Is Acer aspire with Linux unreliable?

hello, I am very new to Linux but I wanted to give my vote and my money to open source rather than Microsoft, and now I regret it, as my Acer Aspire has given up after only 4 months.

My acer aspire expired yesterday, 30 July. I am not a technical person, but am very self-sufficient in fixing PC problems in a Windows environment. But Linux is beyond me, especially when the whole operating system has gone.

I bought my aspire one from PC World on 30 March 2009 and it just went kaput yesterday, black screen with cursor still moving, after two or three of the usual boot-up screens had appeared normally.

I took it back to PC World and they say it's a software problem and so not covered by the warranty. amazing! How could I have possibly screwed up the operating system?

A recovery disc was in the pack and PC World said they would help me boot up using that. We tried, in the shop, to boot up from the recovery disc for two hours, then they decided the recovery disc must be faulty as well.

I am horrified that I have had the aspire such a short space of time, cost me £200, and now I am not covered by the warranty. Why not?

Can anyone advise me if I have any rights?

Acer have said it sounds like the operating system has crashed and the recovery disc is faulty and they will send me a new recovery disc for free (from Germany, specially made for me, takes two weeks!!!!) but that is all they will do to help.

Do acers with linux on them crash often after such a short life??

thanks to anyone with useful input. I am very disillusioned and feel I am unlikely to be able to solve this myself.

 

My Acer Aspire One AOA 150 works very well with Ubuntu 9.04. The full version. Put it on there the day I brought it home. Several months ago.

 

Likewise, I have had Ubuntu on mine for some time. The only problems I really run into is when I try to "improve" it... Sometimes a piece of equipment can be a lemon.

 

Please be warned:

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=724&start=0&hilit=recovery+disk

--Japser.

 

My AA1 A0110 with SSD and my AA1 D150 with 160Gb HD works great with Mandriva 2009.1 Spring Gnome. I have been using it for months.

 

No, it shouldn't have failed like that. It may be hardware related.

But... the "recovery disc" isn't really meant to be DIRECTLY used. You take a USB flash drive, and insert it into ANOTHER computer. That has an optical disc drive (ODD, in Acer parlance). Boot that computer from the "recovery disc", and it will boot directly into a program which will write a bootable recovery USB stick for your Acer (the stick must be 2GB or more).

Then, boot the Acer from the USB stick, and it will automatically restore the hard drive.

Try the recovery, and if it doesn't work, have the Acer serviced (I strongly suspect a hardware issue).