{"id":4577,"date":"2022-12-04T11:31:26","date_gmt":"2022-12-04T16:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/?p=4577"},"modified":"2022-12-23T12:58:38","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T17:58:38","slug":"acer-aspire-5-a515-56-53s3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/2022\/12\/acer-aspire-5-a515-56-53s3\/","title":{"rendered":"Acer Aspire 5 A515-56-53S3"},"content":{"rendered":"

My 6 year old HP laptop<\/a> that I had been using as a desktop had been getting slow lately, so I started looking for a replacement. I had gotten a Lenovo<\/a> 2 years ago to use as my portable computer, but had to install bolts to hold the lid on when its hinges failed<\/a>. I didn’t feel like getting another Lenovo and a lot of people with Dells had issues, so I didn’t want to go that way either. Even the HP had more problems than I would have liked, but I was running out of companies. I thought with Black Friday coming up there might be some deals. Despite inflation and chip shortages, I think a lot of people upgraded or bought laptops recently and lately demand has dropped so prices seem to have come down to more reasonable levels.
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I still had to make some compromises. I would like to get a backlit keyboard and an i5 processor if possible and nothing smaller than a 15″ screen. I needed at least 8 GB of RAM and wanted a 512 GB SSD hard drive. SSD drives are so much faster, but higher capacity ones are expensive. I also like having a SD card reader which is how I move pictures from my camera to my computer and it seems like computer almost always include that. I found an interesting computer on sale at Amazon, an Acer Aspire 5 A515-56-53S3. That’s a mouthful. They have been making A515’s for several years at least and then the second number has been rising. They make some versions with AMD Ryzen processors, which I would be okay with if the performance was decent, but then you have to learn about all of that. The one at Amazon looked good but only had a 256 GB SSD hard drive. I keep most everything on a local cloud hard drive, so maybe that didn’t matter? I looked at the Lenovo and its 512 GB hard drive still had 322 GB of free space, so I think 256 would work. One interesting thing about this computer was that it comes with an empty hard drive bay since its SSD drive is installed somewhere else (in the picture below, the empty bay is shown at the upper left, next to the fan; the SSD drive is at the lower right). The computer also came with 8 GB of RAM, which is the minimum for Windows 11, but it seems like there should be more. I had upgraded the HP to 8 GB as soon as I bought it and that was six years ago. The Acer has 4 GB of DDR4 RAM soldered in place and an expansion bay with 4 GB installed, so I could upgrade to 12 GB or 20 GB by replacing the 4 GB module with a 8 GB or 16 GB module. I know memory has gone up in price, but it looks like I could get 8 GB for about $30 (6 years ago I paid $20 for an extra 4 GB module). I could also get a 1 TB SSD drive for about $70 if I need to bump up the storage. The empty bay can accommodate a 7mm thick drive, so I actually could install an old 500 GB disc hard drive in that space (most of my old hard drives are 9mm thick and would not fit). Probably not worth it to possibly slow the computer down and use more power running a 500 GB disk drive that might not even work correctly since it came from a messed up computer (though I think it was a memory or processor issue). I decided I wouldn’t bother with upgrades unless I really needed them. The other compromise with this computer was it didn’t have a SD card reader and instead included an ethernet port, which is kind of nice, but probably won’t ever be used (except maybe it will be useful in transferring data between backup hard drives). I can use the Lenovo’s card reader, but if I wanted to travel with the Acer I would probably buy a USB card reader for $10 or so.<\/p>\n

I ordered the computer on Black Friday and it took a week to arrive from Amazon. I was happy to see the price increased after Black Friday to $460, but later I noticed a comparable HP laptop at Best Buy for $399 which included 12 GB of RAM, a card reader, and a touchscreen (of questionable value for me), but did not have the backlit keyboard and had only 1366×768 pixel screen. Hmmm. The Lenovo and Acer both have 1920×1080 pixel screens. That HP would make a good desktop replacement where the keyboard and screen wouldn’t matter.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the computer works fine. Supposedly to meet Energy Star requirements the backlit keyboard turns off 30 seconds after not being used and there is no setting to tweak this. It seems pointless for the keyboard to only be backlit when you are using it instead of being visible when you might need it and don’t know where the keys are. Fortunately there is a BIOS setting that leaves it on (BIOS?!). Also, the manufacture date of the computer is December 21, 2021, so it is already almost a year old! That explains why it has an older 11th generation i5 instead of this year’s 12th generation.<\/p>\n

I retired the HP that I was using as a desktop computer and moved the Lenovo to that spot. Supposedly the Lenovo should wake up when I click the mouse even though the lid is closed, but instead I need to press the spacebar on the external keyboard. I also installed the scanner software on it. That was really easy. The only thing I messed up was I installed my old copy of Office 2013 on the Acer, but I should have installed Office 2016 since I was already using 2013 on the Lenovo and the HP had been using 2016. I looked into a subscription to Office 365. It is $70 per year for an individual and I can use it on 5 devices simultaneously that are in my name. The family plan is $100 and allows up to 6 different users on 5 devices simultaneously. However it doesn’t include Microsoft Access, which is what I use for my movie reviews. You can still buy Microsoft Office 2021 for $150, but it only includes Word, Excel and Powerpoint. You still have to buy Access for $160 and both of those can only be used on one PC. Next year Microsoft will stop security updates of Office 2013, so I don’t have to make a decision just yet.<\/p>\n

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My 6 year old HP laptop that I had been using as a desktop had been getting slow lately, so I started looking for a replacement. I had gotten a Lenovo 2 years ago to use as my portable computer, but had to install bolts to hold the lid on when its hinges failed. I … Continue reading “Acer Aspire 5 A515-56-53S3”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4577"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4626,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577\/revisions\/4626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}