I just dusted off my old Acer TravelMate to play with Songsmith (it doesn't work well under VMWare) and I remembered why I was so happy to switch to my Mac. My Acer developed, among other things, an annoying screen flickering issue before we parted ways.
The Acer TravelMate 8200 screen flicker problem: solution article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
I realized this time around that the flickering only occurs when the laptop is plugged in. Disabling ePower Manager didn't do anything.
If your Acer is plagued by this, by all means send it in for repair. But, in the meanwhile, there are two workarounds. First, you can unplug it and run off of battery power. Or, more practically, you can plug it in and remove the battery.
The issue seems to be related to a faulting charging board. i.e., the problem only manifests itself when your computer is charging the battery.
If I had a spare battery, I could check whether the issue is actually with the battery or the computer but, alas, I do not.
Hope this helps someone else who might be having the same issues.
The Acer TravelMate 8200 screen flicker problem: solution article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
great blogs growth up
Aral,
Thanks for you post was about to order a new back light for my acer travelmate 6592 which is now rather predictably out of warranty!
But you seam to be correct, removing that battery stops the problem. interestingly the screen flicker occurs in both Windows and Ubuntu.
Thanks again
Stephen
[...] Thinking the un-clean power from the dodgie replacement power adapter may have damaged the back light bulb I was all for buying a new one and embarking on the daunting task of changing the back-light, until that is I discovered this blog post by Aral Balkan [...]