Update: There is a BIOS upgrade for this notebook. I downloaded a 31MB FreeDOS USB image, and wrote it to a 32GB USB stick. The FreeDOS image is almost completely free space, so after unzipping the Acer BIOS upgrade and copying the DOS directory files to the mounted FreeDOS image, it booted, ran the .bat file (as per readme.txt), and the upgrade went smoothly.
My point is that the BIOS upgrade for this notebook is very easy without Windows.
