Hi Addict,
Did you by any chance make the recovery DVD that acer prompted for on first boot?
That image contains a copy of windows XP as well as the drivers and software that Acer bundles. In my opinion, that's a better route to take than the recovery partition.
In fact, if you have the chance and the machine is still new, I would recommend wiping the hard drive down completely (delete all partitions) and start over from scratch, with only one partition. Acer, for whatever reason, puts XP on a FAT32 partition, and splits half the space into a second one. This sounds cool in theory, but in practice, it's just pointless. It doesn't protect against anything, and I don't even know why they wouldn't use NTFS.
I have this system too, if you haven't figured that out by now
This machine has some strange quirks to it, so I'll outline some of them here for your future reference:
1. As mentioned, the two partitions / recovery disk setup is silly. This machine is better when wiped done-over.
2. The touchpad driver that is on it by default is crap.
Synaptics (the company which manufactures it) has an updated driver that is loads better. It tracks nicer, doesn't cause the little navigator button to crash its tray program, and actually scrolls properly after some tweaking.
3. Display drivers are also crap by default. Either download
omega drivers for the ATi mobility radeon x1600, or go to the revamped amd page and download the mobile catalyst driver.
4. This system tends to overheat when you put it on your lap. To remedy this, just make sure that the little air intake on the bottom is left, and the side exhaust are left uncovered.
5. Bluetooth can be tricky on this laptop. The drivers that come on it seem like an afterthough, but no worries- if they give you trouble, just uninstall them and let the windows driver go on there. Surprisingly enough, it's better, and your devices are much more easily configurable with it.
Hope this helps. This laptop has been great to me. I know I picked a winner, and I've recommended it to anyone who wants a screaming budget machine.