Acer 5920 - which Acer software is useful?

I've an Acer 5920 and I've replaced the Acer OEM Vista Home Premium with a full Microsoft Version of Vista Home Premium with SP1. It worked well. However I now have a list of Acer Downloads (22 in all) that obviously went with the original Acer installation (and ate up lots of memory, I now have 14% more free memory and things run faster). So which of the Acer programs are essential?

I've had to use the Touchpad driver to make that work and I've installed the Crystal camera driver (but can't find the software to display the output). I didn't have to install the Intel 965 graphics driver as Vista update did that.

I've no need for e-Recovery and so on. But what does the rest do? And which should I install?

Any help appreciated.

 

IMHO you canno't mess with a lappie like that.

Stands for Acer or any other brand out there.

Lappies work best when the user understands them and is cautious when just changing things at random.

Hence this forum. You should have asked questions before bulldozing ahead.

Now I canno't help you. Maybe somebody else can.

Cheers,
Theo

 

Launch manager is the only ACER software on my PC...

 

I don't know if this will help....

I have an Aspire 3050, and like most Acers, it came with lots of programs that are junk, or an OS that you don't like (Windows XP MCE in my case).

I formatted it and installed a clean barebones version of Windows XP SP2 on it, then went to the website to get the drivers for Windows XP (for you its vista, http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_5920.html)

In your case, you installed a clean OS and got the drivers. I don't think I ever installed any 'Empowering Technology' sets, just because the need never came up.

 

Hi dms05,

Most of the crap wares which were pre-installed with Acer notebooks are not so useful. The only tool you need is launch manager. If you plan to reformat the 5920 try not to use the drivers provided by Acer. Most of the drivers on their support site were obsolete version. You may refer this post for find updated drivers ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=250174)

 

IMHO, the only Acer soft that you need is Launch Manager, the rest is all resource eating C**P

Regards

 

very correct.... good work ELBUBI

 

What does launch manager do? I currently have uniblue blocking it from my startup programs. Should I allow it?

 

Launch Manager allows you to control "Hot Keys" like enable/disable sound/touchpad/lcd as to adjust volume. (Fn + F1,F2,etc)

Later

 

Thanks you guys. I'd agree with you the comments about C**pware.

This is what I did and what happened. In the end I hardly need anything from Acer.

I installed a fresh version of Vista Home Premium that included SP1. It overwrote the C: drive but left all my data on my D: drive. It also took out one of the two hidden partitions. As the basic drivers were installed by Vista my 5920 connected to the Internet and Updated the Vista and drivers. After the usual cycling 3 times practically all the latest drivers were installed, the exception was the one for the Synaptics Touchpad - so I downloaded the SP1 version from Acer.

Problems? Just one really - after all the Updates etc Vista Aero wouldn't run. This was because the system need reindexing and you do that through Control Panel>Performance>Reindex (mine showed 'new hardware installed'). After that all was well.

I haven't installed Launch Manager. The Fn keys control the screen brightness without it and the volume control works through it's hardware.

Advantages - before, with my own programs in place I had 57% of my 2 GB memory in use, now that's 37%. Opening Vista is now very much faster and closing down takes about 10 seconds comapred to 50 before. And everything works.

 

The hotkeys are working without the launch manager..at least for me..aspire 5715z.

 

Yeah right, I did not express myself accurately .

Mine´s works too without LaunchManager, but Hotkeys like "Mail, Web, etc" only work with LM installed. Besides, LM gives OSD info every time you use a Hotkey or lowering-raising volume (pretty Onscreen Display). At least in my 7720 works like that . In my opinion, it´s worth it.

Regards


P.S: In my case, the side scroll that controls volume, only works with LM installed. The other hotkeys (Fn + X) works without it, except those mentioned (Web, Mail, E-Cr*p, etc), and of course without OSD. Cheers

 

Oh, right, I really miss this info..and I was wondering what is going on, why it's not showing..I guess I might install the launch manager after all..

 

launch manger should be all you need all other drivers can be found at manufacture sites (newer veriosn too) though some people seem to have issues with the built in webcam

 

you only need lunch manager for media keys and email,webb buttons.
and if you don't have them then you don't need it
so delete all the junk.
Phil

i had trouble with the web cam for about 20seconds when i got my laptop.and all i did was stop all the software from using it (msn,yahoo im and windows movie maker).
then went back over each one resetting them.
using each ones set-up wizard

 

hoggie - good point about the webcam.

On the Acer Euro website they list a number of drivers for the Crystal Eye. I initially loaded the 'bison' driver and the webcam didn't work. I then tried the (correct) driver called 'CCD_suyin_v#_vista_sp1' and all was OK.

However I did find that some sites that use a webcam found and used the Crystal Eye without me loading anything, it was only when I wanted to use the webcam in some applications like Skype that I needed the Acer software.

 

I don't use any of the preinstalled stuffs. The first thing i did after making recovery discs is, that i formatted my entire hdd with hidden partitions merged, and installed a fresh os. Less problem, higher speed