I've bought an Acer Swift 3 (
SF315-41) 2 months ago and I've not been able to use it to my satisfaction given a number of problems.
TL;DR:- The latest versions (plural) of Windows 10 are incompatible (according to Microsoft support) with the latest drivers available for this laptop.
- Acer support won't tell me if the issue is known by their technical team or when a solution will be available if ever so I'm posting this here.
- The latest Windows 10 version compatible with this computer is (again according to Microsoft) 1703 (Creators Update), the next version after that one (1709 (Fall Creators Update)) was released to the public on October 17 2017 so it's going to be a year next month, to add to that Microsoft has released another version this year and is planning on releasing 2 more before the year is out.
Complete history:1st thing I did was install Linux on it and that prove to be imposible to get working in a stable manner (see my posts
here,
here and finally
here in which I convince myself it won't work)
2nd After failing with Linux I went back to Windows 10 (the OS I was forced to buy when I bought the laptop and the only OS Acer customer service would care to give support for), it worked fine except it updated itself as Windows likes to do and now the computer would freeze after doing some seemingly unrelated things:
- It freezes if I open the default "Photos" app that Windows 10 has for viewing images.
- It freezes after some time if I open the BattleNet app and decide to install a game.
- It freezes if I open a specific chat on WhatsApp web.
- I'm pretty sure the list goes on.
I contacted Microsoft support about this and this is what they had to say about it:
Your device is compatible with 1703 build not with the 1709 & 1803 build update and that is the reason your device is crashing again and again.
We need to install the older build of Windows 10 which is 1703 and we can disable the updates.
After that you need to contact with the Acer to get the latest and compatible drivers to install the further updates and run your device smoothly.
After going back to Windows 10 1703 and disabling the automatic updates by turning off some services the computer finally works fine, except now I get no updates nor fixes from Microsoft at all so I contacted Acer to ask them if they where aware of the issue since according to Microsoft support:
It's not only who is facing this issue with Acer laptop there are lot many other customers also those who have the Acer Laptop they are also facing such issue because of the drivers.
The Acer customer service, both over chat and on the phone (30 min long distance call), utterly failed to answer me and they said they couldn't tell me when the issue was going to be resolved if ever and not even if the issue was known and as widespread as Microsoft claims.
I'm posting here as my last resource and to let people know that my 2 months old computer has become "Incompatible" with the latest Windows 10 version and as a result is unable to receive updates for the only OS it has official support for and it actually works with.
