Here’s an interesting test I’ve never seen done and had to have explained before I got it.

The video is called “HTC HD2 Vs Acer neoTouch – Coreplayer BENCHMARK” and reading the comments, it appears that “Both the devices are extremely fast in rendering videos. Acer is a little bit faster.”

So now you know…

Hi everybody,

This is just a quick post to let you know that over the next few days the site will be getting the promised updates and some tweaks to sort out some glitches that have surfaced.

The most noticeable of which is that the links from the Forum widget on the bottom right no longer work properly (thanks Ferry for bringing that up).

This is a bit late perhaps but I thought I’d ask you guys if there’s anything you’d like me to add to the site to make life easier and more helpful to the Acer community as a whole. I don’t have the budget to run a Ideastorm or My Starbucks Ideas kind of activity (yet) but consider it the next best thing.

Remember my involvement with the Earthrace initiative? Well first of all, here’s what Earthrace has become:

The reason I’m writing is that we’ve finally managed to start the bureaucratic ball rolling and are leaping through hoops of fire to try and get them some Acer Timeline notebooks in time for departure.

Getting Acer involved in this is no ordinary feat. The Acer Guy will always be a safety net for any involvement in this but you’ve got to admit this is one hell of politically charged mission: In Pete’s own words, “there will certainly be some risks involved and hopefully we will come back in one piece“. You can just imagine the looks on the faces of the suits in Acer when this proposal lands on their desk for approval later on today.

Second thoughts, no, you can’t. Not even close…

So we’re keeping our fingers crossed and I’ll certainly let you know what happens. If worse comes to worse, I’ll bring the launch date of the Causes section forward and we’ll raise the cash ourselves, right?

Aren’t you curious to see how this pans out?

Here’s the article from the 3News site on the latest chapter in this vessel’s fascinating story:

Once famous as the fastest powerboat to circumnavigate the globe, the Earthrace has been transformed into a marine conservation warrior.

Anti-whaling is a new line of work for skipper Pete Bethune and he knows lives could be lost.

“We’re not going down there to throw stink bombs, we’re going down there to disrupt Japanese whalers and there will certainly be some risks involved and hopefully we will come back in one piece,” says Bethune.

The strategies Earthrace will use to fight the whalers are being kept a secret, but the crew says it won’t be used as a confrontational vessel like the Steve Irwin, but as more of a secret weapon.

“It will make us a lot more flexible so the strategic options open quite a bit to have a second vessel there,” says Bill Watson of Sea Shepherd.

And while the boat isn’t harpoon-proof – it has been strengthened with half a tonne of Kevlar to protect it from ice.

The black paint on the boat is part carbon and makes the vessel virtually invisible to other ships radar systems – allowing the crew to ‘sneak’ up on the Japanese.

Use of the powerboat means for the first time the conservation group will be able to keep up with the harpoon hunters.

“They will find it very hard to shoot the whales in the first place and they’ll find it very hard to bring them in their vessels,” said Bethune.

Six volunteers will crew the mission to Antarctica, expecting seas up to 12 metres high as well the whalers’ fury.

Watson says they are determined this will be the first year the Japanese will see a financial loss from whaling in Antarctica.

“What we want to do is make as much as an economic dent as we can and if we can prevent them from taking any whales – that’s what we want to do”.

The Earthrace leaves for the battle zone in December.

That title wasn’t meant to scare you – but prepare you.

Acer have put together a specific page to deal with Acer owners wishing to upgrade to the latest Operating System from Microsoft. You can find it here:

Upgrade your Acer PC to Windows® 7

If you click on the link or picture above you’ll see that the page is divided into three, easy-to-follow steps:

1. Check to see if your PC is compatible with Windows 7.
2. Follow the Instructions for Upgrading Your Acer PC to Windows 7.
3. After You’ve Completed Your Upgrade, You’ll Need to Update Your Drivers.

There’s also a link to Microsoft’s Upgrade Advisor which “scans your PC for potential issues with your hardware, devices, and installed programs, and recommends what to do before you upgrade”.

Well worth checking out if you’re about to take the plunge.

OK guys, trust me.

This is the phone you’ve been waiting for. For those of you disappointed with the neoTouch, Acer is about to launch the perfect solution.

We went through dozens of names before senior management gave us the OK for Liquid which we all really like. If any of you are curious as to why it’s called Liquid well the idea is that the Android Donut operating system is so smooth to use, it’s like running your finger across a liquid surface…

Anyway, I’ll be writing much more for you guys about this product once I’ve got the marketing material approved for Acer.

Here’s what StuffTV thinks:

One of the features I enabled for The Acer Guy when I had the site redesigned was avatars in the comments — or little picture boxes to add a bit of personal flair to postings.

The default box is that blue inverted G you keep seeing, which can get a bit dull when the comments really light up. Since people have been asking how they can add their own pictures, I thought a little step-by-step would be handy. This whole process will take roughly 3 minutes — an eternity in the blogosphere I know – so I’ll understand if I continue to see a deluge of blue G’s in the comments.

Gravatar images

Step One: Sign Up With Gravatar

Painless! — and all they need is an email address. Gravatar is the universal avatar supplier for sites that tie in pictures with their comments. Simply go to their sign up page, drop in your email, and confirm that you truly are a real person. Then, just select a username, password, etc.

Step Two: Add The Email Address You Use With The Acer Guy

This step is important. If you did not already use the same email address you use when adding comments on The Acer Guy, add it to your account by clicking on “Add a new email” at the top of your Gravatar account. Otherwise, proceed to the final step!

Step Three: Add A Photo

Just like with Twitter, go ahead and upload the image you would like to use to represent you. You can crop once the image is uploaded.

That’s it — you’re done! In a few minutes, your avatar will show up next to any comment you’ve ever posted on The Acer Guy tied to that email address. If you post comments elsewhere using the same email address, and that site has avatars activated, a similar result will occur.

Good to see you!!!

Just came across this review of the all-new neoTouch S200 from the guys at PhoneArena.

Just saw the comments and the phone list with Steve Balmer, Bill Gates, Steve jobs and Megan Fox is pretty funny. Anyway, the review is the best one I’ve found so far (until The Acer Guy reviewers finally get off the ground) so you’ll just have to make do.

Also I’m curious as to why the reviewer says it doesn’t support Facebook (2′ 38″). As far as I know it does and it’s pre-installed. Has Acer’s Facebook API been disabled?

Introduction:
The most anticipated Microsoft Windows has arrived! Windows 7 will allow current machines perform better and faster than its predecessor – Vista ugh!!

Sure enough, like XP or Vista before it, people feared having to adapt to a new work environment, but really, the Windows family has been pretty much the same until now. Before you say “No!” to the new interface, the learning curve is pretty linear, in another words, easy to use.

Not just the user interface is easier than ever, Windows 7 also gives users more battery minutes than Vista or XP would. Here we have a screenshot of the task manager showing the number of tasks and the memory used on my lovely Aspire One

This is running on an A110 with a 2.5 inch HDD mod and 1.5GB RAM. The Aspire One performs surprisingly well with 7, so Microsoft’s claims that they designed 7 to run on netbooks too were true after all…
the Windows 7 index has moved from maximum of 5.9 to 7.9, of course, the Aspire One still can’t get to 5.9 anyways.

Features:
Windows 7 may have a smaller install weight, but the reasons are obvious. Features such as Windows Movie Maker have been left out (and no, webcam recording just like in Vista is also missing). To get these features, you have to install them through internet connection with “Windows Live” connection.

Performance:
Microsoft realized just how much Vista was such a resource hog (memory consuming) and finally took the effort to trim down memory usage by reducing the number of processes as can be seen in the task manager screenshot I have shown above (note, different machines may have a different number of processes depending on the driver or driver software required on the machine).

Windows 7 doesn’t just improve the real performance; by trimming down the number of processes running simultaneously, there is now a greater portion of the available speed for your applications and for laptop users that means better battery hours!

Usability:

Windows 7 included what is called “peek”. Back in Vista, when you have multiple pages of word documents opened, it shrinks them all into a small list on the task bar, in 7, we are now able to quickly peek at the selection when we mouse over the thumbnail with a touch of fading transition effect. This feature allows you to select the window you need more precisely.

Compatibility:
It has been advertised that Windows 7 will run any Windows Vista software. On selected CPU’s with Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) or AMD Virtualization (V) you can run applications in native “XP mode”. This is possible by sharing the hardware to a separate virtual machine but powered by original power with real XP drivers, this ensures full XP compatibility for any users that fear incompatibility for any older software that they still keep.

Remarks:
Windows 7 is definitely ready for consumer use, pricing is also slightly better than when Vista first hit the market.

Be sure to share your experiences!

OK I’m going to start the ball rolling here.

As many of you know, tomorrow 22nd October, Windows 7 goes on sale in its final public release version.

In one of the most recent product presentations (AIO), I remember the product manager saying that one of the biggest complaints about Vista was that it was so damned power hungry.

And that is supposed to be one of the biggest improvements of Windows 7 – the fact that it needs a fraction of the resources to run. I’m looking forward to seeing whether that’s true or not in the real world.

Acer, along with all the other PC vendors, has a Windows® 7 Upgrade Offer for customers who purchased a qualifying Windows Vista®-based PC from June 26, 2009 to January 31, 2010.

But extolling the virtues of this latest edition is not what I want to do here – what I want to hear is your opinions and stories.

I’m sure Morris and the other Experts will have something fascinating to write and things will eventually turn up in the forum but I wanted to give it a little more exposure, as it’s something that’s going to affect us all.

Let us know how you get on with the upgrade, whether you can see an improvement and, most important of all, whether you would recommend others take the plunge.

Today’s my birthday – big number, don’t ask – and I’m taking the day off to spend time with my family. It’s a tradition I picked up from an old acquaintance and try to maintain every year. It’s not always possible but this year it looks like I’m going to get away with it.

But just because I’m not going to work today doesn’t mean there aren’t a million things to do; nor does it mean that there aren’t some things that have been waiting for me to get around to doing.
This post is one of them.

In a short while, there will be two new sections up on this site – Reviews and Causes – and just because they’re not there, doesn’t mean we’re not doing anything in the background.

The Causes section is where I (we actually) get to place an Acer notebook in the most worthy causes and we already have one out there. It’s in the capable hands of Emily Penn, Operations Manager for Sustainable Coastlines. For those of you who don’t remember, this is how we met.

And here’s her first update:

Michael,

My notebook has finally made it to this tiny remote island! The sinking of the Princess Ashika Ferry last month and the tsunami last week put a lot of pressure on all freight to the Ha’apai Islands, not to mention major spanners in the works for our project… which we have been busy resolving! I have just installed my software – at last I can download and edit my photos (a selection attached) – and so the updates begin…

Firstly I’d like to share a bit of background information with you: to explain the situation in Ha’apai and the reason why I’m here…

The beautiful remote Ha’apai Islands are among the 169 islands that make up the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean… and are also the location of Sustainable Coastlines’ latest large scale cleanup event.

As is often an issue in many developing countries around the world, we see an influx of modernization into a society that does not yet have the systems in place to assimilate the side effects. Tongan culture is yet to adapt to the problems that arise out of food and water that is packaged in plastic. Only 30 years ago, Tongans led a completely sustainable lifestyle consuming fish, coconuts and root vegetables – the waste simply biodegraded naturally. Today, products imported from overseas have flooded the local market and the islands are now inundated with rubbish.

The low-lying Ha’apai Island group, unsuitable for landfill sites, currently has no waste disposal system whatsoever. Household waste is dumped or burnt in backyards (97%) causing serious harm to the health of local people and ecosystems. When surveying the island for the worst affected sites I witnessed the airport truck pull up and proceed to empty the bins emblazoned with ‘keep airport clean’ onto a pile on the beach.

From a western perspective, it is hard to comprehend that here in Ha’apai the concept of needing to dispose of man-made rubbish does not exist. Last week I saw a man mowing his lawn without picking up the plastic bags and crisp packets – little pieces of white plastic spat out the back of the rusty old lawn mower.

The ‘Keep Ha’apai Beautiful’ campaign aims to motivate and educate local people to help form a long term solution. This all kicks off with a massive community wide cleanup event on Thursday 15th October.
Overseas volunteers will team up with hordes of locals to pick up the rubbish on the two main islands – Lifuka and Foa. With the participation of over 1000 school children confirmed for the event it’s going to be a big day!

For more details visit www.sustainablecoastlines.com.

Cheers

Emily

–
Emily Penn | +676 8895025
Operations Manager
Ha’apai Coastal Cleanup Event October 2009
www.sustainablecoastlines.com

UPDATE JUST IN: The cleanup event was a MASSIVE success! An absolutely incredible week. More details are in the document attached. I’m going to be in Tonga for a few more months working with the schools and community (so lots more updates to come), then back to New Zealand to secure more funding etc to take the project to the next step. We are evolving everyday and I’m very excited by everything I am learning and what the future holds..
DOWNLOAD THE REPORT ON HOW THE DAY WENT HERE!