<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Richard Bronosky <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Richard@bronosky.com">Richard@bronosky.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Six months ago my dad bought a "reconditioned" Acer Aspire A150 from<br>
Tiger Direct. Yesterday he called me offering to send it to me to be<br>
used as spare parts because tech support told him it sounded like a<br>
bad system board. I told him surely a refurb comes with the full<br>
original warranty. After all, you are buying a product that has been<br>
returned and has a far greater likelihood of being defective. Well, it<br>
turns out they they are sold with diminutive 3 month warranty! I would<br>
have never dreamed they would do this. You are not saving very much<br>
money. (From what I saw tonight the refurb is the same price as the<br>
new model.) However, you are giving up a 12 month warranty.<br>
<br>
The bad news is that I talked him through flashing the BIOS (which<br>
tech support also tried to talk him through, but failed to tell him to<br>
rename the firmware image to ZG5IA32.FD, so it failed) and the<br>
computer is now back to its Ubuntu-tastic glory. "Bad news?" you ask.<br>
Yes, if I would have kept my mouth shut I would be replacing my wife's<br>
12 inch PowerBook with it!<br>
<font color="#888888"></font></blockquote><div><br><br>Yeah, this is the one bad aspect of the Acer Aspire Ones -- I seem to have it happen when I leave a USB drive plugged it during a hard power down. For some reason, it causes the BIOS to freak. Fortunately, I know this and have on my stash of USB drives the newest firmware set up to do the flash required to get it out of its funk. Inconvenient, but relatively easy to recover from.<br>
<br>bnm<br><br></div></div>---<br>Ad killing Signature:<br>I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.<br>