After about 1 1/2 years on FC2, I finally upgraded my acer aspire 1690 laptop. If you read my earlier posts on installing FC2 then you know it wasn't a straight forward configuration to get everything working. I'm pleased to say that is no longer the case. FC5 covers essentially everything I need, although I did need to follow one additional page to get the IPW2200 wireless working. But even that was a perfect recipe that worked the first time. Everything is up and running again.
The only real problem was getting my FC5 image updated immediately after installing. I've had these FC5 images for a few months so the first thing I do after installing is update the system with yum. It hit a "hickup" when trying to deal with bind-config vs bind. The former is apparently needed by networkmanager or possibly evolution. In anycase, I uninstalled bind, Evolution and NetworkManager then did the update. After that I reinstalled evolution and everything worked just fine. I'm not sure what NetworkManager really is, but there is supposed to be a gnome applet for it so maybe I'll try it. Right now I use the Network Monitor applet instead.
I still haven't tried the Bluetooth or Smart Card slot, nor the infrared contoller (though I do have mythtv frontend installed on it). I have to admit, with plenty of disk space, plenty of memory and a dvd write too boot, this laptop should last me another 5 years at least. Cross your fingers.
Update: 2006-09-14
I had one more thing to fix. My display looked pretty bad but I couldn't figure out why. It finally dawned on me that it was running at 1024×768 instead of the intended 1280×800. I still have to run the 915resolution program to patch the video bios in order to get the proper resolution. I used to run 855resolution, but 915resolution is the new version applicable to my hardware (intel 915gm). Anyway, after running this the display is correct and the fonts no longer look blurred. Whew! My eyes were really hurtin' with this display at 1024×768. It's really blurry at that resolution.