Wednesday 27 May 2009

The Results are in....


As mentioned in this post I asked the readers of the Acer One Users forums to recommend which Operating System I should install next.

The result that came back, shown in the graph above, was that I should try Windows XP, so this weekend I will try and install it and post here how it goes.

Tuesday 19 May 2009

Thinking of changing OS but which one?

In this post I described how I had installed Ubuntu on my AA1, but as mentioned here, I wasn't really happy with the speed of the OS.

So I'm on the verge of going back to Linpus but before I do I thought I would ask the users of the Acer One Users forums if they could recommend a different OS.

I've got a poll on the forum so I'll see what comes back.

Thursday 14 May 2009

How to install Itunes on the Acer Aspire One (running Ubuntu)

For a bit of fun I thought I would see if I could get Itunes to run using Wine.

Wine is available to install from the Synaptic Package Manager, and after it is installed it adds an extra tab to the menu on the left hand side of the screen.

I then downloaded the latest version of Itunes from the apple site, and unfortunately the install wouldn't complete, so I was about to give up.

However I manager to find an earlier version of Itunes for download so I thought I would give it a go, and it looks to work.

After Wine was installed, I downloaded Itunes verion 7.7 from here.
Wine then opened the install file and installed the application, and an Itunes icon was placed in the Wine Tab.


The application loads ok, I haven't yet played with any of the Wine configuration settings so there may be more work to do yet.

Sunday 10 May 2009

Ubuntu is slower then Linpus on the Acer Aspire One

I've been using Ubuntu for about a week now on my AA1 and here are my impressions so far.

The ubuntu interface is much better and easier to configure then the default Linpus Interface and tasks are generally much easy to perform.

However the AA1 performs better running Linpus, Sites like Youtube and Iplayer and significanlty slower to load and are jerkier when running on Ubuntu.

I'm looking into this but I'm tempted to move back to Linpus.

Sunday 3 May 2009

How to install Flash player on Ubuntu

In this post I described how I installed Ubuntu on my AA1.

One of the first problems I noticed was that BBC IPlayer and You Tube wouldn't play videos.
This is because Flash Player doesn't come installed as standard on Ubunto Netbook Remix edition.

The solution is quick and easy.
1) In the left hand Ubuntu Menu select Administration.

2) Select Synaptic Package Manager.
3) Enter you Admin password if required.

4) Type Flash in the quick search box.
5) Tick the flashplugin-installer addon.
6) Click Apply - Flash player will now install.

BBC Iplayer and YouTube now work fine. :-)

Installing Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire One.

In this post I mentioned that my Acer Aspire One had started a crashing loop. although the problem looked to have corrected itself I decided to re-install the operating system.

I've taken this opportunity to look at Ubuntu, to see how it matches up to the originally supplied Linpus.

To install Ubuntu I first installed the Netbook Remix edition to an auto booting USB stick using a Windows application. Following the instructions here. (Shown below)

  1. Download the desired .img file ( I downloaded the Netbook Remix edition from here)
  2. Download Disk Imager from https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download

  3. Insert your flash media
  4. Note the drive letter assigned to your flash media
  5. Start Disk Imager
  6. Select the downloaded file and target device, and click "Write"
  7. Remove your flash media when the operation is complete
I then booted from the USB to make sure that the system worked and used the Ubuntu install application.

The whole process went well, and my intial impressions of Ubuntu are favourable.

Saturday 2 May 2009

Acer Aspire One is working again.

Well how bizzare.

Despite a morning of constant crashing, I've just tried my AA1 8 hrs later, and it's worked first time without crashing.


Strange but good. ;-)

My AA1 has started crashing on boot.

Bad news: My Acer Aspire One has stopped loading sucessfully.

It gets to a point where it displays the desktop and then 5 seconds later it crashes.

So I'm going to rebuild it from scratch - I just need to decide which OS to use.

Unfortunatly I'm away from home until Tuesday so my AA1 will be out of action until then. :-(