[Sussex] Acer laptops

[Jacqui Caren-home]

On 23/06/2011 10:12, Dominic Humphries wrote:
> Run away! Run away!
>
> :)
>
> Okay.. my Acer laptop has actually done better than I expected, I must
> admit. It's 4 1/2 years old; the optical drive no longer works; the
> battery life is down to about one minute; and the power cord (as people
> who attended the last SLUG moot can testify) needs to be held in place
> in order to supply power.

My Acer has around a 20 min charge the screen is no longer bright and the fans
need cleaning but it still works well.
The one thing to remember about acers is that the windows software came with
a root backdoor that is NOT detected by av software. This provided acer with
an admin remote commandshell via an activeX component that would open up
in MSIE browsers without the users knowledge or consent!
When the whoohaw first kicked off, I cehcked my then new acer and yes the
bdoor was in-situ and work and home av software ignored this supplier installed
crapware.

If you are installing linux then you avoid this but if dual boot then you
need to be aware of this lethal bit or acer goodness.

Sorry I dont have a ref - it was ~5 years years ago

Jacqui