rio de Janeiro, amid the United Nations Safe Planet event, on a pioneering expedition to the South Atlantic Subtropical Gyre.

In the area of the ocean where the wind doesn’t blow, the currents are slow and sea is calm we discovered large amounts of plastic floating around on the surface of the water. We had found the South Atlantic Garbage Patch, that is number 4 of the 5 known Gyres (www.5gyres.org).

After 13 days trawling for samples we landed on the incredible Ascension Island – at 1300nm from the nearest land and only recently inhabited, this place is barely touched. The marine life is prolific, the terrain different each direction you look, the weather changes from hot and arid to cold and wet.

This place is like nowhere else on Earth.

After a quick stop in the filthy waterways of Recife we raced in the Refeno Regatta with 140 yachts to the tropical archipelago of Fernado de Noronha Marine Reserve. There we worked with Project Tamar on the feeding patterns of the green turtles along coastlines subject to tonnes of marine debris washed up each year. Further south we encountered hundreds of humpback whales enjoying their last few weeks of warm water breeding before heading south for the summer.

It was there, in Abrolhos, where we loaded the boat with helium, oxygen, specialised pumps, camera gear, underwater housings, dive tanks, compressors, computers, dry suits and a new team to explore and film the uncharted sea mounts of the South Atlantic.

Sea Dragon is soon to head to Cape Town for the next transect through the South Atlantic Gyre. The agenda for the next 18 months is non-stop from Africa, back to South America, round the cape into the South Pacific, island hopping to Hawaii, Alaska and beyond… Lots more to do, see, assess, solve.

This is one busy Acer…

Emily

This is a post that could worry the many Acer Guys I’ve had the pleasure of meeting over the past four and a bit years.

Don’t panic. I know what I’m doing… I think.

You may have noticed that I’ve been almost completely absent from the blog for the best part of a year, leaving this site and its free, real time feedback to problems, posts and other general queries about Acer products almost completely in the hands of a few dedicated members to whom I will be eternally grateful. You know who you are!

The reason for this is that I’ve been virtually (as opposed to officially) bumped up from Senior Copywriter to Creative Director for Strategic Projects which is a fancy way of saying I now have to do all the digging, planning, writing and presenting for all new shiny objects and projects coming out of Acer.

If it sounds like fun, it would be if we were a little better organized (and better paid!) but the fact is the strategic team is ever-so-slightly undermanned and struggling to keep up with the avalanche of new stuff.

Which brings me to The Acer Guy. Building this site has been the most fulfilling, hands-on workshop I have ever been involved in and I am seriously dedicated to securing its future, which I am not stupid enough to ignore may well require me to get out of the way.

I won’t take this decision alone though as there are many ways it could go and suggestions are more than welcome but with 1 million visitors per year, >20k forum members and a YouTube channel that’s off the charts (and unused), I risk being both creator and destroyer.

In a perfect world, Acer would take it off my hands, recognize the value of the participants and use it like you – yes You! – deserve, but as time passes that looks increasingly unlikely considering the complexity of what’s going down right now (although no matter how many fireworks web 3.0 and fancy, web-based widgets bring to the party, I still believe squarely in good old fashioned dialogue with customers).

Plan B of course is the most likely. I made it for the community so it rightfully belongs with the community so this is a open invite to all you who’ve worked so hard to get this site to where it is, to suggest how to take it further and make it the site Acer has so far refused to build.

TAG 3.0? You design it.

Michael

All in all I’d say yesterday was a great day.

The project I’m working on is absolutely huge and the “brand guidelines” – meaning naming, brand philosophy, colour choice and icon usage etc., is right at the very start because if you don’t know what you’re building, you’re going to get stuck very quickly.

Fortunately this part went very smoothly and everyone welcomed the choices made so at least they have something concrete to work on which shouldn’t be underestimated as I also got a first glimpse into the inner workings of the project development stages and it’s both frighteningly complex and fascinating at the same time.

The sad thing for me is that once this passes I’m out of the project until it goes public (if Acer decides to do any marketing with it) so I won’t get to see the team in London again which is a real shame as they’re a top flight agency and it was a privilege to work with them on this. If you’re reading this William, top marks for the group you put together!

Still, we’ve got a much bigger fish to fry starting Monday so it’s not as if work’s scarce round these parts… Brilliant.

I find myself sitting in a very quiet, yet highly productive office I cannot name in London.

I’m not actually part of anything going on here right now but I am part of the caravan trailing through this city today meeting a bunch of agencies and suppliers on possibly the most interesting project Acer has ever undertaken.

It’s a long way from my “bunker” in Milan and a million miles from where we (Acer) were only a few years ago.

But that’s the thing with this company. Senior management takes strategic decisions at the speed of light. It might take a couple of days to pin one of them down and get an approval out of them but when they’re available, they approve about twenty things at once.

Which is why I’m here today. I wasn’t supposed to be presenting this but I guess I just became the Creative Director of this project as I was the one gluing all the pieces together and – quite possibly – I’m the only one who can explain it and hand it over in the limited time we have this afternoon before the companies in London do their thing. The best part is that I’m presenting it to my counterparts from two of the top flight agencies in London so it’ll be interesting to see if they giggle behind my back

So yet again, I named something and – hopefully – it’ll be something that will blow you away for a long, long time rather than something that’ll get replaced next year.

I’ll keep you posted on how it played out today and it won’t be long before this baby sees the light of day so be patient. It’ll be worth it.

So I have showed you here how to simply upgrade your wireless card in the 5920G *IF* it is using 2 antennas like the original intel WiFi 3945ABG, what if you want to upgrade to say intel 4965AGN, intel 5300 or anything requires 3 antennas instead? Don’t worry, I got you covered here

However, you must be warned, this mod is slightly more challenging, as you will need to crack open more parts of the laptop.

——————————————————————
Here is my new chart of modification hardness (1-10):

1. Simplest, unscrew a few things involved, and simply put it back together again with a screw driver.

2. Simple, but requires some more effort for some parts of the modification such as more than just a screw driver is required.

3. Still simple, but can require more than a screw driver and may need some improvising tips I have provided.

4. Can be slightly challenging, requires all the above and specialty tools and materials.

5. Challenging, requiring all the above but for improvising tips and materials I have used may not be easy to come by, other possible materials or methods are up to your creativity.

6. Advanced, skilled hands on experiences required(my previous mods may provide the most applicable experiences).

7. Challenging advanced, semi-professional, has been following my modifications and have complete up to anything qualified as level 5 is preferred.

8. Advanced improviser, close-to professional that has done couple level 5′s and 6′s some sort of circuitry background is preferred.

9. Professional, fan of my mods and has been following all my mods, completion of from 75-90% of my modifications is strongly suggested.

10. Pro-Processioned, HARDCORE fan of my modifications and has done all or similar mods on different machines, access to multiple soldering tools or cutting and drilling tools is strongly suggested. **first with completion of this level with prove using pictures or videos may win prized on selected level 10 mods!!**

The above levels will be labeled in the title like: lvl(7/10)
——————————————————————

Without more babbling! Lets get our hands busy!

What you need:

Philips Screw driver shaped like this +
Old credit card or plastic card
Thick Double-sided tap (ones with foam in between the sticky sides)
Spare internal wireless antenna with the clip-on notch
A pair of sharp tweezers

First, we need to do some disassembling,

Remove the backplate and screws that are circled in red too.

With those screws removed, we can pop off the power button plate like so

After that is done, we need to crack open the screen’s frame, staring with the rubber tabs

Peel them off using a pair of sharp tweezers and put them on the waxxed surface like the ones stickers comes off from or you can make your own by rubbing wax on a piece of paper until even and smooth. This is to keep the tabs in the mint condition.

Here is a picture of mine all kept nicely on the waxed paper from the double sided tape

make sure all 4 rubber tabs and the 2 plastic tabs right by the lid latch like so:

Now, we need to pop it open using the plastic card from the edge of the lid (TRY not to break any clips inside)

Now, the laptop should look something like this(I have the spare antenna lying on the keyboard)

Now, we can install the antenna! we can insert the antenna in this hole:

If done right, you can pull it out from the bottom right beside where the fan is, it may take a few tries

Hopefully the length of the antenna is long enough so you can attach it to the card

Following the left original antenna and double sided tape, I stick it just above the original white one (try not to have the metals touching.)

Tuck it in!

Putting it back together is as simple as snapping the screen frame and the power button panel back on and screw all the screws back. Remember to put the rubber and plastic tabs back on the screws for the screen frame!

Morris Lee

Envy MacBooks with 2 finger easy scrolling on the touchpad? I have a gift for you all!

With this driver, you can have 2 finger scrolling, chiral motion scrolling, momentum, 3 finger flick, 3 finger launch. Best of all, it works well with the Launch Manager patch!

Box.net

you can see it in action in my video here:

Part 1:

Part 2: