TODO: Create a Laptop Testing page for Acer Aspire 7520G. Temp page here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ΜάριοςΖηντίλης/lap-test-7520g/

TODO: Create a How To / Tutorial for the same laptop. (Sandbox for the tutorial: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ΜάριοςΖηντίλης/7520gHowTo/ )


'''Sunday, February 24th, 2008''' 

Here is the spec table, to be removed to the Testing Page later:

||CPU||AMD Turion 64 x2 Mobile Technology TL-60 (2.0 GHz, 2x512KB L2 cache)||
||RAM||2GB DDR2||
||GPU||NVIDIA Ge Force 8400M G Turbo Cache, 256MB||
||Monitor||17.1" WXGA+ Acer Crystal Brite LCD||
||Hard Disks||320GB dual HDD (160 GBx2, Western Digital)||
||Optical Drive||DVD-Super Multi DL ( Matshita DVD-RAM UJ870QJ )||
||Wired Network Adapter||NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller||
||Wireless Network Adapter||Atheros AR5007EG 802.11b/g||
||Firewire Controller||Ricoh OHCI Compliant IEEE1394||
||Audio Controller||Realtek High Definition Audio Controller, 5.1||
||Webcam||Acer Crystal Eye||

I have not installed yet, still on the live-cd. There seem to be problems with the display. When the pc boots from the cd, after the option Start or Install Ubuntu is selected, the monitor goes black and stays black forever. In multiple attempts I once got a graphic dialog box to chose Graphics Adapter and resolution, after which I got to command line, and startx worked fine. This only happened once.

In Safe Graphics Mode, the monitor still goes black, but eventually the GUI comes up normally, in the correct resolution: 1400x900.

Relative posts in the forums: 
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=579684
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3560142

Further experimentation on the way... I 'll be back.

'''Monday, February 25th, 2008''' Downloaded Hardy Heron Alpha 5. Same problems with display. In Safe Graphics Mode the GUI comes up eventually in 800x600. Sound works out-of-the-box, contrary to 7.10

'''Tuesday, February 28th, 2008''' Here 's how it goes with Hardy: In Normal Mode, the option "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer" results to the monitor going totally off -not black- and the cd is spinning as if normally booting Ubuntu, which apparently is what happens in the background. In the end everything stops and the monitor is still black, with nothing left to do but hit the power button once, wait a few seconds for Ubuntu to automatically eject the cd, and ''press Enter'' to continue with shutdown, as at this point I suspect that it would normally display the message: "Please remove the cd from the drive and press Enter to continue" or something similar.

By pressing F4 and selectiong "Safe graphics mode" and ''then'' selecting "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer", the monitor again goes off and the cd spins while loading Ubuntu, but after a few seconds the GUI eventually comes up in 800x600 resolution. 

Now in this '''Live Session''' there are two obvious issues: 1. There's a constant indication that "A package moanager is working" and 2. the launcher icon that usually launches Firefox shows a "Not a launchable item" message. I am now proceeding to installation and will be back shortly.

'''Later...''' Well, the Firefox launcher does not work due to the switch from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. It is a known bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/193902 and will be fixed.
'''Later''' The Firefox launcher is restored to normal functionality after the system was updated, following installation.