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Acer sued for shipping Vista-book with GB of memory

Um, where's my graphics mem?

Two Middle Americans have sued Acer over its low-cost Aspire notebooks, claiming that the Taiwanese PC giant pre-installed Windows Vista on machines ill-equipped to run Microsoft's latest OS.

With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world's third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-$600 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory.

In its official "recommended system requirements," Microsoft recommends that an additional 128MB is required to run the Premium incarnation of its latest desktop operating system.

"A notebook pre-installed with Vista Premium requires access to at least 1GB of system RAM plus 128MB of RAM dedicated to the graphics adaptor to run properly," the suit reads. "Acer's Defective Notebooks are inherently defective in that they do not contain enough RAM to properly run Vista Premium...despite being promoted and sold as a bundled product of both a notebook computer and a premium operating system."

Plaintiffs Lora and Clay Wolph purchased their Acer Aspire 4520-5458 notebook at a Wal-Mart in April 2008. Cost: $568.36. Shortly after purchasing, they discovered that "their computer would not run properly and that it experienced numerous 'crashes,' 'freezing,' and was operating very slowly."

Some unnamed "computer professionals" told the Wolphs that extra memory was needed to effectively run Vista Premium, so they complained to Acer. According to their suit - which seeks class action status - a company support rep responded by pointing out that although Microsoft recommended a 1GB requirement, the "minimum requirement" is only 512MB.

Which is true. Microsoft says that the Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions of Vista will run on 512MB systems - with certain OS features disabled. In the beginning, Redmond called these "Vista Capable" machines, and it's facing a separate lawsuit over this potentially misleading moniker.

Eventually, the Wolphs shelled out an extra $157.40 for more memory "so that their notebook would run as marketed, advertised, promoted, warranted, and/or sold by Acer." No word on whether it actually did. But The Reg can confirm than even with an additional 128MB of memory, Windows Vista is nothing more than a dog. ®

Latest Comments

Why?

Why do these places insist of branding laptops and installing extra rubbish software? Thats the problem. Just the OS please!

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NOT AN Acer Aspire One!!!!

its a Acer Aspire 4520-5458 its a NOTEBOOK not a NETBOOK and uses standard so-dimm DDR2 you can buy a 2GB stick for $16 on newegg

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Vista laptop...

I have a cheap Vista H. Premium running 2GB ram. As soon as I bought it, I formated the whole of the HDD, reinstaled Vista off the DVD and installed only the software I need, no dodgy stuff for me...

That was almost 2 years ago. Never had any problems with it as there are no crapware programs, no AV shit, only use AVG free and it works like a dream, even better than XP.

For all the Linux apologists, you may be asble to work with it but, for the general public, it is a pain in the ass to work with.

<leaves the room quietly>

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@Paul Chapman

$150 to fit memory to and re-guarantee an Aspire One might be fair enough, but as with Lager and Crisps earlier, you've seen the "book" catchphrase and assumed it must be preceded with "net" rather than "note"... Re-read the article, specifically the section which mentions exactly which model of Acer is involved, and then decide if $150 is still justified.

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In defense of $150 for 1GB

...as anyone will tell you who has actually cracked open an Acer Aspire One, it is not a straightforward process to upgrade the RAM. The spare RAM slot is on the underside of the motherboard... but there's no access port. So the installation process - and it's not hard to find this on the web with video - involves disassembling the entire netbook, disconnecting everything from the motherboard,

Anyone selling a professional service to upgrade RAM for an AAO is guaranteeing the purchaser of the service against damage to their RAM *and* their Netbook - i.e. over $400 of kit. The RAM may only cost $50 but the extra $100+ is well-earned danger money.

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