How to install Songbird on the Acer Aspire One

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How to view ebooks on the Acer Aspire One

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How to stream BBC Live Radio on the Acer Aspire One

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Videos of the classic PC game Wing Commander running on DosBox on the Acer Aspire One

The following video's show how well the classic PC game Wing Commander runs under DosBox on the Acer Aspire One.

Video One shows the game loading and the start of the games introduction.



Video Two shows the the fantastic mission briefing sequence.



Video three shows an in game battle, with enemy ships. At the end of the video I flip DosBox into window mode showing the linux desktop.

Classic PC gaming using DosBox on the Acer Aspire One

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How to access external drives on the Acer Aspire One

One of my original goals when getting the Acer Aspire One Netbook, was to be able to access my files on the SATA drive from my old broken laptop.

I've now achieved this, and this is how I did it:

1) I purchased a Plexus USB to IDE & SATA Adapter from ebuyer. (Click here for more info)


Inside the box there's a Power Adapter, data to USB convter , Power converter, and SATA data cable.


2) Into the SATA hard drive I plugged the Power Converter and SATA Data Cable. (Shown below)


3) I then connected the Power Adapter and Data to USB Converter. (Shown Below)


4) I plugged the usb cable into the Acer Aspire One.


5) The Acer Aspire One automatically detects both partitions on the drive and displays them as separate disks in the File Manager.
All the data is now accessible.

High Definition Video is currently a problem for the Acer Aspire One

I've been running a few tests with video playback quality using VLC player on my Acer Aspire One.

Normal broadcast quality video works really well using VLC player with a good quality frame rate and image quality.

However - High definition (720p) broadcast quality video suffers from a poor rame rate when watched on the Acer Aspire One with VLC player, the video is very jerky.

I'm not sure that this will be much of an issue for me as normal video does play really well.

It's just worth bearing in mind.

How to free up extra space on the Acer Aspire One.

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How to install Skype on the Acer Aspire One

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How to boot from a USB Flash Drive on the Acer Aspire One

There are 2 methods that you can use to boot from a USB Flash Drive on the Acer Aspire One,

Method 1:

• Press the F12 key as soon as the first black and white Acer screen is displayed, this will display the Boot Menu.
• Select the USB Flash drive.
• Press the Enter Key
  

Method 2:

• Press the F2 key as soon as the first black and white Acer screen is displayed, this will take you into the Bios menu.
  
• Press the right key to move into the Boot menu.
• Press the down key until the USB HDD option is highlighted.
• Press F5 to move the USB HDD option up a level.
• Highlight the USB HDD option and move it up using the F5 key.
• Repeat the above instruction until the USB HDD option is at Level 1.
  
• Now save and exit the setup tool.
  

From now on when you boot the Acer Aspire One, if the USB drive is connected it will boot from it, but it the USB drive isn't connected it will boot from the Internal HD Drive as normal.

How to install Ubuntu on to a USB Flash Drive

I'm curious to see how well the Acer Aspire One handles other operating systems, but I'm really happy with distribution of Linux which comes installed as standard, it's quick and easy to use.

So I thought that I would install Ubuntu onto a flashdrive.
Ubuntu is a popular version of Linux and my goal is to use it to develop my Linux knowledge and to try and get Slingplayer working on it.

Here are the steps I took to install Ubuntu onto a flash drive:
1) There is a usful utility called Unetbootin which will create a self booting USB drive and automatically install a Ubuntu distribution onto it. For this exercise I will be using the Windows version. It can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/unetbootin/

2) Next download a disk imageof Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download


3) Next run UNetbootin. Make sure the Diskimage button is selected, and select the ISO file that you downloaded.


And click on ok.
A booting version of Ubuntu is now installed on the USB drive.

Installing GIMP on the Acer Aspire One

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Video Quality on the Acer Aspire One through VLC Media Player

I had the opportunity to watch a film in AVI format this afternoon on my Acer Aspire One.
The film was stored on an external 500 GB USB Hard Drive, which I connected into my Acer and it was recognised and visible in the 'My Files' application almost immediately.

After navigating to the AVI file I was able to right click on it and choose to open it with VLC player.
The file streamed perfectly and the quality was outstanding, perfect frame rate and suberb picture quality - even in full screen mode.

I was very impressed - perfect for travel or solo watching.

How to install Lincity on the Acer Aspire One

Another one of my favourite games from my Childhood was SimCity, and there's a Linux clone called LinCity. The game is available from the add software in the system section of the Advanced menu, but there is one extra stage that you need to take before the game will run. ( I found this solution here )

After the game has finished installing open a terminal window (Press ALT and F2, make sure the input box is empty, make sure run in terminal is checked and then Click run) and type:
lincity-ng -S 1024x600 into the terminal window.

This will launch the game in the correct resolution and the game will save these settings automatically.
From now on the game will run fine from the games section on the advanced menu.

Watching BBC IPlayer on the Acer Aspire One and increasing system performance.

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How to install freeciv on the Acer Aspire One

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