Ubuntu 11.04 Test Run On Acer Aspire One 532H Netbook

Today, I downloaded the daily build of Ubuntu 11.04 and decided to take it on a test drive of an Acer Aspire One 532H Netbook.  The latest daily build of Ubuntu 11.04 has seen a dramatic improvement  in functionality when compared to the previous Alpha Release.

The main thing that I like is that the application side-bar dock now auto-hides!  This is a huge improvement over the previous version of the Unity desktop.

The desktop still seems to be a bit slow, but I think this may just because I was running the OS off of a USB thumb drive.  It is also very buggy, in that you are quite sure if the menus or applications are going to come up when when you click on them.  But that is expected in a daily build.

The other change I noted was that Open Office has been replaced, and the main browser is a beta version of Firefox 4, which came up with an annoying "Test Pilot Study" pop-up.  Ugh.

Ubuntu Suspends Acer 532H Netbook When Battery Powered -- A Fix

One problem I have come across when running a Acer 532H netbook on battery  power is that it will suddenly hang and go into suspend or hibernate mode.  It seemed to have occurred once the computer started to to get warm and the fan was about to change speeds.

There is a simple fix for this problem.  You simply should update the BIOS.  This will fix the suspend of hang problem on your Acer 532H netbook when running Ubuntu on Battery. As of BIOS v1.25 the hang problem does not occur.

If you left a Windows 7 partition on your machine then all you need to do is boot into Windows and  go to the Acer Support website and select your netbook model.  Windows 7 has a built installer that will flash the BIOS for you.

If you do not have a Window 7 partition, then you can head over this how-to flash your BIOS in Ubuntu post on the Ubuntu Forums.