Some notes on the ACER AO522 netbook (the first AMD C-50 laptop out AFAIK)…

Upgrading the memory: There are posts elsewhere on the internet saying to take a screwdriver to the top-right corner of the laptop and pry off the keyboard. DO NOT DO THIS. The keyboard is fit very tightly and i do not see a way to do it without marring up your laptop. You do have to remove the keyboard to get to the memory though. Here’s how:

1. remove the battery
2. open the notbook; turn it over
3. look into the battery cavity; towards the right there in a square hole in the plastic with metal flush behind it – this is the bottom of your keyboard
4. push on the metal with something dull (I used the butt end of a pen) until the kayboard releases; note: don’t use the jewelers screwdriver you have in your hand! the metal is thin (almost a foil) – I broke it my first attempt (keyboard still works luckily)
5. flip laptop over; finish prying out keyboard
6. remove the 4 screws under the keyboard w/ a (1) next to them
7. push in the (2) hole w/ something blunt to pop off the bottom panel
8. install memory
9. reassemble (johnny 5?)

As for linux compatibility (using Ubuntu 10.10 AMD64):

• installer uses the wrong screen resolution, but otherwise completes fine
• broadcom wireless worked fine after restricted driver install; note: I had to push the Fn-{wireless} key to turn it on on first boot (although it stays on through power cycles)
• ATI graphics worked fine after restricted driver install; although there is an “unsupported hardware” overlay in the lower-right corner (probably will go away when Ubuntu updates catalyst driver); OpenGL works well (tested w/ WebGL in Google Chrome
• sound works fine
• ethernet works fine
• webcam works fine
• suspend does NOT work (graphics driver?) (UPDATE: works; see below)

Overall I like it – assuming the suspend issue gets resolved shortly. The high-resolution screen is a very welcome improvement over every other netbook out there. (darn you Intel w/ your arbitrary hardware restrictions!) CPU-wise it is moderately faster than my Lenovo S10 (Intel Atom) at “open all in tabs” (17) from Google Chrome. GPU-wise it blows it out of the water (as expected). Battery did last in the range of 6h last night and this morning w/ heavy usage. (installing packages and updates mostly)

Will update as I discover more.

UPDATE: Hibernate works!

UPDATE 2: I installed the ATI Catalyst driver v11.2 and the watermark is gone. And suspend/resume works. Everything works now as far as I can tell. A very nice little laptop.