Testing the Intel X25-M 80 GB Postville’s performance on the 8371

Published on January 15, 2010 in hardware. 0 Comments

Encouraged by a comment on my previous post about my Acer TravelMate TimeLine notebook, I have benchmarked my Intel X25-M 80 GB Postville solid state drive using IOzone. My results are as follows:

Iozone: Performance Test of File I/O
        Version $Revision: 3.308 $
        Compiled for 64 bit mode.
        Build: linux

O_DIRECT feature enabled
Auto Mode
File size set to 262144 KB
Record Size 4 KB
Record Size 64 KB
Record Size 512 KB
Command line used: iozone -I -a -s 256M -r 4k -r 64k -r 512K -i 0 -i 1 -i 2
Output is in Kbytes/sec
Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
Processor cache size set to 1024 Kbytes.
Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
File stride size set to 17 * record size.
                                                  random  random
    KB  reclen   write rewrite    read    reread    read   write
262144       4   38211   42784    46048    45918    8684   37782
262144      64   69923   77192   115359   113808   91553   74527
262144     512   77909   60055   220997   221988  204858   77677

Through Google I found comparable benchmarks. This one was posted on the Ubuntu Forums. It should be noted that this is a 160 GB X25-M, the poster mentions that his one is a ‘G2’ which means that it’s a second generation one with the Postville code name like mine. Probably the greater amount of storage would have some benefit for performance, but I’m not sure. These numbers are taken from the benchmark without TRIM. If I understand correctly it doesn’t matter if you use an X25-M with the latest firmware which supports TRIM (like I do), because there is no support for it in Linux/Ubuntu yet and it looks like it won’t be in the next Ubuntu release either. With Google or in that topic you can find an explanation on how you could use a recent version of hdparm and some kind of trick to use TRIM, so that’s how that poster probably got his follow-up benchmarks with TRIM. I didn’t bother because I think I’d rather wait until the support for TRIM is mature enough for it to work out of the box. The poster used an HP Elitebook 8530p with an Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 CPU and 4GB DDR2-800 RAM.

                                                  random  random
    KB  reclen   write rewrite    read    reread    read   write
262144       4   55854   61601    77975    77408   18740   37199
262144      64  102575   87223   200613   201029  141870   70205
262144     512  110951   93840   244588   242498  233184   95013

I found a second post with benchmarks on another forum, but unfortunately no more than that. In the specific post I just linked it’s not mentioned, but in an earlier post in the same topic the poster gives the model number of his SSD, INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC, which means he has the same model I have. He posted his benchmarks at 5 December mentioning that it they were made with the most recent firmware. If I recall correctly, that’s still the latest firmware at this moment. So he’s using the same firmware as I am, the first firmware to include support for TRIM. Not sure what system was exactly used for the benchmark, but the poster mentions it’s a notebook. I’ve asked him and I’m waiting for a response.

                                                  random  random
    KB  reclen   write rewrite    read    reread    read   write
262144       4   39360   46785    53897    51421   11412   39529
262144      64   71098   54363   130520   129911   98805   74485
262144     512   81657   78925   207837   210842  218651   81242

So which conclusions can be drawn from this? No definitive. I should also take into account I’m using the EXT4 filesystem on my X25-M in combination with an alpha version of Kubuntu 10.04, which uses the 2.6.32 kernel. Benchmarks done by Phoronix show that with this and other recent kernels EXT4 suffers from performance regressions. The numbers presented by the benchmarks done by the poster  on the Ubuntu Forums leave my X25-M in the dust, but comparing to the last benchmarks doesn’t give such a dramatic difference. The greatest difference can be found in the benchmark with the 4KB blocks (first row). If anyone has a better interpretation of these benchmarks and the context to offer, please comment.

WordPress refuses to allow to upload a .tex file

Published on January 3, 2010 in software. 0 Comments

For my post covering the usage of XeLaTeX I wanted to upload a LaTeX source file, a .tex file, to WordPress’ Media Library. I was surprised to notice that WordPress refused to do this because of a security policy. I posted a topic on the WordPress support forum to ask for help. When that topic had shifted to the archive pages after a day I decided to consult the IRC channel to receive support. Soon I was told that I could use the PJW Mime Config plugin to allow it. All I needed to do was give the file extension and the MIME-type, application/x-tex, to fix the problem. The plugin’s page referred to a few forum topics on the subject which explain why this was done for security reasons. I can understand that, but it’s not a user-friendly solution. It was difficult and time-consuming to figure out why WordPress refused it and how I could solve it.

KDE and Linux are power hogs

Published on January 3, 2010 in software. 0 Comments

Acer claims my TravelMate TimeLine 8371 notebook should deliver over eight hours of battery life. However, that was measured with Windows Vista Business as it’s operating system. I’m using Linux, and because Windows and Linux are different the power consumption should be different as well. The long battery life of 8371 was an important selling point for me, so I decided to measure how much power is consumed by various Linux distributions with PowerTOP.

The distributions I tested were Ubuntu 9.10, Kubuntu 9.10 and the Fedora 12 with KDE. I also wanted to test OpenSUSE 11.2 and Chakra Alpha 4, but while they didn’t work on my 8371. When I tried to boot from the USB flash drives containing the Live systems of those two distributions by using the boot menu you get when press F12 on the 8371, the boot menu froze. My desktop had no problem booting from the USB flash drives with OpenSUSE and Chakra, so I assume my USB flash drives are fine and that it’s Acer’s fault because there is a bug in the BIOS of the 8371. If I’m correct this freezing occured with BIOS 1.18. I haven’t tried this with the latest version, BIOS 1.27, yet. On the other hand, considering that my 8371 had no problems with the Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Fedora Live USB’s, OpenSUSE and Chakra must be doing certain things differently which causes my BIOS to choke on the Live USB’s with those two distributions. I’ve posted topics concerning these problems on the forums of the two distributions here and here. On Chakra’s forum a solution was suggested, I haven’t tried if that works yet. An alternative is to install them with PXE so the network interface (ethernet port) can be used, but I’d rather not do that because it requires more effort. Besides giving the suggested solution a try, I’ll make sure to upgrade to the latest BIOS again. I’ll send Acer an e-mail to ask if they have a changelog of their BIOS versions as well.

Of course I used a common testing methodology for a good comparison. I installed all three distributions to my Intel X-25M solid state drive. I didn’t mess with power management settings, so all settings were at their defaults. As far as I know power management settings are the same for all three, because all dim the display when the computer is idle and reduce the backlight brightness when the notebook is on battery power. I always turned Bluetooth off with the keyboard key combination, because it’s on by default. I have to figure out a way to disable it by default so I don’t have to disable it everytime I start up my notebook, because I never use Bluetooth. I tested with WiFi on and off to see what impact it would have in power consumption. PowerTOP is available in the standard repositories of all three distributions. I made sure to start PowerTOP as root (sudo on Ubuntu and Kubuntu) because it should show more information then. I waited a few minutes to see if the reported power consumption remained steady and then noted it. Besides the X25-M which was used to replace the hard disk drive, my 8371 was completely standard and nothing was connected via USB ports. Measurements were made after starting up the Linux distributions and opening Konsole or the GNOME Terminal immediately, no other applications were started. I didn’t follow any of PowerTOP’s suggestions to save more power, I was interested in how much power the distributions would consume out of the box, without any tweaking. Desktop effects were enabled on all distributions if I remember correctly. One last thing to be mentioned is that all measurements were made while the 8371 was running on battery power, if it’s not PowerTOP won’t even work as far as I know.

Power consumption in W by distribution
Distribution WiFi on WiFi off
Ubuntu 9.10 9,7 8,5
Kubuntu 9.10 11,6 10,3
Fedora 12 KDE 11,1 9,6

Now contrast this with the figure of 5,9 Watt for Microsoft Windows Vista Business 32-bit mentioned here. Adding insult to injury, the 8371 version tested there used a dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 CPU and 4 GB RAM while my 8731 uses a single-core SU3500 and 3 GB RAM. The difference between these CPU’s is notable, because the SU9400 is rated for a thermal design power of 10 Watt while the SU3500 is rated for 5,5 Watt. That’s a difference of 2,6 Watt considering the lowest power consumption I measured with WiFi disabled on Ubuntu 9.10. A difference of almost 30%. And then we haven’t even taken into account the lower power consumption of my CPU and solid state drive!

On the Ubuntu Forums a person who possesses an Acer Aspire TimeLine 3810T (the consumer version of my TravelMate TimeLine 8371, using the same SU3500 CPU) also investigated the power consumption. According to him Ubuntu 9.10 uses 2,4 Watt extra compared to Windows Vista. Another person who replied speculates that the cause might lie in the Linux software because it’s power management is simply not as efficient as in Windows Vista.

Besides that, according to my investigation, there is a very significant difference in power consumption when KDE and GNOME are compared. The only difference between Kubuntu 9.10 and Ubuntu 9.10 is that Kubuntu uses KDE and Ubuntu uses GNOME, so KDE must cause the extra power consumption of 2 Watt. I need to figure out if anything can be done to fix this relatively high power consumption caused by Linux and KDE and what causes it. I will write another post when I know more. Meanwhile I’m disappointed that Linux is inferior when compared to Windows Vista (and by extension probably Windows 7) when it comes to power management.

Using XeLaTeX

Published on December 22, 2009 in software. 0 Comments

According to the WordPress.com Stats plugin which I use on this weblog the search term ‘memoir latex’ is the third most popular search term for my weblog. That, and considering that I’ve got something new to discuss, warrants another blog post on the topic. In my previous post on the subject I gave a paper for Research Seminar 2 as an example. That paper received an inadequate grade and I had to correct it. I have done so succesfully, and while I was working on it I also decided to use XeLaTeX for the improved version of the paper. The PDF document can be found here and it’s source here.

The important change in the improved version of the paper is the use of XeTeX, which is used in LaTeX through the xelatex command. If I’m correct all you need on Ubuntu is the texlive-xetex package. In summary the advantages of XeTeX are that you can very easily use fonts already installed on the system, that you can input Unicode in the source file and the advanced typography features which should result in better looking documents. The ability to use system fonts is very useful, because the ‘old’ method of packaging a font for LaTeX is beyond my comprehension. In the Dutch language the double dot and other diacretical marks are not uncommon, so it’s very useful to be able to input them in a LaTeX document without having to use the special LaTeX ways to get them to show up. I’m not sure if my new document using XeTeX is looking much better than the old one, but I haven’t explored all the options you can give to XeTeX which might improve the result. I’ll have to think about that in the future, possibly that’s food for a new blog post. I like XeTeX and I’m using it for all my LaTeX documents from now on.

The old paper used the Bitstream Charter font, the improved version uses Gentium. Charter was okay, but I think I like Gentium slightly more. Apparently Linux Libertine seems to be a good choice too. The last two fonts can be pulled in by apt-getting the ttf-sil-gentium, ttf-sil-gentium-basic and ttf-linux-libertine on Ubuntu.

Concerning the Memoir class and other things, for my next paper I want to make a better title page, because the current one doesn’t look exciting enough. I’ll also want to use a different section style, because the current section headings are a bit too prominent for me. I’d like to see the numbers of the sections outside of the left margin, just like the chapter style. I the previous post I mentioned that I needed to make a custom citation style for the biblatex package to make it conform to the guidelines for literature references given by the faculty of History of my university. However, the person who graded my paper didn’t seem to care, because one of the stock citation styles which comes with biblatex resembles the guidelines very closely. That’s fortunate, because designing a custom citation style for biblatex is still rocket science for me.

My favorite amateur and fan films

Published on December 19, 2009 in tv and film. 0 Comments

A week ago an amateur Uruguayan filmmaker reached the news because he landed a Hollywood contract after he showed the world his short film titled ‘Panic Attack’. He created the five minute long short film with a $ 300 budget, Hollywood offered him a $ 30 million budget to create a full-blown film. If he can do this much with $ 300, what he could do with $ 30 million would be nothing short of awesome. He made a very impressive short film. But there are more great short amateur and fan made films, so I wanted to mention those on my weblog as well.

Let’s start with another amateur film, titled ‘What’s in the Box?’. This one became a YouTube hit earlier in 2009. It was created by a Dutch student who claims it was done for € 150. According to an interview he was contacted by Hollywood as well.

There are a lot of fan films which are very impressive as well. Escape from City 17 is based on the video game Half-Life 2. Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning is a great parody on Star Trek and Babylon 5. The Star Wars fan film Imperial Military Personnel Stories takes the stormtroopers as it’s subject. Note that the last two fan films are feature length, full blown films.

Films seen in november 2009

Published on December 6, 2009 in tv and film. 0 Comments

Last month I visited the video rental store again and picked up a few films. Like last time I didn’t choose some titles on the spot, but I used a list containing titles which got the approval of the critics, with some exceptions. I don’t want to waste my time watching inferior films. I’ve seen:

All films were good. I had expected a bit more from REC considering the praise it received, I liked it nevertheless. But it might be more controversial for others who don’t like horror movies following the documentary style of The Blair Witch Project.

All I expected from Ong Bak 2 were kick-ass fight scenes and I was not disappointed. However, the rest of the film is merely an excuse or shell for the fighting scenes, and with the addition of a fantasy element it makes the film totally ridiculous. At least the first Ong-Bak had a reasonable story besides the fighting scenes, since then Tony Jaa’s films have gone downhill. There are martial arts films which can score high grades both as a film and as a fighting scene spectacle, as Unleashed for example proves. Tony Jaa should aim for that too.

I don’t have much to comment on the other five films, they were all great. The Other Boleyn Girl was primarily interesting because of the two actresses in the lead roles, but afterwards it aroused my irritation when I read that the film was ahistorical. Contrary to my expectation though. Hunger left a far greater impression on me than The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s a film of little words, but near the end of the film it takes a radical turn with a very long scene of a dialogue filmed with a stationary camera, showering the viewer with a waterfall of words. It’s disturbing to see that people are willing to die for a political cause and out of desperation. The events depicted in the film happened in reality almost thirty years ago, sad to realize that a civilized nation like the United Kingdom didn’t respect human rights not too long ago.

The Swiss minaret ban and islamic hypocrisy

Published on December 5, 2009 in politics. 0 Comments

I agree that the ban on constructing minarets in Switzerland is plain discrimination. Understandably, this has led to indignation in the Islamic world. What I dislike however is the hypocritical holier-than-thou attitude of Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki and the Egyptian mufti Ali Gomaa. According to Mottaki islamophobia is on the rise in Europe and the ban would have ‘far-reaching implications’. It gets ludicrous when he starts taking the moral high ground when he talks about human rights, an excellent example of the pot calling the kettle black. Switzerland’s ban on constructing minarets is nothing compared to Iran’s reputation with religious freedom.

Same goes for Mufti Ali Gomaa who called the ban an ‘insult’ to Muslims world wide. He should first criticize his own country as religious freedom in Egypt is at a very low level. A Coptic Christian righteously calls Gomaa’s comments an ‘insult to Christians’ living in Egypt.

hssssttp://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112924&sectionid=351020101

My Acer TravelMate Timeline 8371 notebook

Published on November 12, 2009 in hardware. 2 Comments

As I wrote in my previous post, I’d write about why I bought this notebook and my experiences with it so far. I’ll also write about the choice of a Linux distribution for the notebook, and about battery life, in two future posts.

Let me start with my criteria. I have already written about my old notebook in the past, and after that I wrote what my requirements were for a new notebook. I wanted a portable notebook which is thin and light, with 13,3 inch as maximum screen size. I wanted long battery life, more than three hours. Performance was less important, I didn’t intend to use it for gaming or anything else which is resource intensive. I also wanted Intel hardware because Intel supports Linux very well. The material choice for the notebook should be modest and sober, a lot of notebooks aimed at consumers pretend to be expensive mirrors because they use ugly shiny plastic in abundance and have glossy displays. The materials used for those notebooks are often easily damaged or scratched as I experienced firsthand with my Fujitsu-Siemens notebook. That was a piece of expensive junk, so I wanted to avoid that for my next notebook. And I didn’t want to spend much money.

Until recently there wasn’t anything on the market which could meet these criteria. There has always been a class of notebooks which could meet them partially, like the X-series Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks for example, but  these were far too expensive, much more than € 1000. When the Intel Atom processor was introduced it was cheap and consumed little energy, but it was mostly restricted to netbooks not larger  than 10 inch. VIA’s Nano processor, meant to compete with the Atom, didn’t show up much in interesting notebooks. So far ARM’s plans to enter the netbook market haven’t been realized either. It finally got interesting for me when Intel decided to introduce the Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) platform, aimed at notebooks which are thin and light with a relatively long battery life and a low price, positioned between netbooks and normal notebooks. Despite the negativity in the last link I provided, fact is that Intel now provides an alternative for those who don’t need the performance and don’t want to pay the high price for the high end ultraportables. AMD launched the Athlon Neo processor to compete, but laptops utilizing those processors fell dramatically short on battery life for me.

The Acer TravelMate Timeline 8371 met all my requirements. According to the specifications it weighs 1,65 kilograms, delivers over eight hours of battery life and it has a 13,3 inch monitor with LED-backlight and a 1366 x 768 resolution. It doesn’t have an optical drive, which is an advantage for me, I don’t need one. I got the 353G32N model, which is the most basic, it uses the SU3500 processor. It’s a single core processor, but that’s fine with me, a dual core processor would consume more energy and I wouldn’t need the extra performance. It comes with 3 GB RAM and a 320 GB hard disk drive. It cost € 531,50 which is great value and only slightly more expensive than most netbooks, if you substract the € 70 you can get with a Windows refund it’s even less.

The TravelMate Timeline 8371 is a business version of the consumer-oriented Acer Timeline 3810T notebook. The consumer version is already unassuming in it’s usage of materials, unlike other consumer notebooks, but the TravelMate version is a real business notebook, and it’s also cheaper than the cheapest consumer-oriented Timeline which sells for € 622,68 at the cheapest. I like the materials and sober black look of the 8371, but I haven’t used it enough to say anything about how durable the materials are. The dimensions of the notebook are exactly right for my backpack, which has a compartment with thicker ‘edges’ offering more protection, probably meant to transport more delicate stuff like notebooks. This compartment has a very small zipper opening and I was worried that my notebook wouldn’t fit through the opening, but fortunately it does.

I don’t have much to say about the touchpad and keyboard, they’re fine. I’m reasonably fast with the touchpad, but it’s still not as convenient as using a mouse. That’s why I intend to learn how to use more keyboard key combinations to issue commands instead of using the touchpad. I’m less positive about the monitor, the vertical viewing angle is very shallow. That might not be obvious at first, but if you don’t look at it exactly straight, colors will be different. I noticed because I use a Dell 2007WFP 20 inch monitor on my desktop PC, which uses an IPS panel. IPS has excellent viewing angles, so the difference in color of the background on my weblog for example quickly caught my eye. If you’re not to picky you won’t notice though. A more serious complaint is that the monitor’s backlighting seems to be flickering sometimes, sometimes I observe the lighting intensity change when it’s displaying a static image. Most of the time I can’t hear the fan when the notebook is in operation, it’s very quiet. But when you start working while the battery is charging, the fan inexplicably starts turning very fast even though the CPU isn’t being stressed. I upgraded the BIOS (I had to use these instructions on Linux) from version 1.13 to the most recent 1.18 to see if it changed anything, but it didn’t. Same goes for suspend which doesn’t work with 1.13 or 1.18 yet. But maybe that should be fixed in the Linux kernel or somewhere else in the software stack?

One of the first things I did after receiving the notebook was replacing the hard disk drive (HDD) with a solid-state drive (SSD), the 80 GB Intel X25-M. The second generation, the ‘Postville’ to be exact, which is an improved version of the first generation. It carries a hefty price tag for 80 GB, € 187. But it is an SSD, which means that it is dead silent, consumes less energy, is more reliable and has a longer life expectancy, but most of all, that it’s fast. The X25-M is the fastest SSD you can get, so it definitely makes a HDD bite the dust. At the moment, a beta version of Kubuntu 9.10 which is not updated to the final release is installed on my 8371, from the moment the splash screen appears after GRUB to the moment KDM appears takes no longer than 2 seconds. My desktop which is equipped with a decent HDD (a Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640 GB for those who’d like to know) and the latest Ubuntu 9.10 takes 15 seconds to do this. I don’t do much data-intensive work with my notebook so the advantage isn’t great, certainly compared to the price, but it’s one of those little things like an extremely fast startup which makes the difference. It would certainly be more useful to replace the HDD in my game PC with an SSD, but then the relatively small amount of storage space would be a problem. Nevertheless, it’s certainly worth it’s money in my notebook.

The process of removing the HDD from the 8371 and replacing it with the SSD was easy, you just turn the notebook upside down and open the hatch on the lower right side. Take out the HDD, attach the SSD to the same mounting mechanism as the HDD, and you’re done. I didn’t go so smooth for me, I wanted to verify if the SSD worked first so I didn’t put the hatch cover back in it’s place before I checked. To my dismay it wasn’t detected by the notebook, and neither was the HDD if I put it back in. I started to panic and put it in and out many times, to no avail. I decided to ask in a forum topic of fellow Timeline owners if they had any problems with replacing the HDD, I was answered that it could not go wrong with a description of the procedure to follow. I had already followed the described procedure, with the exception of closing the hatch with the cover. Apparently the hatch cover was necessary to fix the HDD or SSD in it’s position. Once that was done everything worked fine.

I’ve included a few photo’s which aren’t very good due to my dSLR. Some reviews can be read here and here. Here is the page on Ubuntu’s wiki dedicated to the Acer Timeline series. There are also a few bug reports, one concerning the internal microphone which doesn’t work (never tried to use it myself) which is bug #445614 and bug #429456 concerning the failure to suspend.

Methods of acquiring Windows 7 for a low price

Published on November 12, 2009 in software. 0 Comments

I might not enjoy the € 70 I gained with the refund for my Windows license from Acer for very long. On my gaming PC I use the Windows 7 Release Candidate which could be downloaded for free earlier this year by those who wanted to test Windows 7, but which expires on 1 June 2010. Unfortunately I simply need Windows for my gaming PC, it’s a necessary evil because most games require Windows. Of course I’d rather not hand over even a single Euro to Microsoft, but downloading an illegal version would be unethical.

The lowest price I can find for a Windows 7 license for students is € 49,75 but that’s an upgrade license. The bastards at Microsoft don’t sell normal licenses at lower prices for students, they think every PC must come with Windows so their customers can use an upgrade license. Not in my case, I built my own PC without Microsoft tax and used a pirated version of Windows Vista before I started using the Windows 7 Release Candidate. I’m not proud of not paying for a product which is sold for money, I’d prefer ethical conduct and paying for it, but Microsoft is abusing their dominant market position and charges far too much for Windows with their ridiculous profit margins (85% in fact).

Prices for an OEM license of Windows 7 Home Premium start at € 77. Curious, because I received a refund of € 70 for an OEM license of Windows Vista Business. Assuming prices are similar for Windows 7 and Windows Vista, it’s strange to see that the comparable Windows 7 edition, called Windows 7 Professional, starts at € 108 for an OEM license. Acer pays less for  a Windows license than the normal consumer does. You might say that’s common sense because it’s normal to get a discount if you buy in large volumes, but keep in mind that both the OEM license Acer gets and the OEM license you get if you buy it as a consumer are exactly the same, and that the marginal cost to produce software is very close to zero. There should be no reason for OEM licenses sold to large computer manufacturers to be a whopping 35% cheaper than the license you buy as a consumer. In other words, Microsoft deliberately disadvantages you if you don’t buy your Windows together with a computer from a large manufacturer.

I sent an e-mail to Microsoft’s helpdesk to ask if there is a cheap option for students to get Windows 7 if you can’t use an upgrade license. They said there is no such option. The best legal option which I think is left is this: buy the Windows 7 Professional upgrade license for the student price of € 49,75 and then buy a retail or OEM license of Windows 2000 to be able to use the upgrade license. Windows 2000 is old and therefore relatively cheap, I’ve seen it offered for € 12,50. That would put the total price at € 62,25, lower than the refund I received.

On the other hand I could make an single exception in my ethical conduct when it comes to Microsoft. Even if I’d do that, I’d still be morally superior to everyone who pirates movies and music, I’d pay for everything except Windows. If Microsoft is an unethical company towards the world, why should I be ethical towards them? You’ve got to fight fire with fire. I’ll just get a pirated version of Windows 7. To compensate for my sin, I’d donate the money I got with the Windows refund to various free and open source software projects. I’m very tempted to choose for the latter choice.

Getting a Windows refund from Acer in the Netherlands

Published on November 12, 2009 in hardware and software. 5 Comments

In September I bought an Acer TravelMate Timeline 8371 notebook. In a following blog post I’ll write about my motivation for buying it and my experiences with it, but this first post will be dedicated to describing the troubles I had to weather to receive a refund for the Windows license. As a Linux user I use Linux as operating system, so I didn’t want to pay for the Windows license which comes bundled with my notebook. Buying another notebook which comes with a Linux distribution pre-installed was not an option, because I specifically wanted the TravelMate Timeline 8371. Not only that is my motivation, but I also hate Microsoft for their business practices, so every opportunity to prevent them from making money is a welcome one.

First I verified that others were successful in getting refund, as a Google search on ‘acer windows refund’ revealed that a Belgian Acer customer received a refund. Belgium is not the Netherlands of course, but it’s close. Even if no one had been successful yet, I would have been prepared to file a lawsuit. Before ordering the notebook I sent an e-mail to Acer to ask if it was possible to get a Windows refund. I received an answer on 14 September, stating that it is not possible ‘because Windows is pre-installed’. Of course the person who wrote this answer is ignoring that the Windows End User License Agreement does give the customer the right to ask for a refund.  I decided to call Acer. The person who received my call initially told me as well that it wasn’t possible, but after insisting that it was possible because I found testimonies on the Internet, he decided to ask a colleague who confirmed that it was possible. He told me that merely € 15 would be refunded though. No worries, it was a matter of principle for me anyway. He told me about the procedure: I shouldn’t unbox the notebook and send it to Acer at my own cost.

After confirming that Acer would grant the request for a refund, I ordered my notebook, which cost me € 531,50. It was sent to me on 18 September. When I received it, I called Acer again for details on the procedure. After being put through three times (!), I finally got someone on the line who was able to help. He told me the procedure was slightly different than I was told before, it wasn’t necessary to keep the notebook unboxed (I did sent it to Acer in it’s unboxed state though, anyway) and I would be refunded € 70 for Windows Vista Business (it’s a TravelMate, a notebook targeted at business customers). All I would have to do is send the notebook along with a form I needed to fill in to request the refund. So far so good, the € 70 instead of € 15 was a lot more reasonable and apparently capable people work at Acer’s helpdesk as well, besides the nitwits who aren’t informed of the procedures.

On 23 September I sent my notebook to Acer, I noticed it was received by Acer the following day according to the the track & trace system of the package delivery company. On 30 September I received a voice mail from Acer, asking where the bill of my purchase of the notebook and the form were. According to the instructions I had to include a copy of the bill with the form to request the refund, which I did. I had placed them in an envelope which I had attached to the package containing the notebook with adhesive tape. So the same day I called back and told a colleague of the person who spoke in my voice mail that the the bill and form were inside the envelope attached to the package containing the notebook. The fact that they had to ask me where they could find it worried me, so on 1 October I called again to verify if they had found it. The person who received my call said it would be investigated and that I would be called back tomorrow. The next day I they didn’t call me back. I called again on 6 October, and after being put through I was told again that I would be called back ‘soon’. I began to realize their definition of ‘soon’ is out of touch with reality, and when by the next day I still hadn’t received a call by afternoon I decided to call myself. Without the need to put me through the person who received my call told me they had found the form and bill and that the notebook would be sent back to me again. I had my fears after experiencing the abominable performance of Acer’s helpdesk so far, but after this I thought the whole ordeal would have a happy end after all.

My hopes were premature, as I discovered the hard way on the following day, 8 October. When I saw the package, I noticed the package as well as the envelope had never been opened. All they had done was attach a report of the repair center on the package, stating under ‘Diagnose/Repair details’ that ‘The OS installed without problems, no problems found’. I was totally gobsmacked, dumbstruck, dumbfounded, not knowing whether I should laugh, cry or become enraged. Not only did this pretended ‘diagnose’ have nothing to do with my request for a Windows refund, apparently they thought that if the notebook was never unboxed there wouldn’t be any problem with it. The moron at the repair center didn’t notice the envelope at the package, or more likely they were too rigid in their procedure or too lazy to open it, because I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have noticed it. The moron at the helpdesk lied to me, or possibly misinterpreted the information, when he told the envelope was found. Acer really crossed the line this time, they had already wasted two weeks and too much of my time without being capable to do a simple task.

Back to calling the helpdesk I thought. The first person I got on the line put me through, and I had to select a choice in a spoken menu. After selecting my choice nothing happened, and I was somehow routed back to the main spoken menu which you always get to hear first if you call the helpdesk. Again I tried to get to someone on the line through the usual menu choices to get support for my TravelMate, but this time it was too busy and I had to call back, the recorded voice told me. I called a second time later that day, and I tell the whole story to the other person on the line. After she said she finally understood the problem, I was suddenly disconnected. The only cause of this which I can think of would be that the person on the other end of the line accidentally or deliberately pressed the disconnect button, it wasn’t my Internet connection (I use VoIP telephony). At this moment I was seething with anger, but called for a third time. Fortunately the person who received my call didn’t put me through and easily understood my problem. He told there had been an error in communication, he gave me a new RMA-number and sent me a UPS-label so the notebook would be sent to the repair center again at Acer’s cost. He told me I had to sent the envelope separately instead of attaching it to the package. He put me in the waiting line for a few minutes to finish handling the case, but before he could speak to me again, I was once again rerouted somehow to the main spoken menu. So for the fourth time I called again and told the connection was cut, I was put through again. I asked to which address I should send the letter, and I knew enough.

I called UPS to make an appointment to collect my package and sent the form and bill to Acer. This time they received the package on 14 October, and they sent it back on 15 October if I’m correct. The repair center’s report stated this time that the partitions and license were removed and the system was sent back, as it should be. The following week I was called by Acer again to ask for my bank account number so they could deposit the refund there. A few days after the phone call I still hadn’t seen a transfer of the refund to my bank account, and decided to contact Acer again through e-mail and the phone. My efforts to get the question answered how long it would take for the refund to reach my bank account proved to be fruitless because the helpdesk was clueless and incompetent once more to make a long story short. In the end I decided to be patient, and after waiting some time longer I finally noticed € 70 transferred to my bank account by Acer on 30 October. € 70 on a total price of € 531,50 is 13,2%, quite a notable amount of money.

The moral of the story? If you persevere you win, 1 – 0 for me versus the evil empire called Microsoft. Acer’s helpdesk put me through hell, but fortunately a few people work there who are genuinely interested in helping the customers, besides all the incompetent rotten apples. Don’t misunderstand me, even though Acer’s helpdesk frustrated me to no end I always remained polite during my phone calls, even though I spared no opportunity to blacken Acer’s service in this blog post. Acer should be punished for dealing with it’s customers like this, but if you ask me if I’d buy an Acer product again I’m not sure I’d say no. The TravelMate 8371 simply is a good product for a good price, and in September 2009 the competition didn’t have a product which satisfied my requirements. I don’t want to know how high the telephony costs are for calling Acer’s 0900-number (a number prefix for telephone numbers in the Netherlands which charge an extra fee per minute), probably far too much and a notable share of the € 70 I gained. I’m glad my parents pay the phone bill.