So are the problems cured yet - or not?

Author deleted.

 

No there are obviously problems still. Just had ZG5 model delivered ex amazon. The machine sees infrastructure networks but not ad hoc. Tried all the scripting suggested on this site and no luck. The point is this:

I am a windows user and this is my first linux machine. I believed everything that is said about linux - more stable etc etc But not being able to pick up an ad hoc network in 2008 is just plain pathetic. I can understand the people here saying the machine is great but of course that's because they don't have a problem yet. Here I am having to learn about linux as I try to hack away on the basis of posts on this site, I have no connectivity so cannot download bios or whatever. Hell as I don't know linux I cannot even say whether this brand new machine has the very latest versions or not - that wd be another hour spent learning how to find out whether I need a software update. Then I have to learn how to load the damn thing if I need it.

Meanwhile you all seem to be using different version sof linux. Please would all ubuntu freaks get off this site and let us poor linpus owners share knowledge on how to make this heap of junk do the basic things that even my HTC phone can do.

I love the potential of this little machine but it doesn't work. End of rant. Flame away!

 

Welcome to Linux Kwilley. I am sure you will not get flamed for what you said and I doubt anyone will have anything bad to say. You see most of us have been where you are. I have to say that while the AAO is a great machine and does have a lot of potential Linpus is not the best OS to realize that potential for newbies. I consider myself a newbie also even though I have been using Linux for a couple years because I just don't get along with the command line. Really this is the main reason I left Linpus and tried other distros. For me it was too much command line effort to get Linpus to allow me to see the potential of the AAO. I would recommend you dump Linpus until you are more familiar with Linux and try a different distro. As you can see many people have tried to switch to different distros with varying degrees of success. The easiest for me since I don't do well with the command line has been Mandriva 2009 Gnome. Mandriva will give you a chance to see the potential of your AAO and the potential of a Linux that does not come locked down by Acer. Yet it is very easy to get started and to keep running while giving you the full power of Linux and stability. Good luck no matter which way you decide to go.

 

This is just complete bullshit.

 

Linpus is just an option bro.... for all practical purposes, if you're on a more complex network. Install Windows XP by all means. Whoever said that you're stuck with linux?

 

Don't you know how to say anything else? That statement has no information in it and is useless. It could even mean you are calling all the posters here liars.

 

Well, what a thread. Actually I'm with blackflag on this, it sucks: bith this thread, and wireless on the aspire.

First, to clear something absolutely up, my machine is fully updated and WHATEVER anyone else posts here: Wireless on my aspire randomly dies. And there are obviously many more people experiencing this too.

This has always happened. Usually it goes after some time (several hours), but I have seen it go after 5 minutes, or work all day and not fail. The Issue is random and not caused by any usage scenario/user action that I can determine.

When working the wireless is flawless, connections are good; but after some random period of time it -will- fail. Once it has failed there is nothing to be done other than power off/on the machine. The Wireless connection manager will not show any access points (even when other laptop users see 10+ in their lists, I see nothing). It will remain like this permanently until the machine is powered off and on, when it will suddenly find and list the networks again, and I'll be waiting for the next random failure.

These symptoms have not varied in the slightest, and occur with all four access points I regularly use. I have the latest drivers, bios and have read pretty much every thread here and done everything that was posted by intelligent posters & supposed to help. This issue happened with linpus (FULLY updated) and FC10 (FULLY updated) and the 3305 bios. I will update the bios to 3309 at some point soon, but I would bet money that it has no effect.

There is something very fundamentally wrong with aspire one networking. And nobody has come up with a solution yet. I strongly supect that there is a very occasional wireless hardware issue/state/race condition that none of the drivers deal with properly.

And finally, to the 'It works for me', or 'just update the bios and it will work', or 'do a yum upgrade', or 'try windoze and turn off the power management', or 'adjust the mtu size', or.. any other of the 'it's easy, I fixed it' crowd;
I don't actually believe you. I think you are full of sh1t I think you twiddled with stuff you don't understand following a forum post from another looser, and then did not see it immediately fail and so thought in your ignorance 'It's cured, lets post this since if I post enough nobody will call me 'noob' anymore'. Bet you didn't post when it failed again on you later that week..

 

Actually, your rant inspires what I believe is a legitimate question - does wireless work flawlessly with Windows XP?

 

From what I've read, only if you have the 3305 (or later) bios -and- some super-secret wireless drivers (well, not exactly secret, but a very up-to-date version of the relevant wireless driver, that you need to download from a untrusted source). Disabling power management for the wireless device might also be required.

Prior to loosing it in the previous post I had spent a couple of hours reading this forum and others looking for more info about this defect. It seems that windows users have a better time of it, with more practical 'fix' options, but they have very similar issues by default.

 

ok I am back and here is what I have done. I bought a new netgear adsl wireless-n router modem and rebuilt my network as an infrastructure rather than ad hoc network. My One works beautifully for now though I await the drop-out that people here have mentioned. If it happens to me I will let this thread know and if I run for a week without fail I shall post my setup. Will keep an eye out here for news of Acer solving this issue.
Thx for those who tolerated my previous rant and for the latest ranters my sympathies are all I can offer....

 

I use these super-secret wireless drivers with power management enabled on XP without issue .

 

What are the "super secret drivers?"

Complete B.S.

 

Not secret--- 3305 bios with version 160 Atheros driver works just fine.

Update the bios to 3305 and go on to Windows update and get the 160 driver.

 

Just got my aspire one yesterday for christmas... Used it a lot, and didnt have any dropouts, BUT the network is pretty slow... Usually around 500 kb a sec. Usually I should download from 1-1.5MB per second... So its slow, but not horrible... I have the 3305 bios and most updated wifi drivers. Also turned of power save mode on the wifi driver.. I have an exclent wifi connect in most of my house but its still kinda slow... It takes about 11 minutes to copy a 700MB movie off my home network.

 

So from the multitude of posts after mine, I think we can conclude that the answer to my original question is...'no.'

That's a shame...I wanted to get one of these.

 

I have to agree, mine worked when I updated the bios with one small issue: The keyboard was locked out while the boot menu was up so I could only boot to Windows even though I have Linpus installed too. Of course, I haven't checked yet for a newer bios update and it has been a month or so... I'll update if I have any luck, but from the other posts, I'm not counting on it.

(Oh, and I only had to disable/enable wifi via the HW switch 2 times to read all 6 pages of this... :roll: )

 

I just got the winxp 8 ssd and cant get on the internet so is this the reason why

 

Bios version 3309 solves the bootmenu/keyboard issue (perhaps 3308 did, 3307 was the one with the issue). I'm hoping that since 3307 solved my wire3less issues in the past that this will carryover into 3309.

So Bios is at v0.3309 and wireless is v7.6.1.160. We'll see how it goes.

 

What blows my mind...and what I really don't get...is that you'd think with all these problems, Acer would fix the issue. You think they'd switch to a different wifi card - or whatever the problem is - and tell the world all about it. You think they'd take the dick out of their mouth, and take care of business. Wifi isn't exactly cutting edge technology.

Instead, they just ignore the customers. Nice.

 

Well I just bought one for my wife, from PCworld in the UK. It was a blue Linpus 120GB 512mB and had a manufacture date of July 2008 and came with bios 3114 and I installed XP home on it using the current 7.6.1.149 driver. Wired networking was fine, but the atheros wifi managed 1 gb transfer of files before bugging out and now wont remain connected for more than 5 mins before it heats up the area under the palm rest and refuses to transfer data yet maintaining the connection. I'm using WPA and a BELKIN N1 router.
It appears that a percentage of these wifi cards have a hardware compatibility problem with the ACER hardware. Acer are on target to sell 6 million of these and if they have to replace this card on some of them it will end any profit for them so I imagine this is never going to be fixed. They'll probably get some kind of multi billion dollar rescue package too. The happiest people seem to be the ones who braved spending £20 on an intel wifi card and dared to open it up. Worth slipping in a 1GB stick of ram while youre at it.
I understand that there is a BIOS update but that ACER wont support it hahahaha. I don't own a USB stick so I'm better off installing the new card and using a USB wifi stick till it arrives.
And if anyone from ACER is reading this, I'm going to badmouth you about this on every forum I can now. Hopefully I can hit you where it hurts. Happy New Year.