Acer Netbook Sucks…

the life out of me at this point. Sorry for the dramatic title but hoping to draw attention as I’m desperately seeking help with my Netbook. I have a GlobalSat BU-353 GPS receiver and Street Atlas 2011. The computer locks up when I use the GPS with Street Atlas after approx. a few minutes or more. This can be as little as two minutes up to twenty minutes. I have a new Acer Aspire One D255E-1802 Netbook with an Intel Atom N550 1.5g dual core processor, 1GB DDR3 memory, 250 GB HDD, Windows XP Professional SP3. I’ve tried quite a few things including updating the gps driver, tried different usb ports, tried fresh install of WinXP, tried with my older SA 2009, and still the computer either locks up (where I have to hit power button to shut down and re start), or it will give me the Blue Screen and reboot. By itself, the gps receiver works fine with it’s own utility, and SA 2011 works fine by itself. But together it freezes. I have an older Dell D505 laptop that has no problems with it at all. Speaking with Delorme Tech & Globalsat Tech, they both seem to point toward the netbook itself. Is there anyone that’s had similar problems that’s found a solution? Is there anyone that has the same setup with positive results? Does anyone have any suggestions on what may be done to correct this? Overall I love the netbook, however I bought this with using it as a GPS in mind. Hopefully someone has a solid solution. Thank you very much for any help or info you can provide. Don

 

Hi there,

I've been doing a bit of digging around looking at what might be causing this.

The one thing which stands out is that the Acer has an Intel GMA 3150 Graphics card wheras the Dell has an Intel 855GME graphics card.
The specs for Street Atlas 2011 require "• 3D-capable video card with 32 MB VRAM (64 MB VRAM recommended)" so it looks like this may be the best place to start.

Firstly, before we condemn the little Acer to being useless, I would get into the BIOS at startup and check if there is an option to increase the shared memory available to the Intergrapted Graphics Chip. It may simply be that that is set to some unfeasably low value like 8Mb (as in the case of my D250).
If this is the case, then we need to look at if we can up it.

Let me know what you find.

Paul :ugeek:

 

Thank you Elpaulio for the suggestions. I believe that in the Bios it shows just basic graphics memory as my dell shows 1MB as compared to 8MB on my netbook. If you DXDiag and check the display tab, it shows my dell has 64MB and my netbook has 256MB. This Acer is one of the newest with the N550 dual core processor. I sent this info to a tech at Delorme who checked this to make sure it met the requirements. If you know of anything else my ears are open, as I do love the netbook and don't want to get rid of it and also want to keep SA2011. I'm considering trying another GPS receiver, however I don't want to spend the money to find out that it doesn't work either. My present receiver works flawlessly on the Dell with SA2011. Thanks again. Anything else ...

 

I read a post on another forum by someone who also has an Acer Aspire with Delorme Topo and the BU-353. They used GPSgate and it seemed to have solved their problem. I tried GPSgate and it also has seemed to have solved my problem. Apparently Acer Aspire Ones don't play well with Delorme and the BU-353 gps receiver.

 

I use XPort