Acer Aspire S7-392 (Haswell) Owners Lounge

Download and install the touchpad drivers off of synaptic website. I just tried it and the greyed out options from before are working. Everything else is working also.

 

Running into some wifi issues. Mainly range, speeds seem to crash when I get more than about 25 feet from my router. Any suggestions? I'd like to use it in my room more so I want to resolve this. Does Intel have updated drivers.

Also, I noticed the backlight buzz people are talking about. Doesn't seem that noticable though, only really if I bend close.

 

I downloaded these drivers and it's working, as the previous poster mentioned. All options are available including the freaking Edge Swipe. Now I can get rid of the charms bar (swipe). This was hidden in the Acer driver.

 

Download the driver only package for 64bit.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/De...loadType= Software Applications

 

Thanks for the link! I hope this helps

 

Let us know.
I'm looking to get one since Sammy is taking too long.

Sent from a different Galaxy using Tapatalk 2.

 

Yep it appears those drivers fixed my issue for the most part, judging from several runs of speedtest in various locations of my house.

Edit: speeds in my basement are still quite bad, but I don't use it down there much so it's not a big deal.

 

Yes, that is always the best part of having a Synaptics Trackpad..you can get the software directly from them which is usually light years ahead of the manufacturers.

 

everything that was hidden/greyed out in the acer driver is re-enabled when you turn off "zoomperfect" in the synaptics settings. However, this removes the amazing zooming from Internet Explorer. The new synaptic drivers do not have "zoomperfect" anymore, just the acer ones. It appears you can disable zoomperfect, change settings, and re-enable zoomperfect, but i'm not totally sure if they actually apply.

 

It appears that having zoomperfect on forces reverse scrolling. saywut?

 

Just as a quick warning to those s7 392 owners out there -- don't turn on Intel Smart Connect Technology (the application that periodically wakes the laptop from sleep for notifications and updates). I turned it on and the laptop got very hot and very battery intensive pretty quickly.

 

How do we make the keyboard "backspace" faster? It's painfully slow for me.

 

Hey can we talk if you not interested in the S7. Really need the unit for grad school. Please PM me! Thanks!

 

This is my first post I watched this board for the past few days before pulling the trigger to purchase this and before I did much of anything I immediately installed the driver for both the track pad and wifi. So being that this is Day 1 with this device I hope I won't have to experience any of the issues described. So thank you to everyone who posted the information and links. This laptop is the best looking computer I've ever owned and the leather pouch case it came with was a much needed surprise/bonus. Hopefully I am still in love a few months from now.

Windows 8 is some getting used to but I've customized this to where it is comfortable enough for me to use.

 

This is not an advertising board- please keep you sales to PMs (if you have PM right already).

 

anyone tried to install windows 8.1 on their acer 892?

 

I am still having some issues typing. It is taking me a bit to get use to the shallow keys but more difficult is the space bar. It feels flimsy and if I don't hit it just right it does not register and my words run together.

 

Give a try at the new google chrome canary. In my opinion it scales better than normal google chrome. I'm using Sony Vaio Pro 13 so the resolution is the same.

 

Yeah the keyboard isn't that good, contrary to what reviewers have said. It's just an improvement over the last S7.

 

I'd have to agree here. I've not only had issues with keys not firing unless you hit them right in the middle, but also my enter key has started to stick (this is after only having it a few days). Apparently, I hit the enter key close to the left edge... which makes sense, why would I stretch any further if I don't have to? But it occasionally gets stuck at an angle and I have to pop it back out. Minor annoyance... for such great specs/form factor, this machine has a lot of those.

Here's a more comprehensive list:

Bad:
- Enter key sticks
- Other keys don't fire unless they're hit on center (notably, arrow keys)
- High-pitched whining from keyboard backlight
- Picking up the laptop from the front-left corner clicks the trackpad button--excessive flex
- Blows hot air on your legs right out that big grille on the bottom
- Mouse occasionally jumps around randomly
- No dedicated function (F1-12) keys
- No dedicated Home/End keys (personal gripe, not many people care it seems)
- For all it's "Haswell", isn't noticeably more power-efficient than any other decent laptop

Good:
- Two SSDs. This is totally awesome. I un-RAIDed them, and now I not only have a more reliable system, but I've installed two OS's without partitioning--one on each drive. Nice. (Doing this will erase both drives, so be prepared for that).
- Beautiful screen.
- Very lightweight.
- Attractive.
- 8GB RAM, where silly Samsung is releasing their flagship with only 4GB.
- Fast. Core i7 (again, Samsung seems to be doing the core i5 first... dumb move).
- Quiet fans (ignoring the keyboard backlight squeal)

For those of you wondering, the two SSDs are, as mentioned, in RAID0 format. This means they share data as one disk. A write operation will put some data on one drive, and some more on the other drive, back and forth, until the file is written. This means that if one drive fails, you lose major parts of that data. I've not personally known any failed SSDs, though, so maybe this isn't an issue. But I've never heard of a laptop in this class having two internal drives. Really cool for those of us that like to experiment with OSs, or need two OSs for whatever reason. Granted, you could just partition the one drive, but in my experience that tends to be a bit messier than just having one OS per drive. (Disclaimer: I run linux on all my laptops, so I don't know anything about installing Windows or OS X)

 

good summation. I don't have the left corner trackpad issue.

any luck with graphics drivers on linux?

 

Not yet, although the guys at #intel-gfx on freenode have been very helpful. They seem to think it's a bug that apparently got fixed, then they reverted that commit for some reason. I'm delving into that today. It should be noted that you apparently NEED linux kernel 3.11 in order for the wifi to work. Something about API level 7 vs. 6, and of course that .ucode file for the 7260. This presents problems with installing distros, because there's only three that have installers with 3.11 out of the box at the moment--Ubuntu Saucy, openSUSE, and Fedora 20... and they're all unreleased as of yet. You can get some daily snapshots and whatnot, though. In a couple months all of this will be moot, hopefully, when 3.11 is actually released and all the distros have caught up with it.

For the moment, I'm running Mint with 3.11-rc5 and openbox, because the Cinnamon desktop is nasty without graphics support... I think I may stick with openbox even after I fix the graphics, though. It's way more configurable than Cinnamon.

 

Good to hear. Which mint did you even get working? I tried 14 and 15 Cinnamon with legacy bios, and neither would boot with nomodeset (flickering display then blackness)

jcarrz1

 

Mint 15. You might try downloading the latest Ubuntu Saucy Salamander snapshot and use nomodeset. Try compatibility mode. You could also try i915.modeset=0 (which should be the same thing), or try it with i915.modeset=1 and pray that it works. Maybe try waiting a little longer after bootup for the OS to load? Also, if you do a Ctrl+Alt+F2, you may be able to see a terminal and do some things there. If you're having trouble getting to GRUB (I was), try holding down left shift during boot. That may get you to the GRUB menu, but if you tried nomodeset on the linux line in grub, you probably aren't having trouble with that. : )

Some LiveUSBs also will let you install in a non-graphical mode.

You could also try Arch. I got Manjaro (which is Arch-based) to boot and install with nomodeset, although I don't know what you'd do to get wifi working there... never actually used it, just installed to fiddle.

If you're still having troubles with that, you might be able to set a file in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ to use a screen of 800x600 (the intel driver works at every resolution but 1920x1080 on my box). I don't know if this is possible in a LiveUSB. But it certainly is on an installed system. Here's my file:

Code:

# In Ubuntu/Mint
# /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf
Section "Screen"
  Identifier      "Screen0"
  DefaultDepth    24
  SubSection      "Display"
    Depth         24
    Modes         "800x600"
  EndSubSection
EndSection

Once you've got an install going, I suggest you install powertop and generate an html report with it, then throw its suggested "tunings" into rc.local. You'll get an extra 30-45 minutes out of your battery at least.

 

wow, thanks for this. I'm downloading the newest 13.10 nightly. I'm curious why the Vaio Pro 13 seems to work with graphics, 4400+1080p.

 

I tried these drivers and they do open up more options in the settings menu, but it's def buggier than the driver that came with the machine.
I'm going back to he Acer driver.

 

Just received mine, its fantastic so far. Typing accuracy isn't perfect but hopefully ill get used to the keys soon. No issues with the touchpad or wifi so im going to leave the drivers alone for now. Boots up in 4-5 seconds....amazing.

Anyone have a guide to tweaking the speaker clarity through the dolby equalizer settings? The speakers have some punch but it lacks depth and bass...

Also about 195 gb free on the harddrive, I know the machines ship pretty lean from Microsoft, but is there any bloatware to be removed?

 

im actually quite impressed with this computer i was going to wait for a lenovo t440s, but after using it i think i am going to stay with this, and i actuallly dont find the keyboard too bad

 

Hi all, I just received my s7-392 and it's such a beautiful machine. The only issue (and this is a big one) is the right shift key (which I use all 90% of the time) is not registering keystrokes/presses. It's rediculous in that it works sometimes but not others, i.e. 50% of the time). I write for a living so this is a huge issue. I don't want to take the machine back to the microsoft store, is this a software fix or hardware? any idea how Acer's warranty repair is? I used to have an Asus and it was painful with repairs. Any guidance appreciated. thanks!

 

I came across this guide for installing osx. Might try to give it a go in a few days when I have some time.

Temporary Installation Guide for Haswell Systems [10.8.4 only]

 

Okay, I've got a working intel driver now... kinda. : ) At least it display as its native resolution. Here's what I did to my grub:

Code:

# Mint 15, /etc/defaut/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="drm.debug=6 acpi_backlight=vendor i915.modeset=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=0"

The acpi_backlight=vendor bit seems to have solved the "no native resolution" problem, albeit in a roundabout way. You can leave out the drm.debug bit, that's for the intel-gfx guys (it adds a bunch of logging to dmesg output)

And with that xorg.conf.d file, it will start up and use the intel driver properly, but in a low resolution. Getting native resolution requires me to put a startup script in my openbox autostart.sh file, which runs as openbox is loading. Here's that file:

Code:

~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh
# Enable power manager
xfce4-power-manager &
# Enable gnome settings, like system fonts
gnome-settings-daemon &
# Enable ssh-agent system-wide
gnome-keyring-daemon &
# Enable transparency and fading
xcompmgr -cF &
# Disable touchscreen touch control
xinput set-prop 'ELAN Touchscreen' 'Device Enabled' 0
# Start our taskbar (must wait to be sure other stuff has loaded)
(sleep 1.5s && tint2) &
# set resolution to native--do this well after everything has loaded, or things act funny
(sleep 2s && xrandr -s 1920x1080)

Phew! Native at last! As an added bonus, because we're using acpi_backlight=vendor, we can use the xbacklight program (available on apt-get) to set our backlight and not stare at 100% brightness ALL THE TIME. This display is freaking bright. Use it like so:

Code:

xbacklight -set 10 # sets backlight to 10% brightness

And now everything functions finally! Wooo.... kinda... except there is one more problem. When I close the lid and open it from sleeping, it goes back to the lower resolution. Sigh. So close. Maybe I can set a post-wakeup script to do another xrandr -s 1920x1080.

Having control over the brightness also has the lovely side effect that the battery life is now probably around 6-7 hours instead of 5. : D

This is _clearly_ a bug that needs remedied, and shouldn't require all of these acrobatics. Requiring kernel 3.11 is no big deal, that'll get sorted out. I just hope they support the wifi out of the box in 3.11--instead of us always having to copy that ucode file in.

Now to file bug reports to the intel-gfx guys to get this display sorted.

 

Guys Iam getting only 5 hours of battery, browsing, email and brightness at 50%. Do you guys know how can I extend it to the promised 7 hours?

Thanks lot

 

i'm about to try this. why does mint 15 have xfce4 power manager? or did you add?

i'm so glad about brightness. In a clean install of windows 8, the "full" brightness looks about half. upon wake from sleep or a fresh boot, it's 100% brightness, then if you adjust down it'll only let you get back up to halfish. annoying. I'm very disappointed that I didn't create windows recovery usb.

BUT WHO CARES, linux.

 

One thing about Chrome...
The OS is defaulting to 150% scaling in Desktop which is throwing Chrome off.
When I switched scaling to 125% Chrome works perfectly now. Looks great and scrolls great.
To change scaling...
- Right click anywhere on your desktop
- Click "Screen Resolution"
- Click the link that says "Make Text and other items larger or smaller"
- Choose 125%.

 

FWIW...Amazon is now showing the S7 back in stock at a price of $1560 for 256/8GB.

 

You have to turn off adaptive brightness in power options/display settings which gets turned on by default.

 

EDIT: I found a solution that doesn't require changing the desktop resolution. This way other apps stay a reasonable size.

-Open File Explorer
-Open C: drive
-Open Program Files (x86)
-Open Google
-Open Chrome
-Open Application
-Right click chrome
-Select Properties
-Select the Compatibility tab
-Check Disable display scaling on high DPI settings
-Click Apply
When you reopen Chrome the browser bar will be smaller but sharper. You may want to go to Chrome settings and change the default zoom size.

 

Genius! Thanks a lot. Do you have any tips regarding battery life?

Thanks again

 

I added the power manager. I just like it. I opted out of using Cinnamon, after being a diehard Cinnamon fan for the past two years.. simply because it consumed the entire CPU on software rendering mode, and openbox didn't chew hardly a cycle of the CPU. I dunno why Cinnamon is so resource-hungry. Anyway, after being forced into openbox, I kinda like it better now.. so I'm cobbling together all of the "normal" desktop environment apps that I like in it--since it's just a window manager.

Good luck with your install!! I hope it goes well. Feel free to message me if you need some help. Hopefully our computers are the same...! Or at least you have an easier time of it than I did. Actually, I hope you don't have the native resolution issues, so you can help me. : )

 

Has anyone encountered a problem where the touchpad cannot scroll after starting up from hibernation or sleep? It seems random and I've used both Synaptic and Acer drivers... I haven't narrowed down the issue or been able to replicate it. Restarting the computer fixes it.

 

Yes... happens to me too. Randomly.

 

Made an interesting observation today. I was typing a paper at school on their wifi, using office 365 university, and for some reason I couldn't connect to my Skydrive. Anyway, as I was typing I was getting terribly laggy response on my keyboard. I thought it was just the S7's keyboard, but then when I went home and was able to connect to Skydrive, the input lag went away completely. Very odd. So if anyone is experiencing slow typing like this, it could be software related.

 

Anyone notice an issue with the space bar? I am assuming this is an isolated issue. It does not respond unless I hit it center and hard. Everything else seems to be perfect expect for that keyboard backlight noise that other people mentioned but I only notice that if I am looking for it.

 

Yes, I've typed a few lines and missed the space bar. To me, the keyboard isn't good and I'm a decent typist.. never had to retype so many times before this.

 

I am a two finger typer and nearly every sentence has a mistake....especially with the space bar. Even though I have had the machine for 2.5 weeks I still am making a lot of mistakes.Glad to hear I am not alone w/this issue.

 

It's especially hard to get used to if you use a mechanical keyboard on your desktop. Man when I went back to that keyboard it felt like heaven haha. I feel like the keyboard is decent enough on the S7, but far from perfect.

 

For real, the keyboard on the Acer s7 is junk. I almost prefer the first gen 391's keyboard over the 392. If you are going to make a $1k+ machine, make sure the keyboard and trackpad are high qual, or don't even bother...it can't be that hard to reproduce an apple quality keyboard / trackpad can it? bunch of monkeys...

 

Haha! I have to say though, I do love the trackpad. It honestly feels like a MacBook trackpad to me. Mine is very responsive and smooth to use. It's interesting, because I feel like plastic key keyboards are easier to type on, even though the aluminum on the S7 does look great, it seems to feel more heavy and slow than Chiclet keyboards with plastic keys.

 

Sucks to hear about the keyboard issues. That's a big time deal breaker for me.

Sent from my GALAXY NOTE II

 

Has anybody tried to connect their laptop to their TV through HDMI? I am having a overscan issue (where the edges are cut off on the TV) but their are no scaling options in the hd graphics control panel. The only scaling option I can find is maintain aspect ratio but I can't even uncheck that.