Last weekend, I purchased an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 from FutureShop. I would like to think that I got a pretty good deal, but more importantly, I was glad that my family members were enjoying the use of this nettop. The initial experience for me was not too pleasant thought. Perhaps a mistmatch of expectations.

I had some early setup problems trying to get the wireless keyboard and mouse to work, until at last I found out that there was a small wireless adaptor embedded in the mouse battery compartment. This adaptor has to be connected to one of Revo’s several USB ports. I tried the top-most port first. Both peripherals seemed to work on bootup, but as soon as Windows started up, the keyboard would become non-functional. That frustrated me quite a bit. Finally, I tried a different port, one at the back of the computer and that seemed to help.

The remaining hardware issue was with the keyboard’s layout. For some strange reason, I could never authenticate correctly with the keyboard. If you have any clue about why that is, please let me know. My current work around – short of connecting a second USB keyboard – is to use the on-screen keyboard to type in the password. Alternatively, get Windows to perform an auto-login at startup.

Getting MKV videos play smoothly on the Revo can be challenge. I use the VideoLAN player for this, and today, I found a neat little trick to make use of GPU power in Nvidia’s Ion chipset to help boost the video playback performance on my Revo and it worked!

If you are wondering how, do this:

1. Go to Tools > Preferences, or simply press Ctrl-P.
2. Next click on the “Input & Codecs” tab.
3. Check the “Use GPU acceleration (experimental)”.
4. Click “Save”.

That is it! You should be able to enjoy HD playback on your Revo. Believe me, I initially could not even get the video to play.

With all the minor heartbreaks, I would still give the Revo a 3.5 out of 5 rating. It is rather inexpensive and is a good media entertainment device for the family to enjoy an evening together. The setup experience could be improved with better documentation. Hence the reason for this post: a one-stop tip to not only get started, but to get the most out of your Revo.

Have fun!