I purchased one of these computers for my child. It made a loud buzzing noise and turned off last week. I discovered the locked BIOS for myself when I tried to boot from a USB to diagnose the problem. Acer wants $619.99 to diagnose it at their repair center, since it is 2 weeks out of warranty.
In college I sold a lot of laptops for best buy. Acer often had great specs, seemingly solid looking hardware that was clearly influenced by good designs (Apple) and a great price for the specs and features.
All laptops have problems, but Acer was by far the worst - More often then not, the problems stemmed from bad heat management (the most common killer of laptops IME) and quality control that was seemingly laser focused on avoiding problems for exactly as long as the warranty lasted.
PSA: Lenovo has tons of problems w/r/t how they operate as a company, but the thinkpad is far and away the best overall non-mac laptop brand you can readily buy anywhere in the world.
I worked at a repair tech at a local computer shop, already over 10 years ago. Certainly all the tech people were secretly a little bit embarrassed we were selling Acer laptops. I did some sales too, when it was busy and people were needed, and always tried to steer people away from Acer.
For some of their models we had over 50% return rates. Far from all models mind you, but still: it was ridiculous. Many came back after warranty as well with hardware issues related to the casings and hinges. Their warranty service took forever and often we had to send back the machines again because they didn't actually fix the issue (we weren't allowed to repair them ourselves too, we had to use their repair centres; other vendors tended to be more flexible about this, especially if we had a long relationship with them).
But they were cheap. So we sold many.
We didn't usually sell ThinkPads, but we did on special demand. One customer returned theirs for whatever reason (T400 IIRC). We put it in the showroom, and it was there for well over year before we managed to sell it, at quite a loss I might add. We actually had a lot of business customers as we also did office management etc., but people just don't want a €1,000 laptop.
Another aspect is that ThinkPads just don't look good to most people when put next to flashy Asus or Acer laptops. The keyboard is more "wonky" instead of the neat rectangular square; it's clearly better designed instead of the cramped 1cm Shift keys and such, but it doesn't look as good. The more matte display is better for loads of people, but it looks kinda crappy next to a bright Acer in demo mode showing off cool pictures. And the "black box" design doesn't seem to appeal to many people's tastes (although personally, I always felt it looked quite handsome; I miss the blue Enter keys btw, I always thought they added something).
Oh, and gosh, don't get me started on the Acer "laptop" they put out with a desktop Pentium CPU, regular DIMMs, and 3.5" HDD. That was truly an abomination.
About 4 or 5 years ago I was working at one place as a consultant where I’d previously been an employee. Being a consultant I provided my own hardware. I needed really beefy hardware for the project, so I bought a brand new Thinkpad P50, completely maxed out.
One day the IT guy was making the rounds distributing new laptops. I got to chatting with him about the new hardware and he said something like “yeah, these are great compared to that old thing, 8 GB, dual core, 256 GB SSD… blah blah…”, while pointing to my brand new Thinkpad. I started telling him the specs on my Thinkpad (which are still good today, but were especially good then) — quad core i7, 64 GB RAM, RAID striped dual M.2 SSDs, … he just said something like “Oh” and walked away without continuing the conversation. Haha…
Speaking of Asus, I've had no end of issues with the Asus laptop I've been using for the last 3-4 years. Decent spec for the money, but:
* audio output no longer detects external devices
* I've had to replace the display twice due to it flickering/losing part of the image
* multiple keys (~10) fell off the keyboard[1]
* bottom case cracked when I lifted the laptop (plastic appears to have gone brittle over time)
* drive/RAM access cover is held on with electrical tape, as it's broken away from the screw that should hold it in place
* charger cable insulation broke where it meets the DC Jack; replacement charger is starting to do the same
* trackpad occasionally isn't recognised from a cold boot
* USB3 ports are flakey - the slightest nudge can cause devices to disconnect (tried with multiple devices/cables, and they're all fine on other machines)
* keyboard sometimes locks into repeating the last key until I disconnect a USB device or change my keyboard layout with the mouse (probably a software issue, but I haven't managed to track it down)
Combining the repairs (display, bottom case, keyboard, charger) with some upgrades (SSD, HDD, RAM, WiFi card), it's a real ship of Theseus at this point. There's not _that_ much of the original machine left. This is my first Asus machine, and I really can't say I recommend it.
[1] And I didn't notice until after I'd ordered the replacement keyboard that it's not really designed to be replaced without replacing the top case (it fits between the top case and a metal shield, and they're heat staked together), so that was an interesting repair
At the time ASUS tended to be my go-to recommendation: fairly good price/quality balance, good repair service, reasonable failure rates.
At the time needs stressing, because this is a long time ago and I haven't kept up since.
One thing I will say is that every brand can have issues. There can be a particular model that's problematic (see the exploding Samsung Galaxy Notes phone of a few years ago for a famous example), or you can just be unlucky with a particular production series that has issues.
Yeah, I had similar thoughts; it is Big Blue after all. Although the 25-year anniversary they put out a few years ago had the blue enter, but perhaps that was a special one-time deal they managed to strike with IBM (good advertising for IBM too, after all).
this was exactly my experience. Bought an Acer in high school; it was cheap and did the job for me. But after a year both hinges were damaged to the point that the display was tilted. After two years the laptop split in half.
I just bought a Thinkpad (my 3rd in a decade) and there's one big problem with it - the fan runs while the computer is asleep. From what I could find this is due to Windows' modern sleep (or connected sleep) which means the computer is still basically on, just in a lower power mode. Super annoying to hear the shhhhhhhhhh coming from the machine 24-7. To get rid of it, you basically have to turn off the fast boot option and power completely down rather than put the machine to sleep.
It's surprising that the thermal design can't passively cool the CPU while in this sleep mode. It feels like a design flaw.
I have been using hibernate for the last few years for all the laptops. With 'faster' start times this seems to be a better option than sleep. Plus, less risk of inadvertent awakening.
For my personal laptop, I still use a 1st Gen Thinkpad X1 from 2011, running Linux and it's going strong.
Think the fan power management is the only downfall for these devices, mine either runs way too hot or at full blast (which was a turbo mode) back when there was still support for the drivers (some old windows version think 7).
Yes, thinkpads fan control suuuucks. My fan would run 100% of the time, even when just doing light browsing. Had to do a bunch of messing with windows power settings to get it manageable.
I've never had the fans actually run while sleeping though, thats really bad.
I get two Lenovo ThinkPads from work, and have two personal HP Spectres, along with one Gateway (2020, not Acer) and ThinkPad (both low end).
I love the 2020 HP Spectre hardware-wise (better than my work ThinkPads), but sometimes forced NVMe RAID gets annoying with FreeBSD when Lenovo and Asus let you disable it. At least it's not Acer with forced Secure Boot. Yes, I'll take a Mac over an Acer, and I work at Microsoft (but not Windows).
One of the work ThinkPads I get has a locked BIOS, the other (that I normally use for work) doesn't. But I won't use a ThinkPad as my main personal laptop unless FreeBSD only works on one and nothing else.
The dell xps 13 is a fantastic alternative to the thinkpad. It can come with Ubuntu preloaded and fully configured, something that was a major plus for me.
I have an XPS 13 for work and I mostly like it, but I don't think that after having used it for a while, I'd buy one as a personal laptop.
Like the new MacBooks, it's a donglebook and it has basically no ventilation. I'd much rather get a T-series or a non-X1 X-series at this point. I don't think Dell currently offers any Linux laptops with that form factor, but I"d be willing to try them
Thanks for the term “donglebook”. I have an XPS 13 and I will definitely use that in the future.
It’s not a big deal for me since I just share the same dock between it and my work macbook, but I do wish it had more than two ports, for redundancy’s sake.
Agree on the XPS line, they have been largely very good for me. The reason I recommend Lenovo over Dell is because Lenovo has been more consistent for me over the years, but that’s mostly anecdotal of course.
Frankly - and please don't punish me for what I'm about to write - I'm shocked by the endless litany of absurd issues with this Lenovo Thinkpad T14s I just bought.
For some reason the W10 kernel chokes when handling network streams, huge load on the CPU0 core and barely nothing on the other. I'm also constantly thrown off by the inconsistent and sometimes roughly cut UI.
Booting into Linux is a litany of horrors: desktop fractional scaling is blurry, Gnome 40 won't properly handle the alternatives to NetworkManager or PulseAudio which I had to install when WiFi or audio suddenly stopped working for unknown reasons. KDE is cute, but will crash spectacularly taking down the whole session. Tried Ubuntu and Fedora, Same.
I'm a software developer so I can deal with quite a fair amount of tinkering and tuning but frankly I don't have time to learn and debug multiple implementations of entire OS subsystems in order to pick the less unstable one and meticulously integrate it with the rest.
I regret straying off the Apple path, and counting the days the new "M2" (or whatever it will be called) is announced.
I have a 2016 Acer Predator I use for work. I replaced the thermal compound with liquid metal. Dropped the temps 25c and I have had no issue with it, it is on generation behind being able to run Windows 11 but still.
My current laptop is is an Acer Aspire 3 a315-41, and I've had some significant issues with it.
Firstly, there are nice access hatches for the 2.5" slot and the DIMMs, but not for some reason for the M.2 slot. Minor nitpicking, but why make nice access hatches for two items out of three?
Secondly, it does not support NVMe, only SATA drives. Not a huge deal, they are of course not required to support NVMe, but why? It seems to me like they're only saving some wiring going to the CPU. And the firmware menu contains references to NVMe, which led me to believe it did support it.
Third, there were some some issues with Linux on it. Half the time you booted into Linux, the trackpad wouldn't work, and you needed to reboot to get it working. A bigger issue though was that sometimes when you suspended the laptop, it would instead just hang and hard reboot. It took like a year before these issues went away I think. These can be excused I suppose, it's designed for Windows, so it can't be expected to work flawlessly with Linux right away, but it does mean I won't consider Acer for a Linux laptop in the future.
Recently, AMDGPU sometimes hangs when it resumes from suspend, forcing you to reboot. Though this is probably not an Acer issue.
It also seems like the battery stops reporting charge level until you reboot it. I think this happens under Windows too. At least this happens very rarely, but it's one more thing.
But by far the biggest issue though, and the thing that means I will never get another Acer computer, regardless of OS, was when they released a Firmware update for it that caused it to bootloop if you started it without the charger connected (https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/599232/a315-41g-1-1...). As in, you started it, and after a few seconds it would hard reboot, over and over. You could start it with the charger connected and then disconnect it, and it would work fine (until you suspended and resumed, at which point it would hard reboot after a few seconds). And this wasn't a Linux issue, it happened regardless of OS, and even in the Firmware menu. And there was zero official communication from Acer on this, all we got was some "Acer Community Expert" idiot telling people to uninstall some Windows driver, even though Windows had nothing to do with it, and someone telling you to modify the updater tool to downgrade the Firmware. And it somehow took them literally months to release a fix for this. So fuck Acer.
I just use the Best Buy warranty. I always buy it and haven't paid for a laptop since the one I went to university with. I just buy the warranty again. On my fourth laptop now.
Pretty much. They have lasted between 1 and 2.5 years. I can usually negotiate something slightly better each time as well. Hardware works fine until something goes wrong and I drop it off a Geek Squad, use one of my other computers for a week, and then go select a replacement.
It also covers charger replacements and accidental damage, so if your charger frays, they replace it (a big issue with Acer and Asus). I grant that the Geek Squad people aren't great at fixing things, but replacing? Excellent.
We bought our son a consumer HP laptop. Its BIOS isn't locked, but has few settings exposed. HP intentionally cripples its consumer laptop BIOS to hide most of the settings. I can't get WoWLAN to work and wonder if the BIOS settings are why but there are no WoL settings exposed in the BIOS.
There used to be a hidden key sequence to reveal an "Advanced" menu. It changed a few times. But on the more recent versions, there is no "Advanced" menu any more, it is removed completely. (They use InsydeH20 BIOS; you can find some reverse engineering tool to decode its menu structure – I heard rumours on forums the hidden menu was completely removed, the tool confirmed it.)
May still be possible to inspect and change some undocumented settings with some more in-depth BIOS hacking. But I'm scared I'm going to brick the computer by doing that. I gave up. I guess next time I buy a computer I'll keep this in mind.
I'm a long term IBM/Lenovo T/X series user with a side of yoga. Lots to like but plenty of problems too. Overall better than a cheaper brand like Acer from what I could see from my friends devices.
But there have been some low points. Dodgey motherboards on multiple generations of T series laptops, Superfish and whitelisted wifi cards on the yoga, and generally poor quality screens for a variety of reasons gives one pause before buying the next one.
For the first time in a couple of decades I've taken the risk and branched out to the Acer Spin 5. I am pleasantly surprised. Not perfect either but not nearly as cheap as I had feard. A Bios update was essential for it to be functional. But that was true of some models in the T series in the past.
I’ve been out of the Windows/PC scene for a decade, but even in the 2000s, I was under the impression that Acer was a choice to sacrifice quality for a lower price.
Some years ago I had an acer laptop with a discrete video card that would get so hot it would start having graphical errors. I installed bios updates, made sure the intakes weren't blocked, reinstalled drivers, reformatted the machine, etc etc. I spent days and days trying to solve the issue myself.
I sent it into acer (under warranty!) because i couldn't play any games on it for longer than half an hour. They sent it back to me saying they couldn't find anything wrong with it. The laptop would still crash within 30-45 minutes of playing a game.
Whenever people ask me to recommend computers or computer accessories, I never recommend acer. I've never bought another acer product since and I have never been dissatisfied with that decision.
Back in late '00 I had a top of the line Acer. Two years of warranty. A week after the warranty ended the display lost 50% of its brightness, a day later the trackpad died and in a couple of days later speakers went kaput. Was rock solid while on warranty.
> He explained that all computer vendors do this to one extent to another, such as Apple with iPhones, and refused to provide me any means to unlock it no matter how technical I am.
I bought a Razer Blade 15 two weeks ago during Amazon sales - once arrived I opened it and upgraded the SSD from 256GBytes to 1TBytes without any issue, and it works really good on Arch...
So, Acer, not all computer vendors are doing this shit.
Just throwing in a surprising second vote of support for Razer's laptop line. I've never owned a laptop that didn't have a ton of quirks, and my Razer Blade Stealth isn't an exception - but even given that, it's one of the best laptops I've ever owned. It looks beautiful, it's light, battery lasts a really long time, it handles any game I throw at it at 1080p with reasonable framerates, so I can game while traveling.
The biggest issue I've had with it was actually with the charger - the USB C port on the charger snapped off after just a few months of reasonable use. Razer replaced it for free, but that's when I learned that any charger less than 100watts results in the battery draining under load when plugged in. The build quality of the laptop itself, though, is excellent.
I've done BIOS updates, etc., and have had no issues.
Razer's computers are expertly designed to die right when the warranty expires.
The machines look and run great, but they don't last. Mine's a paperweight unless I find a replacement motherboard, or send it in to Razer to get it fixed for ~$300.
Fuck that though. A Thinkpad is a better investment.
You don't want to spend $300 to repair a $2000 laptop?
I'm still irritated that I have to spend more than $300 to buy a new laptop. It's a constant struggle to balance old man syndrome with reasonable sticker outrage.
Nope. Why spend money on something that's most likely going to fail again? Those $300 will be better spent on a new laptop from a more reliable company.
Also, I didn't lose $2000, I bought a $2000 life lesson: never buy Razer products.
$300 is a goot price for motherboard repair. Razers have few signature failure modes, some have troubling caps, others use weak mosfets. You need to be able to diagnose, what parts to buy and where, know how to microsolder, and own >$300 in equipment.
Yes. They are impressive.
But. They don't seem to last.
As someone else mentioned, not long after warranty the motherboard quit working.
Looking online there seems to be hundreds with that problem. I suspect from overheating. I think they all have heating issues- perhaps to keep them quieter?
I don't recommend then anymore.
Search razer won't boot.
I think they have heating problems because they are pushing the limits of what can be done in their form factor: They get extremely hot under load because they're small and the fans are on the bottom, so there's a good chance they're blocked and will overheat. I have experienced this myself.
It will be interesting to see what happens in a few years of use. I wouldn't be shocked if it died - but if it did, I still might get another one. I already replace my laptop every ~3 years anyway, and the benefits it provides in terms of form factor and capability are substantial.
I have a Dell 5401 for work, same story with USB-C charging. Its power brick is 90W but the USB-C block I have can only do 60W max per port. Windows will whine about a "slow USB charger connected" but other than that it works fine for the typical MS Office stuff. It will drain if I really push it though.
I had some issues with the Razer model 4 years ago. The rubber pads on the bottom came unglued from the heat, and I had 2 chargers where the cord frayed from the heat and started sparking. Decided to just stick with a mac for casual use and a desktop for when I want a gpu.
That's the great thing about it. It's a big black piece of CNC'd aluminum. The only lights are on the keyboard and they can be turned off. I don't find it to be flashy at all, apart from the logo being a little overwrought. It's subtle; unless you knew what you were looking for or knew the logo, it looks much like any other highish-budget laptop.
(The Razer Synapse program you use to control the keyboard RGB is annoying, it'd be a good weekend project to replicate its functionality in a free app, but it works for that purpose.)
> The Razer Synapse program you use to control the keyboard RGB is annoying, it'd be a good weekend project to replicate its functionality in a free app
Much love for openRGB! Made my old ROG laptop so much fun! Having specific keys light up specific colors.
Yet another case where the vendor specific software was complete garbage, but FOSS to the rescue.
I also remember being able to make my PS4 controller LED change brightness and colors/shades/blinking, etc on release, and I don't think you can do that on a PS4 to this day.
I really prefer the simplicity of not having to drag around a laptop brick, and love the simplicity of having one cable to carry all the signals I need (USB, DisplayPort, Power, etc.)
2.1 appears to have been released less than 2 months ago. So it might eventually mean USB-C is viable to keep up with higher performance laptops, it can't do it yet.
Even then it's not enough for some top-end laptops. Alienware laptops with a 3080 use 330W
To add to my comment, top end laptops w/ an RTX 3080 use up to 330W. Also USB-C 2.1 w/ 240W isn't actually in any laptop I can find: it's less than 2 months old.
Yeah, this is pre-2.1 (as another commenter mentioned). It makes sense when you think about the hardware though - because it uses a laptop i7 and a Max-Q video card, even when gaming about 100W works OK. See https://www.kitguru.net/lifestyle/mobile/laptops/andrew-munr...
Looks like 2.1 is too new to actually be in any production hardware-- less than 2 months old.
Gaming might be fine in some laptops, but clearly not in the one for this article. Top-end laptops like an Alienware w/ 3080 use a 330W adapter. 100W USB-C is never going to keep that thing from running down the battery.
I bought MSI GP66 Leopard with RTX3070 (90W TDP with spikes up to 170W) for my nephew this year. It has 230W PSU, but it usable and not too hot even under heavy load as long as it standing on table.
It has two fans that in turbo mode can keep GPU it under 70C even at 100% load. But yeah it's bulky almost 3KG workstation.
Oh and at max fan speed it as loud as modern vacuum cleaner, but people play in headphones most of the time. So yeah you can have laptop with high TDP, but it's gonna be bulky and loud.
my T490s has soldered RAM as well. It's beginning to look like vendors are doing this to force higher tier purchases or to reduce longevity of the devices.
Give them time - Apple (and other smartphone makers) have shown how profitable it is to lock down a system and make it unrepairable. Once even more custom ARM processors appear on laptops and desktops, we can forget about the kind of "open" hardware and software we have been used to so far.
Before we all grab our pitchforks, maybe we should take a moment and realize that this is a single review on Amazon that's lacking in important details. The headline here reads "Acer disables BIOS for laptops sold through Amazon", but the review mentions that they're able to get into the BIOS. They're only unable to change the boot order, which is a lot different from "disables BIOS". Furthermore, I don't entirely understand why the reviewer tried to get a refund from Acer when they purchased it from Amazon. I bet there's a non-nefarious explanation for the disabled setting that the reviewer saw. Sadly with a $1,530 cost, I don't expect anyone here to buy the laptop just for research purposes!
I’m the OP. I can get into the BIOS, set passwords, etc, but the options to turn off Secure Boot are disabled and it is impossible to add anything to the boot order other than the drive that ships with the machine. Acer likely are the only folks who can flash/change that.
Many new computers don't let you turn off Secure Boot but do let you delete all the keys... which then sets the machine in a mode where any OS can be loaded
Do you think the review is false or misleading or do you just think it might be? For a $1500 product often you will have to make purchasing decisions based off just one review.
There was a time when people would make trustworthy Amazon reviews, but... one bad apple spoils the bunch. If I don't know if the review I'm reading is manipulated crap, then I need to go elsewhere.
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For better or worse, "Best Buy" and "Walmart" have solid non-comingled supply chains. There's also the option of buying directly from some manufacturers (although I've had bad luck with say... HP from their website. So I prefer having a trusted 3rd party retailer to handle returns in the worst-case scenario. Best Buy handles returns fine, and I trust that an 'HP' laptop is indeed from HP from them. Good enough for me).
I also live near a Microcenter, which would be my primary computer store. But Best Buy isn't bad for prefab and/or laptops, I take my friends there to check out some merchandise when they're looking for new laptops.
I've earned hundreds in Amazon gift cards by just doing as instructed on the review cards that come with parcels. Trust not one word in the reviews, particularly the ones with videos or pictures.
First, Acer (the manufacturer) is doing it, not Amazon.
Second, it does appear to be systematic.
Third, refund policy is irrelevant and implies (falsely) that the issue is simply a consumer choice problem.
Fourth, you ignore what is troubling: it represents the loss of general purpose computing devices as a product category, even in that last bastion of "freedom", the personal computer. Acer is a major manufacturer, and this shift is ominous.
>but was told that Acer locks the BIOS on all computers shipped through Amazon in order to "protect" customers from changing things that might break the computer if they don't know what they're doing.
That doesn't make any sense. Why would you lock it because it was sold through Amazon?
Is it accessible if you buy it direct from Acer?
Sounds like a customer support person just made up a reason.
Perhaps it’s a workaround for Amazon’s commingled-stock problem. Third party can’t override Secure Boot to install a root kit and then return the laptop in a way that ends up with it commingled with “new” stock, if third parties can’t write to CMOS memory in the first place.
(Of course, they could still install a “hard mod” root kit by e.g. reflashing the BIOS through its JTAG pins, or just desoldering it and soldering on something else. But that requires a much higher tier of resources, one that also enables other classes of attacks that don’t involve putting the stock back into the first-party warehouse.)
Even if it is illegal, lots of sellers on Amazon break the law... and since they co-mingle inventory from different sellers, one bad seller trying to pass off returns as new could contaminate every seller's products.
Why not? If Amazon is facilitating fraud and computer crime by cutting corners on stock management, they should be called out for it by the companies impacted by it.
What customers hate is tier 1 support acting as a brick wall between them and the people with the solution to their problem. Or at least that's how they perceive it.
While I don't shout at tech support, as I know what the script is, you better believe my blood is quietly boiling as I'm rebooting various devices that have nothing to do with the issue on their instruction, just so I can get to an appointment with technicians to fix my real issue.
Same thing occurs with GP doctors, and basically every other system in tiers, where it inevitably organizes to basically stall you, so people don't overload the higher tiers.
That's a different issue, though. We have problems that literally nobody knew the reason for, and they required formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows to fix. They did eventually figure things out, but it was over a year later, IIRC.
In the mean time, the techs would get yelled at for not knowing what was happening. I wasn't surprised when they invented reasons... And they may even have believed them.
As for the rebooting... I've seen too many weird things to deny them the reboots. And a few times it has actually fixed my problem, even though I believed it impossible. (And had the same happen to customers I was supporting.) So I know it's frustrating, but it's necessary in a surprising number of cases.
Also, techs were often the worst customers. They thought they knew everything, even if it was just Dunning-Kruger. Forcing them to reboot was painful, but actually worked more often than non-techs because the non-techs would blindly try things like that after having been told it once in the past. There were plenty of times I fell back on the "I can't send this up until you reboot it" because I knew there was a good chance the reboot would actually work if the customer tried to avoid it.
Agreed, customer service folks feel like they need to give an answer (totally understandable) and ... customer service isn't given many tools so they just make do with what they think might be true.
There are a lot of YouTube videos of people going into the BIOS on this same laptop, but acquired elsewhere. From what I can tell, it’s only the Amazon ones that have the BIOS locked.
We are entering the dark ages rapidly. Soon you will no longer be allowed to install what you want. Sorry! That app is illegal now. All under the bullshit reason of safety/security. We can have both without setting everything up for an orwellian state.
We entered that age a decade ago with the rise of smartphones and tablets. General-purpose computing devices that allow you to run any code you want are gradually disappearing.
For how long will we be able to run unsigned code on Windows or MacOS? And for how long will 'secure boot' hardware allow us to run Linux?
Soon we'll have to buy very expensive and specialised development kits/development workstations to create content for the other 'content consumption computing' devices
> We entered that age a decade ago with the rise of smartphones and tablets. General-purpose computing devices that allow you to run any code you want are gradually disappearing.
GNU/Linux phones are general-purpose devices running desktop Linux. Support them if you want to have the freedom to run anything.
I've had a lot of weird out there smartphones, webOS, BB10 and Windows Phone 7/8. GNU/Linux phones just don't even seem close to being ready with basic phone features not working well from what I've read. If I could get one that worked reliably, lasted at least a day on battery and had some sort of NFC payment method I would.
The phone market is lost. May be better to focus on keeping desktop/laptop Linux hardware available.
But the way things are going, the open source community might soon have to start designing their own CPUs, as you may not even be able to buy a high-performance CPU within a couple of decades, they'll be proprietary tech that only exists as part of a locked-down platform, like Apple are now doing.
Anything to back this claim up? I disagree here. Librem 5 and Pinephone are getting more and more popular now. The first one is even recommended by the FSF: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v11/
> the open source community might soon have to start designing their own CPUs
This is my greatest fear but you have to wonder if the reverse will happen, where tech companies get so large, they they can afford to develop and support their own distro (or even operating system).
On Android I can still run whatever software I want, and there are ecosystems of apps that rely solely on sideloading because they are not allowed on Google's app store.
Google or Microsoft trying to prevent you from running whatever you want would probably lead to swift action from EU courts, it looks too much like an attempt to control competition on their platform. So instead they stick to scare-mongering with opt-out.
Apple gets a pass because they are the underdog (30% market share in the EU)
Depends on the manufacturer, on a lot of phones getting root access is not that difficult. The problem is that a lot of applications started to check for root access and will refuse to work if they detect it. So in practice you will loose some functionality that can be important, like your bank application.
It's not just individual bank apps. Netflix, Snapchat, Android Pay, Pokemon Go, and Super Mario Run will all refuse to run if they detect root or any other modifications.
My local bank removed a bunch of these checks from their application, presumably because they started requiring everyone use that app for 2FA now and promptly had their support lines overloaded by customers no longer being able to do any banking.
I was one of those people threatening to either walk or get another option - lo and behold they signed me up for the old 2FA for a few extra weeks.
I don't know what they were thinking, really. Rooted phones, or in my case, custom ROMs like LineageOS are quite common in these parts.
My bank is just one of many using a reskinned version of the same 2FA app, so you might want to re-check yours.
Every year since 1995 has been "The Year of Not Being Able To Install What You Want". And yet, here we are, still sideloading on Android and running bare .EXEs on Windows. It's the hot take that keeps giving!
It started on just niche devices like the TiVo. It's been slowly branching out to more and more devices since then. Also, have you never seen an Android device where sideloading was disabled and you couldn't re-enable it? Because I have.
Is it really expanding though? The market for devices is also expanding. Don't confuse absolute numbers with relative numbers. Of course I have encountered devices that don't allow sideloading, are you saying that is expanding also? Or has "rooting" always been something many carriers and manufacturers sought to disable?
In both absolute and relative terms. Basically every new computing device that's not a desktop or laptop is locked down in some way, and even some laptops are locked down too (e.g., Windows RT on ARM laptops).
Just want to point out the A-to-Z Guarantee from Amazon. When you're dealing with problematic sellers who refuse to remedy defects, mention the A-Z and watch them cave. Couple A-to-Z complaints and the seller is kicked out Amazon.
> Sure temporary disabling secure boot for making Linux installs easier is nice, but not required for functionality.
For as long as Microsoft deigns to allow the signed shim to boot.
Microsoft is the only key authority allowed by the main PC manufacturers. If you wish to become a key authority yourself, to allow your OS to boot on Secure Boot enabled devices without asking the end user to install additional keys (note: some devices may not allow this), then you must go to the OEMs individually and petition to be added to their key authority list. Prices from the OEMs that allow this are in the millions of dollars.
What is holding them back is regulatory oversight, and the fear of it.
So if they ever do so, it's not a fault of "secure boot" and similar, but 100% the fault of politicians seriously messing up their job.
EDIT: You can also blame Apple, for constantly pushing in a direction where such regulatory oversight is removed. (END EDIT)
IMHO Secure Boot and TPM are features I want in my system if properly implemented. A laptop not supporting some form of secure boot and TPM would be for me a reason for not buying it. (Through being able to use custom platform keys is also a must have for me.)
A lot of distributions doesn't support secure boot, or it's difficult to setup, look at the guide to setup secure boot on ArchLinux.
A lot of distributions supports secure boot trough generating your CA, using it to sign the bootloader and the kernel and installing it in the UEFI, to do this you need to put the UEFI in "setup mode", that is a mode that permits the OS to add/remove keys, and then put it back in "user mode". Of course not being able to disable secure boot will not allow you to do so.
As far as I know the only distributions that supports secure boot without the need to put the firmware in setup mode and install custom keys is Ubuntu, since they bought keys from Microsoft. But that is just as bad as running Windows...
You can say, but I can simply turn off secure boot. If the firmware allows it, you can. The problem is if you have a dual boot with Windows: you would need to enable secure boot each time you want to boot into Windows and disable it to boot back into Linux. That is a complication that would make some potential new Linux users just stick with Windows (you have the WSL and you can run all the Linux programs into Windows, why would you need to install it really? That seems to me the policy of Microsoft).
Assuming the BIOS lock also prevents you from adding your own keys this fails the Windows Compatibility Program requirements (i.e. Microsoft's requirements for OEMs to be able to pre-install Windows).
> The platform must come provisioned with the correct keys in the UEFI Signature database (db) to allow Windows to boot. It must also support secure authenticated updates to the databases.
I'm not sure how to contact Microsoft about this issue though.
I believe that allowing updating the database from Windows itself is enough to satisfy the requirement. No need to allow doing it from firmware setup. Microsoft's own devices do it that way.
Maybe unrelated to your post, but assuming you can’t change the boot order how could you feasibly reinstall the OS if you ran into malware or other issues?
I am a little surprised because I am actually quite fond of Acer’s laptops. That’s because I repaired two of them and I was delighted how easy they were to work with and how cheap the repairs were.
On the last one (a 2016 Acer Aspire E5) I replaced its IPS panel twice because the owner (my GF) had repeatedly stepped on it. That was pretty easy: Removing the screen bezel, scan the panel’s QR code revealing its part number, ordering replacement on ebay (€70, delivery from one day to another), loosening four screws and replacing the old panel. The second time I additionally had to replace the panel’s housing and transfer hinges (bending one back into form), cables, camera modules and WiFi antennas which was done in under an hour. Again, all modules and individual parts carried a QR code for easy sourcing of replacements. The replacement housing had cost me only €30. I also replaced the laptop’s battery before (after 2.5 years of intense usage) — €50, the battery was not even screwed in or glued but just held by the casing. So easy peasy replacement.
In the end we sold the poor and unloved thing — repaired, well-working and 4 years old — for €200 on Ebay. Just because my GF longed for a MacBook Air for over 1400 bucks that surely looks great but is neither upgradable nor well repairable …
I must admit I never tried to change the boot order on these systems, so I might have overlooked the crippled BIOS. But ever since I’ve been recommending mid-range Acer laptops for the great price and repairability and been thinking of replacing my Fujitsu Siemens business laptop with an Acer.
I bought an Acer laptop a while ago, then I found out the support they sold me was through a third party that had terrible customer service and they never upgraded the drivers after shipping, which made the laptop useless a couple of years down the line.
From what I've heard, Acer's support is nothing to brag about either.
I never owned one myself, but I've heard complaints about their laptops from several people regarding reliability/longevity.
At the last company I worked at, we had two beamers made Acer, both broke within six weeks, we sent them in for repair, when they came back, one of them still didn't work.
Assuming these use 4 pin SOIC chips, a programmer and chip clip will get you started...back it up with flashrom and see if you can just modify the settings there, sometimes you can with open source tools, other times you need leaked AMI etc tools.
Beyond that, you may be able to find a way to remove the restriction and flash with your programmer, or use the bios from their website, but you have to be careful in case machine specific things like serial, etc are overwritten.
These are good hints for special cases, but when one buys a computer it must remain implied: it is owned not licensed, it is bought to be used according to need not according to the vendor's assumptions. It must be open - you want to install any OS, you can easily install any OS (and you surely must not be bound with the provided one). Strictly.
We should be very careful about surrendering the demand for free, open general computing for whatever reason. Convenience, networks and pricing are driving a trend towards trusted, locked-down computing. It never happens all at once. Always one step at a time.
Acer have always sold utter barrel scraping dog shit machines with worthless warranty made of the lowest bidding vendor's parts. I'm surprised anyone even looks in that direction these days. In fact I'm surprised they are even still going. And as for this, I am also not even surprised if it's happening.
If you're after a new laptop, buy Apple or a business grade unit from Lenovo (T/X/P series). If you can't afford that or don't want to afford it, buy a 2-3 year old machine from a larger refurbisher from the same list. If you shop around you can pick up a previous gen machine with 3 years next business day warranty on it sealed new for less than half current retail proce. I got a ryzen T495 for 500 GBP here with 3 years NBD on it.
I bought a second-hand E585 for €500 last year; works like a charm. The 15" isn't what I would have chosen myself (I previously had an X270 that unfortunately broke after a fall), but it works well enough.
If you're not looking for latest cutting-edge performance then you're usually better off buying a second-hand ThinkPad if available in your area.
A www list of "Product name | Experiences installing Linux" would be really, really needed. The existing ones I know are very incomplete.
My last purchase experience was very successful (30 mins install including a compressed dd backup of the original hd contents. Before buying the product I had web-searched for other people's experiences), but it is absurd that one may have doubts about the process working (flawlessly, effortlessly...). It is like buying a car still wondering "will it work in my weather". This definitely should not happen.
EDIT: one trick I use, that some may find useful, to get corroborations about Linux running on a product: the Geekbench results browser. The Geekbench benchmark results are uploaded to browser.geekbench.com, and the 'Platform' column may contain 'Linux'.
So, for example,
https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q...
shows e.g. that a few days ago the benchmark was run on an Acer Aspire V5-552G using Ubuntu 14.04.2 etc... EDIT2: of course the information about which this page revolves is based on laptops which are locked under some conditions, so techniques like the one I mentioned are not full warranty - they guarantee that in some instances of the product Linux may work.
First, I'm just confused why Acer would even do this. At first I thought they'd be charging extra $ to unlock the BIOS or something, but the review doesn't mention any of that. It's just... locked period? Businesses usually only do things they have a financial incentive for, but I'm not seeing what the incentive is here. Does anyone have any idea?
Second, what is the "support number in the pamphlet that came with the computer" that wasn't Acer? Is it normal for computer manufacturers to provide a third-party support service or something?
Third... why even bother trying to return it to Acer? Probably the #1 reason to buy from Amazon is you can return almost everything to Amazon no-questions-asked for a full refund within 30 days.
I don't buy this. Some Acer laptops in the past have required that you set a Supervisor BIOS password in order to change the Secure Boot settings, but after you do that you can set the password to blank to clear it again.
+1 on the need to set the Supervisor PW in BIOS, otherwise the settings were greyed out. Puzzling indeed, I had to deal with it back some 5 years ago. Definitely found this answer on forums rather than from mfgr suport pages/docs.
However in this case it may be a different "lockdown" issue, though quite an odd choice reasoning-wise.
With this machine, if purchased from Amazon, the settings remain greyed out even if you set the Supervisor PW. That is not the case if you buy it elsewhere.
You can do that on this laptop if you don’t buy it from Amazon. There are plenty of YouTube videos showing how. If you but it from Amazon, like I did, you can set/change BIOS passwords, but Secure Boot cannot be changed and you cannot add a USB drive to the boot order. I spent hours trying to find a workaround.
Even if this is the case, it's still terrible that such unintuitive, undiscoverable behavior (1) isn't documented as being the case, and (2) isn't known and explained by their tech support. And why would it only work like this if you bought from Amazon?
In this situation it’s often best to employ what many seasoned consumers call the HUCA strategy:
Hang Up; Call Again.
I’ve used this in many scenarios, with much success. It does mean you might on hold for a bit, so it’s best to plan mindless tasks that can be quickly interrupted while doing this, but for big ticket items where there isn’t much recourse it’s often worth it.
As soon as it becomes clear the person on the other end can’t help say “goodbye” and hang up.
Call right back and hopefully you’ll get a more helpful person.
It’s very possible there is a way to get into the BIOS, and the rep just didn’t know it but didn’t wanna come off as ignorant.
I guess this will explode in popularity now, because it's a heinous behavior and what's (clearly) ridiculous is that it would be discovered out of the box if not long parted with it making returns needlessly more complicated. Besides, it'd catch by surprise the majority of IT people, I've never read about anything like this in retail.
I'm wavering between a Dell and System76. I know the Dell will have better hardware... but man, at least the System76 will work with Linux, and if not, I'll have support. This only pushes me further toward System76.
Ah, that's right. I was a bit confused because in France you deal with the vendor, not the producer.
I would ask Amazon why this is blocked and that they are selling something that is not proper (and Amazon cannot refer me to the producer because they are responsible).
I now got the fact that he was trying to make the laptop work, rather than just getting a refund.
No, I’m OP and experienced it first hand. It was after struggling for hours and calling Acer support that I found this review, which accurately describes the problem/situation. I did not write the Amazon review. FWIW, I submitted a claim to my credit card extended warranty insurance perk but have yet to hear back.
Honestly, fuck all new laptops. I'm working on a custom PC case that's 36x29x15cm and can fit standard components so I have a proper computer that I own and can carry around in average sized luggage.
Would anyone be interested in something like that btw? Fits mATX boards, most graphics cards (sadly not the top end), 4x 2.5 drives (plus onboard NVMe/mSATA), standard ATX PSUs and has a BIOS reset button.
There are actually plenty of modular laptops. This one doesn't look terrible but there are plenty of other options.
Thinkpads have a pretty good reputation. You can also get big "desktop in a laptop" style PCs, and generally, the thick gaming laptops tend to be easy to work with. You can look at Clevo, which is known for being the OEM for many off-brand PCs, notably System76. If you are a bit more extreme, you can look at Panasonic Toughbooks: hardened, industrial laptops with plenty of swapable modules.
Framework have the advantage of being thin and light, most modular laptops are on the big side. It means it fits a niche. However, if re-usability is your goal, keep in mind that it is a startup, it may fail, and if that happens, forget about support and spare parts. By comparison, Lenovo is not going anywhere.
17 inches, a 144hz screen,GTX 1650, 512 GB SSD and space for 2 more!. You can add a 4 TB HD, a 1GB SSD, and change the RAM to 32 GB and get a monster machine for about 1200 USD.
With a Clevo (and other similar brands) you can have even more customization options, although I expect them to be more expensive.
It's a random Amazon customer. This is HN. You and I know that GNU/Linux distros can pass Secure Boot just fine, but someone else may not know, or it may simply be more convenient for them to disable Secure Boot prior to installation.
The Amazon customer was evidently confident enough to flip BIOS settings (or attempt to) but may have not known how to get Secure Boot working properly.
I see I’ve landed so deep in the sea of FUD, beyond my ability to keep my feet dry, but I’ll make one last attempt at spreading actual knowledge.
1. Too guaranteed boot Linux with UEFI Secure Boot OOB without technical fiddling you have to use GRUB signed using keys trusted by Microsoft, like Canonical’s keys. So kinda, yes.
2. Many firmwares allows you to roll your own keys, meaning you don’t have to trust MS or Canonical or anyone else.
So you have the choice between user-friendly (default) or improved security (requires fiddling).
I personally think the default makes sense for most users, and I’m already 200 miles beyond proving that Linux can indeed use UEFI and Secure Boot. That’s an established fact for more than half a decade now.
Not being able to disable those in BIOS won’t prevent you from loading Linux, and it would reflect better on the wider Linux-community if people stopped pushing such FUD.
If I can’t upload my own signing keys to be trusted, it’s as good as useless to me. So, option (2) would be ok, but having to rely on _Microsoft_ to run Linux on my laptop is exactly the sort of scenario everyone was afraid of 20 years ago.
> If I can’t upload my own signing keys to be trusted, it’s as good as useless to me.
I personally haven't seen a computer yet that doesn't allow this. Even if it's not provided the option to disable secure-boot is still available.
Phones are the real problem. As far as I can find only the Pixel phones will allow secure boot with a custom OS. If you own another phone you're already locked in to your manufacturers keys or no keys.
Ubuntu is not Linux. On other distributions secure boot doesn't work out of the box and requires some manual tweaking, like generating a CA, signing kernel and stuff, installing the CA key in the firmware, etc.
I don't like Ubuntu, in fact I consider it the worse Linux distributions (it was good in the old days, nowadays is full of crap like snap packages and commercial stuff).
Also, secure boot will have implications, for example with secure boot enabled you cannot load unsigned kernel modules. That depending on the situations can be a problem (for example a lot of third party drivers, for example the NVIDIA one, works by building a kernel module, you cannot install them, the distribution must provide a binary signed module or you won't be able to use them).
> On other distributions secure boot doesn't work out of the box and requires some manual tweaking
I can’t recall having issues with Fedora, but I’m not 100% on that. I might be wrong.
> Also, secure boot will have implications, for example with secure boot enabled you cannot load unsigned kernel modules.
I mean, that’s kinda the point. You should be able to boot into a kernel you can trust is untampered, and that includes blocking unsigned modules from being loaded.
Let’s face it: allowing that would essentially erase any trust you had built up until that point.
You can always enroll your own keys though?
> for example the NVIDIA one, works by building a kernel module, you cannot install them, the distribution must provide a binary signed module or you won't be able to use them
For Nvidia that’s a bit if a pain, but I’m not a gamer and has always used the open source nouveau drivers instead.
For me secure boot is clearly worth it (much improved security) at near no cost. For you the tally may be different, and I’m ok with that.
I’m just trying to help kill the myth that you can’t UEFI secure boot Linux, because clearly you can. People are doing it every day.
At this point you have to be wilfully ignorant if you still believe you can’t.
But look in this thread: replies upon replies and downvotes en masse on unopinionated, factual posts. Maybe some people really want to remain ignorant? I really can’t tell.
It works only because Linux distributions boot through a MS signed binary called "shim" which allows to import the distro key to allow booting. That's still a much worse experience than with the "root of trust" MS key.
Yes you can boot Linux with secure boot on UEFI as long you use a preloader like shim, graciously signed by Microsoft. That’s what most distribution are doing.
With the access to the UEFI, you can add your own trusted key, without needing to rely on Microsoft good will on signing your preloader.
Yep, it works great. The only caveat is that to load non-mainline drivers (e.g. VirtualBox or Nvidia) you need to enroll a Machine Owner Key (MOK) and then use it to sign the driver. In Ubuntu/Debian the mokutil process is streamlined and "apt install" will automatically prompt you to do it.
Microsoft signed an open source bootloader called Shim, which can run out of the box on any PC. You can use Shim to load your own GRUB2 and set your own keys. Shim is used by Fedora, Ubuntu, and Debian so far. A good writeup is available here https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot
You guys discussing a complete bs review from a technically uneducated person which was called “lamer” long time ago. “1920x1080, but looks a little pixelated” seriously can’t you just tell for sure what resolution do you have in OS?
Acer does not sign it’s laptop BIOSes and it is trivial to read it and unlock/unhide all possible options with ready to use GUI applications from BIOS vendors. This is what people doing for decades, and for Thinkpads you will need a flash programmer and hex editor.
So even if there is secure boot lock which i highly doubt, because no relevant detail was present in the review, you can solve it (hack the device that never meant for whatever you want it to do) at least three different ways and the easiest one is not bugging official support, but ask on forums like win-raid and get your instructions and ready to use bios in pm in several days if he absolutely can’t set UEFI himself.
I wonder what happen with snowflake when he learn that his Tesla top speed and range also software blocked.
Yet there is no other proof beyond that one single Amazon review
I mean I'm all in for some good HN rage but there is no proof beyond that one person. Also no other review mentions this problem (just by searching around). Linux distros can pass Secure Boot just fine but maybe the reviewer just simply didn't know that
Honestly if I were in the US I'd just buy one to test this then send it back to Amazon because I very much doubt it's true
