The Acer Guy

Over the past year and a half, I have been on the receiving end of literally thousands of technical questions.

Believe it or not, I am not a technical guy. No I’m not kidding. I LOVE technology, but it doesn’t take much for it to leave me literally clueless. But Simone is, fortunately, and that means we are running an almost 100% success rate with everything you throw at us. I’m lucky to have him on board.

One of the things I have always wanted to do was a “DO THIS FIRST” guide. A sort of quick start checklist designed to make sure you’re never left with a dead machine.

I mentioned it to Simone and he was pretty enthusiastic too.

The result of that 5-minute chat over coffee was this intelligent list of things to do the moment you get your Acer out of the box.

This is a community. We’re here to share our experiences so if there’s something missing, please mention it in the comments. With a bit of luck, and with your help this guide could save thousands of pounds/dollars/euros in unnecessary repair bills…

So, without further ado, let’s start the ball rolling with a couple of things you need to do right now in order to make your Acer experience as smooth as possible:

1. Burn the Acer Factory backup onto a blank CD/DVD.

2. Install and Run an Antivirus program before you do anything else! – If you don’t have one yet, check out Norton Internet Security 2008.

3. Run Windows / Microsoft updates for both Windows and Office (Microsoft Update automatically downloads and installs updates for all Microsoft products on your computer). If you don’t have Office 2007 or if you don’t want it, first remove it and install the Office Productivity application you prefer and update with hotfix if available

4. Get to know the Acer eRecovery suite.

Of all the hundreds and thousands of Acer notebooks sold worldwide, I reckon somewhere around 99% do not use this life-saving software feature, and it’s built right into the computer!

What eRecovery does is to manage your software configuration, drivers and applications so that should something go wrong you can return your computer or single driver or single application to its original state in a couple of steps WITHOUT having to deal with Acer support.

So how does it work?

eRecovery restores the original content of your C: partition to the original Acer preload system with applications. You then have the option of burning this “Personal Backup” onto DVDs and use this to recover your machine instead of the Factory backup (which stores only the original Acer content).

With a Personal Backup, the eRecovery engine saves the content of your C: partition (for example Vista + Programs + all other content in this partition) into “hidden” files on D:
The advantage of eRecovery is that you can re-do your Personal Backup as many times as you like with any configuration, so that as you install more software, you can keep your “restore software” updated as well.

WORD OF WARNING NUMBER 1
Every time you run this personal backup and save a new configuration, you overwrite the previous one. This means that the only way to store different backup versions is to burn them on DVDs each time you run eRecovery.

This way you can have different DVDs with different versions of Personal Backups and you can choose what to restore when you have to use it.

WORD OF WARNING NUMBER 2
Of course the basic engine NEEDS to be the same, so this works ONLY if you have your original Acer preload working fine. eRecovery does not work if you delete / format the machine first!

WORD OF WARNING NUMBER 3
eRecovery Personal Backup and eRecovery in general works only with content on the C: partition!

When Acer eRecovery restores the factory backup (default Acer preload) it re-writes ONLY the C: partition, all files on the D: partition are NOT touched in any way

When eRecovery runs the Personal backup it saves ONLY files on the C: partition, not on D: !!!
So if you have your Company backup file somewhere in D: this WILL BE NOT SAVED in the “Personal Backup”

WORD OF WARNING NUMBER 4
Nothing from the D: partition is saved with eRecovery but DO NOT SAVE EVERYTHING ONTO C: just to make sure that eRecovery Personal backup will save everything during the backup process. For personal files you should use another backup system.

Remember that the Acer Default Factory backup will generally require 1 or 2 DVDs, depending if Office 2007 is installed or not, so if you add more software you need more space to create the backup (on the D: partition) and more time to burn into many DVDs !!

It’s a vicious circle. The more you add on C: the more space you need on D: and the more DVDs you need to backup and the more time you need to restore everything…

The best way to do it is to separate your Operating System (Vista + programs) from your files. The Operating system and programs are on C: and are used to determine the back-up point with eRecovery. Your files can be stored on D: and backed up separately onto DVDs.

This way should you need to fully restore your computer you can use the eRecovery Personal Backup first (two DVDs = quick process), then restore all your files from another storage solution.

Got any more? Feel free to add your own and if they’re good enough, I’ll put them on the list.

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It has been mentioned more than a few times that 80% of the components of competing PCs are all the same.

Think about it: LCD screens, processors, hard disks, graphics cards (and dare I say it, batteries)… they’re all shipped in from one manufacturer or another and assembled in various combinations to offer optimum solutions at specific price points.

So what’s the difference?

The difference lies in the remaining 20%. That’s the part that contains all the added-value of one brand over the next. Sure, this part contains things like warranties and after-sales support, but even there companies compete on more or less the same level.

The one thing I have always liked about Acer is, quite simply, what you don’t see. If you take a closer look at the spec sheets, the number of “AcerXYZ technologies” is really quite something. You’ve got Acer SignalUp technology that conceals an extra-sensitive PIFA antenna on top of the LCD screens where they enjoy maximum signal strength as well as Acer InviLink™ Nplify™ wireless technology as featured on the latest Ferrari notebooks. That’ll explain why all the Acer notebooks I’ve owned always seemed to suck a wireless signal out of nowhere.

Then, on some notebooks, you’ve got the massive Acer Video Conference package that includes a 1.3 Megapixel Acer Orbicam™ that in turn features Acer VisageON™ technology (a face tracking feature that keeps your face in the centre of the screen), and Acer PrimaLite™ technology that automatically adjusts the colour and definition for clearer pictures the really clever Acer Bluetooth® VoIP Phone that pops out of a slot and saves you yelling into the daft little built-in microphone.

What about the screen? They’re all the same aren’t they? Well. No. First Acer came up with Acer CrystalBrite™ technology that took screen clarity to another level and then they introduced something called Acer GridVista™ which resizes the application windows and slots them into dual, triple or quadruple grid configurations so everything you have open is right there in front of you where you can see it (tip: if you really want to get the most out of this feature, hook up a second external monitor (which you’ll probably do through the Acer PCI Express® ezDock) and then tell me if having up to eight organized windows doesn’t speed you up a little bit).

How about protection? Well for starters there’s Acer Gravisense that protects the hard disk by automatically retracting the disk heads if the notebook takes a fall and there’s even Acer Anti-Theft technology that sets off an alarm if the notebook is snatched away.

Then there’s the mother of all add-on applications: Empowering Technology. I’ve only ever come across a couple of other blogs that talk about this software whose sole purpose is to make changing something “important” on your PC, notebook or whatever, simple. Apart from the one on The Acer Blog, which in turn links to a pretty cool explanation here, I also found a quick review of it on Tracy and Matt’s blog.

Empowering Technology shouldn’t be underestimated. I have seen it used in real situations and it makes as much difference as all the other trademarked technologies listed above put together. It’ll be interesting to see how it evolves with the Vista platform.

But that’s another argument. The fact is Acer has bundled almost its entire product range with a series of added-value technologies each designed to help you get more out of your product. Notebooks, Desktops, projectors and even their TVs have been given the Empowering treatment. If you don’t believe me, then read this.

Acer doesn’t shout too loud about this added value, and I really think it should as I believe this particular take on Pareto’s 80:20 principle says a lot more about a PC vendors approach to its customers than any performance benchmark ever could.

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