Acer Aspire 1 boot USB problem : SOLVED

 Just got this cheap Acer Aspire 1 just to put linux on it.  But bios doesnt show boot from USB option and F12 boot menu doesnt show either.

I tried booting 2 different USB drives that I made with DD in linux, no luck, nothing working.

I Google'd this and found a very helpful forum post that worked for me, my Acer Apire 1 boot from USB fine and is installing Linux Mint now.

Here is what I did based on the forum post

- bootup windows

- download Rufus

- format flash drive as Fat32

- in Rufus select ISO to burn

- in Rufus under "partition scheme" change from MBR to GPT

- burn iso

After that put the USB drive in the Acer and press F12 on bootup.  Instead of only showing me windows boot manager it had another option , and that let me boot off the USB.

NOTE : 

- F12 boot shortcut key has to be turned on in bios

- After that when you press F12 for boot menu hold FN key on bottom left corner

The F function keys need you to hold the FN key first.

The Cheap Android CPU limiting conspiracy

Around 2014 or so I bought a cheap $100 Samsung android.  I was impressed by how fast and snappy it was.  I remember thinking, "why bother with an expensive phone when this $100 is so fast?".  Eventually the screen broke and the phone got replaced.

Since then I've had about 4 or 5 cheap androids and they felt much slower and laggy.  Most of them start off feeling fast at first, but over the months get slower and slower.  Simple thing like waiting for the top pull down menu, or waiting on the keyboard to pop up.  Stuff that was never a problem on my $100 phone from 2014.

"Why bother buying an expensive phone when the $100 is fast?"

I think the phone makers figured out this was a problem for them.  So they fixed it to make the CPU's run slow so you will buy a new expensive phone.

Some facts to go with the conspiracy

On your Android the CPU is not always running at full power.  The CPU will slow down to save power, then will speed up when you are doing stuff and need the extra CPU power.  This is a total normal thing.

Well on one of these cheap androids I installed a CPU monitor and it revealed that the CPU was almost always being kept at the much slower speeds - below 50% almost all the time.  So even when I'm using the phone and it's struggling to keep up the CPU is not using max power.

Basically the CPU speed was being reduced by 60% most of the time.

Please note during this time I was on my phone A LOT so it should have been spending much more time in the higher CPU speeds.

412hr stuck at 546 mhz but the phone max CPU power is 1.43 ghz

546 mhz is a very very slow speed.  No one would buy a phone like this on purpose.  These cheap phones advertise they have fast CPU speeds , but then the phone makers lock the CPU speed to be slow so you will want to upgrade later.

Win10 keyboard arrow keys move mouse cursor

When I press keyboard arrow keys the mouse cursor also moves.  This started happening after some recent updates / reboots.  Searched some and the problem is MS Paint is open.  After I close MS Paint the problem stops.  I find this odd because I use MS Paint often and have surely had it open before when I used the arrow keys.  Either way, now that I closed Paint, the arrow keys no longer move mouse pointer.

I checked Ease of Access > Mouse and nothing was enabled / on.

Block Bing "picture of the day" from Bing homepage

I like Bing and have been using it a lot recently.  However I don't like the "picture of the day" which is behind the search box.  I feel it clutters up the page.  I like a nice clear search interface.  Using uBlock I was able to add this to "My Filters" and remove that image

||bing.com/th?

Here is what bing looks like now: