ACER Aspire 5002 Notebook - Vista install OK

For those of you with Acer notebooks, or who are interested in how a
minimally equipped notebook performs.

The Details: I have an Acer 5002WLCI (Canadian) notebook with the AMD Turion
64 ML-30, only 512MB RAM (Vista reports only 448MB), 60GB HDD, and lame SIS
M760GX 64MB shared video. Vista System Performance Rating comes in at a lowly
1 rating. The lowest of the low! This notebook doesn’t meet the min system
requirements but Vista seems to be fine, dare I say pretty fast.

Summary: I was not going to keep the Vista running at first, but now that I
have reinstalled, I will keep it running. My notebook seems to run as well or
better with Vista than it did with XP. I may install another 512MB of RAM to
improve performance now that i know it will run Vista and I can keep this
notebook for use with Vista (although without Aero glass - i have shared 64MB
video). I am now quite happy with Vista, and will try the 64 bit version
soon - thanks to AMD for giving me the option to get the inexpensive 64bit
Turion processor a year ago for the price of a Celeron! I will continue to go
AMD!! My only regret is that I don't have a mobile video card like an ATI
200/x700 or similar GeForce that can run the Aero glass.

OK, so here is my story. I first did an upgrade from XP to the 32 bit
version, although I have a 64 bit processor. The results were not impressive
until I did a complete new install of Vista, and then reinstalled some key
drivers. Much better now, even on my minimally equipped notebook.

No, I didn’t do the smart thing and install on a different partition, I just
replaced my main XP image because I thought I could just run Acer eRecovery
(Norton Ghost) and revert back to my old XP image stored on D:drive...notes
below on why that hasn't worked.

My first attempt was an upgrade from XP and at first I was not impressed.
Some notes:

Display: Display was blurry. I adjusted the display settings to 1280x1024
and the display was still slightly blurry (Why doesn’t Vista detect the
notebook’s resolution and auto update it?). I figured it was just my video
card that was not capable of running even the basic Vista UI, never mind
Aero. However, I just did a complete new reinstall (versus upgrade from XP)
and then reinstalled the SIS drivers and the display is now crystal clear
with the basic (not Aero) setting. I do have choppy video when running a DVD
in Media Player 11, although the videos on my hard drive play fine.

Software compatibility: Zone Alarm (free) doesn’t work so I’ll use the
Windows firewall. Otherwise, my Avira AntiVir wouldn’t update so I switched
to the CA free Vista eTrust antivirus trial which works fine. Funk Odyssey
Client is not working which is a real PITA because my university uses it for
wireless. Windows Live Messenger beta is OK.

I had been using the Office 2007 beta and love the new UI because it now
presents the menus in a much faster layout. I had totally customized my menus
to suit my needs and Office 2007 menus now offer every one of my key commands
on the new menu. I couldn’t be happier with the new Office which is working
perfectly under Vista.

Note for Acer Users:
I used the Acer eRecovery (Norton Ghost) to back up an image of my machine
before doing the Vista upgrade but it was rendered useless after I installed
Vista. I tried to run it from Vista to revert back to my previous XP image
and it tried, but when it rebooted it could not get past the Vista boot
manager screen. I don’t know the command to run the Acer eRecovery DOS
version so I couldn’t revert back to XP from Vista. When I did my complete
reinstall of Vista (after first upgrading) the eRecovery software got wiped
when it formatted C:drive and the Acer eRecovery can only be reinstalled by
Acer (lame). I suppose I could try installing Ghost myself and then running
it to grab the backup image from D: drive where Acer puts it.

Also for Acer users, the Acer Launch manager works after reinstalling it but
the Alt-F8 mute and the volume keys seem to conflict with the Vista volume
control. I don't miss the Acer volume two finger salute though. Wish they
just put a damn volume control on the case.

My issues:
1. After resuming from hibernation on some occasions I get a message that
the csrss.exe process is running low on virtual memory. I have jacked it up
to 1500MB from the Windows managed system but I don’t think it will resolve
the problem.

2. My Benq 310 wireless USB mouse is working but after hibernation it isn’t
always recognized so I have to unplug/replug and it works again.

3. As noted above, playing a DVD in WMP11 is choppy, although my saved WMP
videos from my hard drive work fine. I am not sure the SiS drivers fully
installed properly although for everything else the display is outstanding.