Test bed: Acer Aspire V5-122P

My intercontinental transition is more or less complete, and with a new home comes a new array of toys.

For the last week or so I’ve been using a home-grade lightweight department store PC as a test bed. This is an Acer Aspire V5-122P.

It’s been a long time since I bought a new computer, and ordinarily I would be averse to it.

I was losing time though, and had no local connections for leftover hardware, and this had the right price on it.

Guts are:

System:    Host: v5-122p Kernel: 3.8.0-19-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.7.3) Distro: Linux Mint 15 Olivia
Machine:   Mobo: Acer model: Aspire V5-122P version: V2.04 Bios: Insyde version: V2.04 date: 05/10/2013
CPU:       Dual core AMD A4-1250 APU with Radeon HD Graphics (-MCP-) cache: 2048 KB 
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm) bmips: 3992.46 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1000.00 MHz 2: 1000.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Kabini [Radeon HD 8210] bus-ID: 00:01.0 
           X.Org: 1.13.3 drivers: ati (unloaded: fbdev,radeon) FAILED: vesa Resolution: 1368x768@0.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.2, 128 bits) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.1.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] FCH Azalia Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:14.2
           Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device 9840 driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:01.1
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.8.0-19-generic
Network:   Card: Atheros AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k bus-ID: 01:00.0
           IF: wlan3 state: up mac: 00:1d:76:c3:bc:5c
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (42.0% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: ST500LT012 size: 500.1GB 
           Optical: No optical drives detected.
Info:      Processes: 167 Uptime: 1 day Memory: 542.8/3475.2MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.7.3 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4 

My personal opinions are sometimes one way, and sometimes the other.

It’s got terrific battery life, which is not something I’m used to. It’s very light and has a strong display, which are also things I’m not used to.

And I can honestly say this is the first computer I’ve ever had with a touchscreen.

On the other hand, I am used to machines that run me US$20 or so at the max. This was a good deal more than that, even if it was a bargain-basement price.

But I can hardly complain. This is running Linux Mint 15 (as you might have noticed) without effort, setting up perfectly and with no complications save a failure to properly turn off. No biggie.

(It did come with that abortion of an operating system, Windows 8, preinstalled. The salesperson was horrified when I told him I planned to put Linux on it. And he ran away mad when I told him Win8 was unilaterally despised. 😈 )

My plans include a shift to Arch and a different window manager to be sure. Mint with MATE is a little laggy on this.

After that, probably drop back to console applications. And there you have it.