Hello Bill14, Picked up the Acer V5 for semi work horse, I have use many of ACERs toys and found yes the support and actual hardware within is not always what is avertized, (their fall back is "depending on the Model, which takes in to account what month it was actually manufactured) This said for the most part once you get past the pre loaded stuff and for me it is easy since i do not beleieve in the warenty thingy.
also wish to preferance this with I upgrade my RAM to 8gigs, and replaced the sata drive with a 500 SSD drive, Neither of these where fix/cause just help point out some things.
I had the issue with the wireless timeing out, and first though was the power management (something I always do is remove the system from managing the power requirements (on/off/sleep) of MY laptop, How ever this had no affect, moved on to downloading the driver there latest when I uninstalled the pre-loaded and resinstalled the newest the V5 could not connect to any wireless network, (so went looking if you click on the show all drivers you will see many, you could pick and choose, one might work, I tried a few different combinations but none worked). However fun stuff because I updated to the SSD and I pre-order the windows 8 pro(win 8 is pre loaded) and always a good idea to re-load for extra benifits of the SSD (not to mention removes all the ACER/Microsoft Preloaded memory hog stuff) So loading the Disk win8 64 bit first message which appeared was the WIRELESS driver is not correct for the wireless device?????? so it deleted it (foot note all of ACER wireless newer drivers are wireless and bluetooh suites (which means two blue tooth drivers uninstall the pre loaded blue tooth).
WIN 8 pro up and running no connection to wireless (ps have LAN cable and this was not going to be used as travel Laptop, have ACER Iconia tab w500 for that (also a great little toy) but I dicress I also have normal issue with my in house wirless (some rooms less bars and others no connection) so I purchased a Amped wireless model TAN1 adapter ($40) for the tablet this little jem opened all of my wireless weak/no connection zones. for experimentation I installed it on the V5, you have to disable the internal one (easy way put it in airplane mode). So the AMPED again found the wirless connections, (you then must manually set the wireless connection up the auto connect does not always work correctly) I was then connect to my home wireless net and had no issues timeout or other wise, even proceed to download 108 updates from microsoft, all went well (took about 30 to 45 min)
Then some fun stuff, since the wireless was working for the AMPED, decided to retry the the imbedded Athos wireless, disabled the AMPED removed it from the usb then turned airplane mode off, the Athos found the wireless connections again, now I did a manually set up of the "Preferred Wireless" a windows thing basically set up my home wireless connection, have to reenter the security key and preferances, but once done I could now connect to my home wirless using the ACERS V5 athos wireless device, with no connection time outs left it connect overnight used it first thing in the morning worked fine.
Now you may not want to upgrade to win8 pro, or get the AMPED adapter, suggest try this (this worked on another acer model which also had wireless issues) put the wireless device in airplane mode, remove the blue tooth and wireless drivers, (would not hurt to remove the wireless device in device management) connect through the LAN cable download latest driver .225, extract it to the a folder on the laptop(do not install) power off the V5 not sleep/hibernate, remove battery pack(quarentees no keep alive processes) re-install battery pack, power on, once up if it did not self locate do a search for devices, if it does not find the wireless select from list, select the wireless device, then when requested for driver location point to where you extracted the download. Once driver loaded go to network connections, do a manually set wireless connection, enter you home network, with security preferances and key (this will be the "prferred" connect) with luck should be good to go.
Best of Luck!
i really need help over here..
United States