I've had this laptop about a half year now and have tweaked things around quite a bit on it thus far. I wanted to start a thread just for this series or even my model specifically for troubleshooting issues or just simply a club for us fellow Aspire 5000 users to chat about random things. I personally for your own note own the 5004 WLMi model of the Acer Aspire 5000 series.
Thus far I have found a site with upgraded drivers on it here but those aren't the latest drivers while still an improvment. They are close enough however and if you so desire you can also search for more recent updates yourself or even prompt me for mine.
They include other things as well along with the drivers such as a more customizable menu to set the unique setting on those more deviant networks. I love it personally and since I live in silicon valley where I am exposed to many different wifi routers it is often needed to add more time to time. The upgrades for the monitor are decent and allow you to split the screen a little easier to share with other monitors or tweak small things but it's difficult to get a resolution to fit with the screens just perfect and sometimes can be more hassle than it's worth. There is also a nifty little tool that can be kept on the task bar to show you how much your processor is being utilized at any given time. This can be made to start up in regular mode or minimized to the tray for convenience upon login.
The specs for each model of the series can be found here.
EDIT: My current project is dual-booting the pc with the copy of Windows XP Home Edition SP2 along with Ubuntu's latest version 64 bit. I was having issues with getting the WiFi to work but the ethernet does work at least by default. A good place for the WiFi is to go here The install has been done as normal and nothing has been changed on it thus far besides getting WiFi to work and installing game packages + updates. The Linux boot uses the other partition that comes factory empty and is separate from the partition used by Windows. If you wish for your Windows Partition to see your Linux partition to edit files using VIM Editor or for having more shared storage space go here and install fs-driver. In order to get the proper resolution in Ubuntu as it only offers the 3 basic ones is to go into the 'etc/x11/xorg.conf" file and add it to each line of the file so it says: "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480".
Thus far I have found a site with upgraded drivers on it here but those aren't the latest drivers while still an improvment. They are close enough however and if you so desire you can also search for more recent updates yourself or even prompt me for mine.
They include other things as well along with the drivers such as a more customizable menu to set the unique setting on those more deviant networks. I love it personally and since I live in silicon valley where I am exposed to many different wifi routers it is often needed to add more time to time. The upgrades for the monitor are decent and allow you to split the screen a little easier to share with other monitors or tweak small things but it's difficult to get a resolution to fit with the screens just perfect and sometimes can be more hassle than it's worth. There is also a nifty little tool that can be kept on the task bar to show you how much your processor is being utilized at any given time. This can be made to start up in regular mode or minimized to the tray for convenience upon login.
The specs for each model of the series can be found here.
EDIT: My current project is dual-booting the pc with the copy of Windows XP Home Edition SP2 along with Ubuntu's latest version 64 bit. I was having issues with getting the WiFi to work but the ethernet does work at least by default. A good place for the WiFi is to go here The install has been done as normal and nothing has been changed on it thus far besides getting WiFi to work and installing game packages + updates. The Linux boot uses the other partition that comes factory empty and is separate from the partition used by Windows. If you wish for your Windows Partition to see your Linux partition to edit files using VIM Editor or for having more shared storage space go here and install fs-driver. In order to get the proper resolution in Ubuntu as it only offers the 3 basic ones is to go into the 'etc/x11/xorg.conf" file and add it to each line of the file so it says: "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480".
