The Laptop
Manufacturer: Acer
Model: Aspire 5570
CPU: Intel Core Duo T2450 @ 2.0GHz
RAM: 1GB
Hard drive capacity: 80GB
Screen: 13" Widescreen 1280x800
Hardware
CD/DVD read: Works.
CD/DVD write: Slow.. See below
LAN: Marvell 88E8038 PCI-E Fast Ethernet -- Works, see below
Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG -- Works, see below
Sound: Intel 82801G (ICH7 Family) HD Audio -- Works.
Video: Intel Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express -- X, glx, Yes.
USB: Yes, see below.
Firewire: not present
Media card reader: TI 5-in-1 -- Yes, see below.
Touchpad or other pointing device: Yes
Accelerator buttons (music, DVD, web, other): Never use them, Unknown.
Adaptive CPU speed: Works.
Sense battery level: Works.
Suspend (manual): Unknown -- see below.
Suspend (close lid): Unknown
Additional information
1. CDROM burning
The Default settings for burning yield a slow a Burning rate (0.50x < Rate < 1.15x ). I think this due to the cdrom appearing as /dev/hdc. It is a SATA drive. I'm looking at how to change this over to a scsi driver to increasing the speed. Will keep you informed.
2. Networking
One Minor thing that is a pain. The install I did, does not set the hostname in /etc/hosts, therefore if you try to ping your hostname, it fails. I added an entry for the hostname to the loopback interface line, and all is well.
2.1. Wireless
I finally got my Wireless networking up and running. To do this, I had to add ::
alias eth1 ipw3945
to my /etc/modprobe.conf file, and ensure that my NetworkManager was running. (I had turned it off some some unknown reason)
Connecting to unsecured wireless networks now works without issue. I don't have a secured network to test against, so I can't say anything in that regard.
3. USB / Media reader
Again, when I get at chance I will get this working properly for me. I use neither Gnome nor KDE. Concequently some of the automounting stuff doesn't work quite right. I'll look into this later.
FYI, I use fluxbox.
4. Suspend
I don't know if this works or not. As stated above, I use fluxbox, and as far as I know Gnome and KDE run daemons to do some of this magic. This also gets filed in the 'when I have time' category.
Comments
I like this little laptop. I purchased it about a year ago (currently Aug 2008) and have had no hardware issues. The Dualcore processor make developing very nice. When I want, I can watch a movie in one corner of the screen, and compile in a xterm window. Overall, Nice little laptop.