Aspire 5 Laptop - A515-58M-56BP

[Grogan]

Aspire 5 Laptop - A515-58M-56BP
https://store.acer.com/en-ca/aspire-5-l ... 5-58m-56bp

We ordered this for my Dad yesterday, he needs to have his own surf buggy because Mom is on the PC a lot.

The CPU is "Intel® Core™ i5-1335U processor Deca-core 1.30 GHz" (low base frequency for power saving but it would ramp up to 4.6 GHz turbo)

I picked that model because it at least has 16 Gb of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Most want to sell you 8 with 256 or 512G storage. It's not so easy to just upgrade storage in today's thin laptops.

[Zema Bus]

That should be a good machine. I've had good luck with Acer products.

[Grogan]

Me too, I like Acer. Good quality for the money (at least the hardware, maybe housings and shit not so much). I said "we're getting an Acer... I'll go to their web site and pick a model"

Last time we bought two laptops for the kids direct from Acer, the shipping was excellent.

[Grogan]

I got the laptop today, it actually came from Indianapolis by FedEx so it took a few days (ordered on Saturday). I haven't powered it up yet, as it's been on cold trucks for days, but everything looks to be in order. It was shipped in 3 cartons within each other. A shipping carton, with the laptop in an outer, and inner carton. No handle (cheap bastards lol). They come with nothing these days, just the AC adapter and a warranty booklet.

The first thing I have to do is bypass the Microsoft sign-in (Though this is Acer, they may already bypass that or even have an local owner account pre-created)

[Grogan]

It's even worse than that, the Acer setup won't proceed without connecting to a network. There's no way to bypass it, no way to kill it (alt+F4 doesn't work) and the only option if you can't connect to a network is to "use another device to access the following troubleshooting steps"

Fuck you Acer... that makes me angry enough to consider shipping it back as "unsuitable for purpose". Even Microsoft lets you continue without a network connection. This is their setup dialog preventing me from getting in to the $800 computer I just bought.

Well, I had to connect to WiFi to proceed, but I immediately set the connection to "metered" mode to stop the updates. Then when it prompted for the Microsoft account I just entered admin and a random password. Then "Oops somethng went wrong" and it let me proceed to create a local username with no password. So at least I got through without a Microsoft account which was the only real issue... it just pisses me off that Acer did this. I signed in with an Acer account and posted a question to hold their feet to the fire though. "I'm sorry, but I will be sending this back for refund if Acer's setup screen is preventing me from accessing my property" (I have no intention of that, I'm just not taking that without giving them shit)

[Grogan]

I wish I had "wget" lol

(I've either got to use Microsoft Edge to download Firefox, or transfer the download via USB stick. I don't want to run Microsoft Edge even once. I'll be deleting the icons for it so nobody does)

[Grogan]

It wasn't in too bad a state when I got poking/cleaning/disabling. It had actual McCrappy Antivirus and the web shield installed though, I was surprised to see. I promptly removed that. It also had Microsoft Office 365 both English and French editions fully installed. Not having that. We're not going to use Microsoft Office on that laptop, Libre will be just fine. I could probably get their full version (owned license) to activate on there, but I'd rather use the shiny new LibreOffice 24.2. There's nothing fancy schmancy in their documents (not that he'll be opening on there).

Firefox was able to claim default browser status during its install (and is set to prompt if it isn't) so it seems Microsoft relaxed that. In Windows 10 browsers would pop up the "Default Programs" interface to make you do it lol

Now is the time I'm super glad I have my parents on Thunderbird. It is super easy to put the data in place, install the program, and when you open it for the first time everything is exactly the same as the other computer you took the profile from (I take both Local and Roaming just in case, but I think all you really need is roaming as that's where the mail and settings are). That wasn't always the case with Thunderbird though, if you missed a database conversion (trying to use data from an old version) I found it to be unusable in the past.

I actually removed Microsoft Edge in Control Panel/Programs and Features. I'm sure it's still there in some capacity, like where it would prompt to install itself if you went there lol

I was able to get the taskbkar and start menu in some semblance of order quickly enough (pinned things etc.) and copied over his "Internet Shortcuts" folder from the desktop where I made "icons" for the web sites he goes to. I set things for Dark Mode, like their Windows 10 Desktop.

Something I hate, and I may look into fixing, is that the context menus are all collapsed into a dumbed down menu. It's got cute little graphical icons at the top, but to actually see "copy" and "cut" and "rename" etc. in the menu you have to click "More Options". When I'm doing a file operation, I want to see the words "copy" or "cut" etc. I don't want to be second guessing icons, or waiting for hover text.

I'm glad I don't have to use Windows 11.

[Zema Bus]

That was surprising, but glad to hear you got past it. The Windows 11 menu reminds me of the Gnome menu. I think if I ever get a new laptop in the future I'll get a Framework. They're modular with replaceable parts, and you have the option to build it yourself (cheaper).