Notebooks & Netbooks

[cwatkin]

I recently purchased an Acer C710 and figured I would be able to load Windows by reflashing the BIOS or similar.  I looked at various ways of emulation under Linux or flashing with Coreboot.  The problem with Coreboot is that not all features work properly under Windows or Linux for that matter.  I came up with a very simple and elegant solution that will allow my Acer C710 to become an AO756 without compromise for between $10-20.

Since the C710 and AO756 are essentially the same, the motherboards are completely interchangeable.  I am going to pruchase an AO756 motherboard for $50 or a little more off eBay and do the swap.  Then I can sell the C710 board for $40 or so to recoup some of my costs.  I have replaced a fried AO756 motherboard in the past and it wasn't a big deal.  Another nice thing is that the replacement board comes with a 1.4 GHZ CPU while the stock C710 comes with a 1.1 GHZ CPU so this is a slight upgrade too.

I will just keep the packaging when my new MB arrives and use it to ship out the C710 board.

[cwatkin]

I just replaced the motherboard in my C710 with a pull from an AO756.  It works like a champ except that the touchpad doesn't work with Windows and you must use a USB mouse of some kind.  This doesn't really bother me as I thought the touchpad on this stunk anyway and I always used an external.  It appears that Google uses proprietary mouse hardware in their Chromebooks for some reason.  I have read that this is very common.

Conor