The Acer Aspire V 15 as a media center so I can use my 11-inch Macbook Air as my main computer again

Acer Aspire V15
Acer Aspire V15

I decided to test the Acer Aspire V 15 Windows 10 laptop as a media center connected to my HDTV. My plan is to use this Windows laptop from that position instead of my 11-inch Macbook Air from 2012. By doing so I can start using the Macbook Air as my main computer again.

So I started with installing the software I need on the Acer to make this possible.

Mobile Mouse Pro
Mobile Mouse Pro

First I installed the mobile mouse server software. It makes it possible to use the incredibly good iOS app called Mobile Mouse Pro form my iPhone and iPad to remote control the Windows machine. Mobile Mouse is a mouse, TouchPad and keyboard built-in to the same app. Incredibly useful. It’s so good that you actually don’t need physical keyboard and mouse. Heck, you can even use Swiftkey on your computer this way!

Splashtop running on my Mac
Splashtop running on my Mac

After I got that working I installed Splashtop streamer on the Windows machine. It makes it possible to have remote desktop access from all my devices, iPhone, iPad and Mac. It basically means that I will now have the complete Acer Windows laptop on my Macbook Air too! So I can start and use apps and files running on the Windows laptop, from my other devices. Really brilliant and lag free. It’s freaking awesome to run Windows 10 on my iPad Air 2 for example :)

Plex Media Server
Plex Media Server

And after that it was time to install Plex Media Server for all my movies and other videos. It feels really great laying in my bed using Mobile Mouse Pro on my iPhone 6s plus to navigate and start movies in Plex that is running on the big HDTV, connected to the Acer Laptop!

I also installed Calibre to organize my ebooks.

After that come the big problem. How to move my media files and other files I need from my Mac formatted external hard drives?

I did a Google search and found a demo version of some Windows software that could read mac formatted drives. It worked quite good to move the files I needed to the built-in 1GB hard drive on the Acer Aspire V15. It has a hybrid drive, a 128GB SSD for Windows and installed software, and a 1TB normal hard drive for file storage. Quite nice. I like that.

So now I have only one problem left to solve. How can I schedule the computer to wake up in the morning so it can be on and wake during the day (when I need it), and to go to sleep during the night (when I don’t need it)? It’s very easy to do on the Mac (OS X), you just go into power settings and set the time when you want it to wake up and sleep. Really easy. But I can’t find a way to do that on Windows 10? I have tried Google it but haven’t found a solution yet..

It feels really nice to have my really portable and mobile 11-inch Macbook Air back as my main computer again. I really love it. And even if it’s from 2012 its really fast. I mean it’s a 2 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB RAM. So it’s basically faster and more powerful than the latest 12-inch Macbook that I planned to buy. I’m not sure I will buy it anymore. I think I can use my Macbook Air at least one more year. The only bad thing with it is battery life. It only have 4 hours or so. It’s the model from the year before the Air got really impressive battery life… So we will see.

Here is one video I’ve done about the Acer Aspire V 15: