Problems with Acer 5315 Laptop

[crucibelle]

Hi everyone.. I bought my daughter an Acer 5315 laptop several years ago. For reasons that would take way too long to explain, the laptop was reformatted and Ubuntu was placed on it (original OS was Windows Vista Home 32 bit). This was not done by me, but by a person who shall go un-named. Anyhow.. I was told that no drivers needed to be installed, because Ubuntu took care of it. I went along with it, because I thought that it would be good for my daughter (9 yrs old) to learn another OS in addition to Windows. Shortly after Ubuntu was installed, the wireless on the laptop started randomly dropping the connection, and the laptop would also randomly shut down.

Grandparents took the laptop to a computer repair shop -- was told that Ubuntu does not "play nice" with Acer laptops. Also told there was nothing wrong with the laptop.. no broken cpu fan or anything that would cause overheating (I had thought overheating might be the prob).

When I saw the laptop "shut down", myself, for the very first time, it appeared to me that the thing was actually going into sleep mode, not shutting all the way down.. but I'm not certain.

So anyhow.. my question is: would it just be better for me to reformat this thing and put Windows back on it? My daughter is getting very frustrated, so I want to get this fixed ASAP.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I would just go back to Windows, figure out all the drivers the machine needs, and install them. Ubuntu is a great, free OS, but it's not for someone that just wants to use a computer and be familiar with it right out of the box. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Windows Vista.

 

[crucibelle]

CurseTheSky,

Thank you so much for your reply. That's what I figured would be best, but I wanted to check in here and get another opinion. Guess I'll work on that this evening, thanks again!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Linux geek gone wrong? Should have allowed the Ubuntu installer to partition the HD and install a dual-boot. The current Ubuntu installer does that no problem, so it can co-exist with windows.

 

[crucibelle]

VirtualLarry.. lol.. well, I haven't gotten around to doing anything with it, yet.. so I might try that. Thanks for the info!

ps -- it wasn't a linux geek that put Ubuntu on the laptop.... I think that was the problem. lol

 

[CurseTheSky]

I found Ubunutu kinda fun to play around with, but that was about it. Windows is much easier to use in terms of familiarity, so I definitely wouldn't force anything else upon a kid. Unbuntu is a great alternative for a low-cost PC, though.